There is a new craze, of all things, for adult colouring books. I know much has been written on the infantilization of our culture, the Boomers regressing to their earlier years, trying to find their lost youth, and the Millenials striving mightily to hold on to a youth quickly slipping away. But colouring books? Whatever […]
The massacre in Paris yesterday marks the beginning, alas, of other tragedies to come. Well over one hundred dead, hundreds more injured, with a bomb going off in the Stade de France where President Hollande himself was taking in the French-German football (soccer) match. Our first response is to pray for the victims and […]
Dostoyevsky wrote, through the voice of Prince Myskin in his novel, The Idiot, that ‘beauty would save the world’. I have often wondered about that quotation, and whether it be true. A month or so ago, our Schola choir traveled to a parish 2 hours from where I live, to sing Schubert’s Mass in […]
I just took in the new American-everyman Tom Hank’s movie, Captain Philips which, surprisingly from its limited quality, has made over $218 million so far, and won six Academy awards. Directed in shaky-realistic-video by Paul Greengrass, who also oversaw two of the Bourne movies, the film has a stark realism. The problem, I think, is […]
I had to wait a few days before writing on the election of Justin Trudeau as our new Prime-Minister-in-waiting, not least for the emotion of disappointment to dissipate somewhat, and a sense of objectivity to set in. To be honest, I expected the result. Harper’s heart (which sounds like a Harlequin romance) was not […]
In an interesting turn of events, the niqab, the face-covering veil worn by certain Muslim women, has become a defining election issue in Canada. Just today, Zunera Ishaq, who had petitioned for the right to take her citizenship oath wearing the veil, took that very oath, yes, with her face covered (she received a court […]
This morning, as I begin this column, ten people at a community college in Oregon were killed by yet-another loner gunman, seeking some kind of notoriety and/or settling some ill-defined grievance; the ultimate motive is really yours to choose. We will never really know, besides the killer’s confused on-line postings, for he was shot to […]
I have been meaning to comment on a ridiculous article in the National Post at the end of August, but one which does pertain, at least indirectly, to the current election. The article described the supposedly unassailable argument of Deputy Premier Deb Matthews against Patrick Brown on the subject of ‘women’s rights’ and abortion. […]
As this interminable election process lumbers on, like a dying African elephant stumbling through the savannah, only to curl up beside some fetid swamp, we, the electorate, are in the danger of ennui, and eventually not caring who becomes Prime Minister, nor who forms a government, just to get the whole interminable thing over with. […]
Following on my last post on the ‘refugee crisis’: One danger in a situation like this, especially one of its global impact, is to act purely on the basis of emotion, a gut reaction which we later, to put it mildly, regret. Saint Thomas has an article on ‘alsmgiving’ (II-II, q.32, a.10), wherein he […]