Of Trillions and Youth Summits
Another milestone for progressive Canada: We will soon hit the trillion dollar debt mark, not quite up to the 20 trillion south of the border, but we’re proportionately catching up. Like the U.S., interest payments alone are playing havoc, and there seems no end in sight, as the Liberals, NDP, well, let’s just say all the political parties realize that the votes are in money, and money in votes, and the only debate is how quickly we are headed towards insolvency, unless cooler and more prudent heads prevail. But these are rare on the ground, and even more rare in politics.
The upcoming Vatican Youth Summit seems sadly already fraught with ideology. Matthew Schmitz at First Things has a telling, commentary on the build up to the Synod, whose working documents bespeak a bygone era of liberal Catholicism, unhinged from tradition and sacredness. The story of the young priest’s cassock airbrushed into jeans for a vocation photo-op is telling, and it seems a large and influential number of Vatican prelates have little idea what young people really want, lost in dreams of their own youth, or perhaps dreams of what they think youth dream about. What should seem clear is that all generations from Adam onwards want tradition, solidity, something to live for and by, and, most of all, they crave truth, and Truth, which takes discipline and work to appropriate for oneself. The easy way out, false freedom, banality and mediocrity, complaisance and complacence, are not attractive, and have emptied our churches. Christ always calls us higher, to strive for nobility and grace, for we are supernatural and immortal beings, called to no less than divine life with God.
And while we’re on bad choices, the midpoint of Holy Week is traditionally called ‘Spy’ Wednesday, when Judas took the easy way, making the fateful decision to betray Christ to the Sanhedrin for a bag of silver. We all have decisions to make with our free will, from the big to the small, and all of them impinge in one way or another upon our eternal destiny, for good or ill. A bit more self-reflection is always requisite in this life of absorption in the external and the ephemeral.
Yet here we obsess over alleged affairs of the President and Justin Trudeau’s awkward affairs of State and Mark Zuckerburg’s mercenary interest in all our affairs, licit and not. One can scarcely avoid all the inanity if one is within fifty feet of the internet, or, as I keep discovering, in a grocery store queue.
So find what refuge you can, whether that be interior, as Saint Theresa of Avila and her ‘interior castle’, or, in addition, exterior, some place to which one may go, to find God and His Christ in a ‘lonely place’, where we may ‘rest a while’, to ‘be still’, so we can hear in the silence the voice of our Maker and Redeemer.
A grace-filled Holy Week to one and all.
Carney’s Amoral Majority
After five defections – euphemistically described as ‘crossing the floor’ – and three by-elections, Mark Carney and his Liberals how have their coveted majority. One wonders what bowls of pottage were offered in back-room deals. In the archaic monarchical system that is the Dominion of Canada, this majority allows the newly-minted Prime Minister to rule[…]Continue reading→
Saint Kateri , Canada’s Protectress
This was the title given to Saint Kateri Tekakwitha, by Pope Benedict XVI, when he canonized her on October 28th, 2012, along with six others, in Saint Peter’ Square (she had been beatified by Pope John Paul II back in 1980). With Saint Joseph as our protector, along with the Canadian martyrs, we seem to[…]Continue reading→
A Closed, Unsustainable, Descending Loop
As a follow-up to my thoughts on Payette’s payout, here be a stark image of where are here in Canada. As the graph shows in, well, graphic terms, since 2025, the public sector has contributed to 95.5% of economic growth. The private sector – which funds the public sector, or is supposed to – has[…]Continue reading→
Remembering Father Alphonse de Valk
(Today marks the sixth anniversary of the death of Father Alphonse de Valk, C.S.B., a faithful, courageous and indefatigable Basilian priest, pro-life-and-family apostle, and the founder of Catholic Insight magazine. Here is what we wrote those on his entering into eternity five years ago, as we continue to remember him in our prayers and thoughts)[…]Continue reading→
A Tale of Two Benedicts
A grace-filled Holy Week to all our readers! As we await and prepare for the Resurrection about to dawn upon us, we might keep in mind two Benedicts: Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI, requiescat in pace, elected on this day in 2005; and today’s commemoration of the mystic pilgrim, Benedict Joseph Labre, who died on this[…]Continue reading→
My Name is Bernadette
April 16th is a propitious day, for besides the anniversary of Father de Valk’s death, who founded Catholic Insight in its print form decades ago, and the commemoration of the ‘two Benedicts’, mentioned in accompanying posts, today we also recall Saint Bernadette Soubirous, the young visionary to whom the Virgin Mary appeared numerous times at[…]Continue reading→
Presidential Pardon of Weronika Krawczyk
As a good news, follow-up to our story from Poland, of the persecution of Weronika Krawczyk for her pro-life views, we heard that she has been granted a presidential pardon. One might still wonder why one needs a presidential pardon for simply holding the long-held belief that the child within the womb is a child,[…]Continue reading→
Saint Lydwina of Schiedam and Suffering Joyfully
Saint Lydwina of Schiedam (1380 – 1433) was one of the countless and glorious ‘victim souls’ in the history of the Church, those whose lives are filled with suffering, often of an unimaginable intensity, but who suffer joyfully. She was a fifteen-year old Dutch girl, out skating one day, when she fell and broke one[…]Continue reading→
The Glorious Martyrdoms of Martin and Maximus
As we enter into Eastertide, we recall on this 13th of April Pope Saint Martin I (+655), one of the noblest, if most tragic, of the successors of Saint Peter. Born in Umbria, Italy, he was of noble lineage, with great intelligence combined with charity and love of the poor and the Church. While still[…]Continue reading→
Divine Mercy Sunday – An Echo of Every Mass
Reach out your hand and put it in my side. Do not doubt but believe’… ‘My Lord and my God!’ (Jn. 20:18)). Today is Divine Mercy Sunday, and as we celebrate the end of the Easter Octave, we contemplate the wounded side of our Saviour, the Church’s source of life. On Good Friday in the[…]Continue reading→