Sovereign debt is dull television compared with a president lobbing paper towels into a crowd, but the former is rather more important to Puerto Rico.
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The “filial correction” accusing Pope Francis of “propagating heresy” published last month by a number of Catholic scholars and priests is both a great surprise and the new normal.
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The monument includes large open spaces, designed for larger gatherings. But meetings such as one I had with a survivor are also part of the purpose of the monument, to make history personal.
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The House of Commons Committee on Canadian Heritage is holding hearings on M-103, and I was invited to appear before the committee to offer some views. I appeared on Wednesday, and on the whole it was a positive experience.
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As we mark the centenary of the Fatima apparitions, there are suggestive links between Leo XIII, the St Michael prayer and Fatima for those who are anniversary-minded.
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A new word was given papal emphasis recently—“integration”—that echoes the recent moves of the Canadian government to limit those coming to Canada to seek asylum.
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It’s been a while since I could do what I always did during my student days in Rome on St. Matthew’s feast, namely visit the Contarelli chapel in the church of San Luigi dei Francesi.
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A celebration planned by the Canadian Goan Christian Group for St. Joseph’s parish in Mississauga on Oct. 14 will highlight the role that immigrants play in keeping the Church in Canada alive and vibrant.
Read MoreWe have domesticated so much of nature that we think something has gone horribly wrong when natural forces cannot be tamed.
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Henceforth, the Congregation for Divine Worship (CDW) will not play the role it does now in preparing liturgical translations, but will largely limit itself to approving – or withholding approval – the texts prepared by bishops’ conferences.
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In Canada and the United States, we live so far from the Biblical world that on occasion we have to remind ourselves of that fact simply to understand the sacred Scriptures properly. Hurricanes can be such a reminder.
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In a significant essay for First Things, Archbishop Charles Chaput of Philadelphia calls for renewed attention to Veritatis Splendor (The Splendor of Truth), the 1993 encyclical of St. John Paul II on the moral life.
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On Saturday, I watched the BBC retrospective on Diana’s death; entitled 7 Days, it chronicles the week of her death in Paris and her funeral at Westminster Abbey. It’s strange to watch it now.
Read MoreIn those early days of September 1997, it was the self-indulgent who seemed to rule the day, while the self-sacrificing were thought out-of-step. The conduct of the Queen was so roundly criticized that it seemed the monarchy itself was in peril.
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The death of Mother Teresa was my big break, if I might put it that way, into Catholic journalism.
In the summer of 1997, I had written my first few pieces for the National Catholic Register.
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Just as Pope Francis used his visit to Mexico to influence immigration politics across the border in the United States, it would be impossible for the first Latin American pope to ignore the crisis across the border in Venezuela.
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To the bureaucratic mindset, the answer to a stubborn problem is always another bureau. Productivity is lacking? Establish a minister of innovation. Fitness is flagging? A minster for sport.
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Memories of it have now disappeared into the constitutional miasma that shrouded Canadian political life for some thirty years from the 1960s to the 1990s, but the Charlottetown Accord – signed twenty-five years ago this week – bears remembering in our current moment.
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