Feature

Getting to the soul of the Messiah [w/ slideshow]

November 25, 2011

TORONTO - Incarnation is the art of God. But the art that Ballet Creole practises has the same inspiration. This year will be the 10th time the Toronto company dances the Soulful Messiah. It will also be its 10th version of the Christmas favourite set to Quincy Jones’ jazz-gospel-funk reinterpretation of Handel’s masterwork. Each year the dance piece grows a little, sheds some skin, discovers a new wrinkle in the music, said choreographer and artistic director Patrick Parson.

Christians live in fear in ‘Talibanized’ Pakistan

November 19, 2011

TORONTO - Fear has silenced the voice of Pakistani Christians since the political murder of Shahbaz Bhatti last spring, said the retired archbishop of Lahore. “People are very sad, very bitter. They said, ‘If that happens to him what happens to us?’ ” Archbishop Lawrence Saldanha said. Bhatti’s killers remain at large. The convicted murderer of former Punjab Province governor Salman Taseer was greeted in court with rose petals and garlands. In an atmosphere of impunity for anyone who kills a Christian, educated Pakistani Christians are getting out of the country. Those who remain are keeping their heads down and their mouths shut, said Saldanha.

Deacon's street ministry brings hope to prostitutes and dealers on Toronto's streets [w/ video]

November 17, 2011

TORONTO - It’s a cool autumn night, and Robert Kinghorn begins his downtown ministry as night falls on Jarvis Street in downtown Toronto. Amid the hustle and bustle of night life near a local hamburger joint, Kinghorn stands out sporting a white Roman collar. But here on these streets, Kinghorn, the 26-year deacon with a background in prison ministry, seems at ease. Toronto’s unofficial red light district isn’t where you’d expect to find hope and a prayer. But here on “the track,” the notorious downtown area with a well-earned reputation for crime and prostitution, is where Kinghorn has been ministering to people once a week for the past six years. Kinghorn lends a sympathetic ear and offers prayers for the women and men on the track who seek his counsel, the prostitutes and drug dealers, many of whom are wrestling with broken childhoods and drug addictions.

John Michael Talbot brings music ministry for the new evangelization

November 13, 2011

TORONTO - He’s a Third Order Franciscan friar with an iPhone. And through his music ministry, top-selling Catholic musician John Michael Talbot embraces new ways of evangelization while keeping his ministry grounded in the roots of prayer and Catholic tradition. One of the ways Talbot is part of the “new evangelization” is through his latest album Worship and Bow Down. Seventeen tracks include choral background harmonies and the songs for the new “Mass of Rebirth” which he composed in contemporary chant style for the new Roman Missal. (Talbot is one of several musicians around the world who have been commissioned to compose new settings for the new Missal which will be launched at Masses the first week of Advent.)

Study finds more optimism, less depression among weekly churchgoers

November 12, 2011

WASHINGTON - Past studies have shown that those who attend religious services at least weekly tend to live longer and healthier lives. Now, new research indicates that frequent churchgoers also face those additional years with more optimism and greater social support than other people. A study involving more than 92,000 postmenopausal women showed that those who reported weekly attendance at religious services were 56 percent more likely to be above the median in terms of their optimism level. They also were significantly less likely to be depressed or to be characterized by cynical hostility.

Canada's new Roman Missal aims at improved liturgy

November 11, 2011

When Catholics begin using the new Roman Missal on the first Sunday of Advent, they will find an “awesomeness” to the new translation that maybe wasn’t as present in the previous incarnation, said Ottawa Archbishop Terrence Prendergast. The Roman Missal’s new translation will mark the shift from using current principles of “dynamic equivalence” to “formal equivalence” on the first Sunday of Advent. Its aim is an improvement of the liturgy, said the Ottawa archbishop. “It’s a historic moment in the life of the Church and the English-speaking world,” said Prendergast. - VIEW "MISSAL FAQ" - VIEW "MAJOR CHANGES" - VIEW ALL "NEW MISSAL" STORIES & FEATURES The new, more literal translation of the original Latin text will give particular attention to maintaining biblical references and avoid simplifying the words and phrases into contemporary terms. The current translation, in effect for almost half a century, was primarily concerned with how the translated text would be understood by the community for which it was being translated and was often simplified to reflect contemporary English usage.

Religion slowly making its way into corporate towers

November 11, 2011

TORONTO - Nadir Shirazi calls religion "the black sheep of the diversity family." Getting corporate Canada to sit down and talk about accommodating religion at work is a tough sell compared to other diversity-in-employment seminars, said Skills For Change executive director Cheryl May. "It's more of an edgy topic," she said.

"Canadians at War" - Remembering our fallen on Remembrance Day

November 10, 2011

Passchendaele, Vimy, the Somme, Hill 70 and Flanders Fields are all still there more than 90 years after they swallowed the lives of Canadian farm boys and office clerks. The once scarred and rutted fields of mud have been transformed by green grass, monuments, grave markers and crosses. “It’s a vast memorial,” said writer Susan Evans Shaw. Evans Shaw has produced a 350-page guidebook to the battlefields of the First World War called simply Canadians at War. The book is dramatically and amply illustrated with photographs by Jean Crankshaw.

Catholic way respects dignity of all life

November 9, 2011

The arrival of a newborn baby usually brings cheers, not a doomsday prediction for the world. But that’s how Philippine-born Danica May Camacho, symbolically called the world’s seven billionth baby, was introduced by international media on Oct. 31. Her birth was used in news stories to indicate the UN’s concerns about global overpopulation. Overpopulation theorists charge that there are not enough resources to feed and care for seven billion people. They advocate for “population control” like contraception and abortion especially for Third World countries.

The Vatican's global economy - ‘Rubbish, rubbish, rubbish,’ or timely, pertinent, reasonable?

November 6, 2011

Thinking in catholic terms about a global economy ought to be natural. Catholic means global, universal, transcending boundaries. But a Catholic proposal for regulating the global economy has stirred a battle between left and right within the Church. The Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace’s “note” — issued in advance of the G20 meeting that opened Nov. 3 in Cannes, France — proposed a gradual evolution toward global governance of finance and trade. On the right the proposal has been dismissed as “rubbish, rubbish, rubbish” by American conservative George Weigel of Washington’s Ethics and Public Policy Centre. Weigel dismisses the Pontifical Council as “a rather small office in the Roman Curia” without much standing in relation to the teaching office of the Church.