*Anyone who is remotely interested in the state of the Canadian university, and especially all the parents pondering where to send their children, and all the high school graduates wondering where to go next year, must read this recent essay by Professor Ron Srigley of the University of Prince Edward Island, on how truly corrupt these […]
As we near the over-hyped commemoration we call ‘Valentine’s Day’ (Valentine was a rather obscure third-century martyr, of whom we know little, but legends abound) in these early days of Lent, I was pondering, given some recent events, the darker side of love. Particularly, the connection between intimacy and violence, which is a curious and, […]
*The migrant/refugee debacle continues, with assaults, rapes and (so far, thankfully foiled) terrorist plots in Germany, Sweden and other countries, who have bent on an emotional and irrational desire to welcome all and sundry from Syria and other war-torn regions. As I have written before, there is nothing wrong and indeed much good with the motivation to […]
*A Happy New Year to all of our readers, and may 2016 bring you all many joys and blessings, even if there are a few crosses and sufferings along the way. As the Catechism reminds us in the words of Saint Rose of Lima “apart from the cross there is no other ladder by which […]
Marc Bauerlein has an insightful essay on false innocence in the recent issue of First Things, describing those who feign an innocence that, perhaps at some level they think they have, but, deeper down, in their heart of hearts, in that still, small voice of conscience I alluded to in my last post, they know […]
A very merry, holy and joyous Christmas to all our readers! The twelve days of Christmas traditionally goes until the solemnity of the Epiphany, on January 6th (in Canada, as with so many of our feasts, transferred to the nearest Sunday). But Christmas began yesterday, so continue the celebration! But to the point at […]
I will often ask my students in class whether Christ was a human person. The answer may seem straightforward: Of course He was (or is that is)? But the correct response is that He was not. This may at first glance seem counter-intuitive, but, in fact, is a central truth of our faith, without […]
El Chapo (or ‘Shorty’, whose real name is Joaquin Guzman Archivaldo Luera), the infamous fifty-something-year old drug lord, recently made a dramatic escape through an elaborate tunnel from a maximum-security, and supposedly ‘inescapable’, prison in Mexico. This raises a number of questions, such as, a propos, whether Mexico is a failed state. Does that even […]
On this Solemnity of Saints Peter and Paul, the first Pope and his primary missionary bishop respectively, and in light our current Pope’s new encyclical, I thought a few words on the papacy itself would be helpful, and particularly the often-misunderstood charism of infallibility which goes with the office. Today’s Gospel reading gives the […]
To be honest, I was not fully aware until I came to Auschwitz that there was a whole city by that name, but one that retains the Polish original, Oswiecim. It is actually a pleasant city, which I discovered in an early morning run around the central, mediaeval quarters. Auschwitz was the Germanic form given […]