Arts and Culture

The Irish-Canadian experience

October 20, 2008

A Story to Be Told: Personal Reflections on the Irish Immigrant Experience in Canada by M. Eleanor McGrath (Liffey Press, 215 pages, hardcover, $65.00). TORONTO - Between 1940 and 1990, the reasons behind Canada’s last great wave of Irish immigration were about more than Ireland’s poor economy — there were social, cultural and political factors too.

Making sense of our different beliefs

October 20, 2008

Common Ground: A Priest and a Rabbi Read Scripture Together by Andrew M. Greeley and Jacob Neusner (McGill-Queen’s University Press, 335 pages, softcover, $24.95). A couple of nights ago I looked up at the sky and saw the wishing star and so I made a wish. I wished there was a university course, perhaps called Thinking and Judgment 101, and that it became a required course for everyone in a position of responsibility or aspiring to one.

'Sheen Affair' on tap for Somerville election

October 10, 2008

TORONTO - A slice of American-Canadian relations, examined in the battle to get Bishop Fulton Sheen on Canadian TV back in the 1950s, will be the subject of the annual Somerville Lecture on Christianity and Communications. Professor Mark McGowan, historian, author and principal at the University of St. Michael’s College in Toronto, will present the annual lecture on Nov. 6 at Toronto’s Newman Centre and Nov. 7 at St. Jerome’s University in Waterloo.

Christianity's changing face

October 10, 2008

Christianity and Ethnicity in Canada. edited by Paul Bramadat and David Seljak (University of Toronto Press, softcover, 448 pages, $49.95). Canada’s churches no longer look or talk the way they once did. The once predominantly Anglo-Celtic membership of the United Church, an organization that viewed itself as a potential national church for Canada when it was established in 1925, is now complemented by large Taiwanese and Hungarian congregations. Many Catholic parishes in major cities now have a significant Filipino presence.

Hope for Hollywood

October 10, 2008

In Hollywood, the mission field is as fertile as the wheat fields in Saskatchewan — or so you might hear from Mark Matthews, the founder of Bibles and Brew. Bibles and Brew is a group of about 15 men who meet bi-weekly in the throes of Hollywood culture to discuss what it means to be Catholic and to support each other in the faith.

The true joy of Lourdes

October 3, 2008

The Miracle of Lourdes: A Message of Healing and Hope by John Lochran (St. Anthony Messenger Press, softcover, 134 pages, $12.95). To commemorate the 150th anniversary of the miracle of Lourdes, where Our Lady appeared to French peasant girl Bernadette Soubirous, Fr. John Lochran retells the familiar story with deep insight and new appreciation.

ROM to host Dead Sea Scrolls

September 26, 2008

TORONTO - The Royal Ontario Museum has reached out to Israel and back to the beginnings of Christianity and Judaism as we know it to bring the Dead Sea Scrolls to Toronto. Some of the most significant pieces of the 2,000-year-old writings will be on display at the ROM from June 27, 2009, to Jan. 3, 2010. Scrolls on display will include passages of Genesis, Deuteronomy, Psalms, Isaiah, the War Scroll, the Community Rule and the Messianic Apocalypse.

Praising God in song

September 18, 2008

MISSISSAUGA, Ont. - The 19th International Festival of Religious Song in Mississauga will bring both professional and amateur performances to the stage in competitions this year. The festival, originally started by members of the Polish Catholic community and promoted by Catholic Radio Toronto, is meant to encourage musical talent, especially for use in praising God. The new professional category this year will provide a place for more established Catholic musicians to compete, whereas everyone previously competed on the same level.

In community we find home

September 18, 2008

Beyond Homelessness: Christian Faith in a Culture of Displacement by Steven Bouma-Prediger and Brian J. Walsh (Wm.B. Eerdman’s Publishing, softcover, $27.99). Stone by stone, as he laboured to build his summer house on Lake Geneva, the Swiss psychoanalyst Carl Jung came to recognize that home — with its design, rooms, windows, corners and doors — mirrored the human psyche, with all its needs, shadows and spiritual longings. Home is foundational to individual identity and therefore acknowledged as one of our universal human rights.

Gratitude keeps our society human

September 11, 2008

TORONTO - Margaret Visser is much too civilized to tell about the incident which sparked her new book, The Gift of Thanks: The Roots, Persistence and Paradoxical Meanings of a Social Ritual. “There is a story, but I’m not telling it because it’s so horrible,” she told The Catholic Register.