Well, you have likely heard that Father Lombardi, the Vatican spokesman, has clarified that Pope Francis was indeed referring to contraception in his remarks on the flight back from Mexico. Here is the relevant section in Italian, from an interview which Father Lombardi gave to Vatican Radio: L’esempio che ha fatto di Paolo […]
The Ontario Liberal budget was released yesterday: As expected, costs are going up, while revenues tank, the deficit is $50 billion, the debt, well, the debt is now more than $300 billion. With those apocalyptic figures, I am not sure how worried we should be that wine is going up ten cents a bottle. Perhaps […]
*Pursuant to my recent post on Pope Francis’ ambiguous and confusing remarks on contraception, it turns out that my initial discomfiture of hearing of Paul VI’s supposed permission to nuns in the Congo to use the Pill in case they were raped was a healthy sign: According to Father Z (his blog posting on this […]
The Holy Father has started another furore with his latest off-the-cuff interview on the plan ride back from his pilgrimage to Mexico. I would recommend that all those interested read the entire text of the interview, or at least the relevant bits. As I have written before, it is always good to go back to […]
On a news report the other evening, it was mentioned that enrolment in the humanities (philosophy, literature, history, to say nothing of theology) has dropped by 50% over the past ten years in our universities. Burgeoning onwards with full enrolments, on the other hand, are the S.T.E.M. studies, science, technology, engineering and mathematics, with which […]
*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 […]
I finally got around recently to watching the fifth instalment of the Mission Impossible franchise. As expected, it was slick and high-budget, with impressive real-life stunts. Besides hanging on to moving planes and swerving motorcycles, Tom Cruise is showing his age a little, a rigid expression setting into his normally expressive face, a rictus grin […]
Like many around the world, Catholic or not, I have been trying to figure out Pope Francis. It is always a difficult task to ‘get’ a man, to understand whence he comes and whither he goes, not least due to the complexity of people’s backgrounds and that unpredictable reality that we call’ ‘free-will’, but which […]