Inspired by Truth, Enlightening Minds for the Church in Canada and Throughout the World
Inspired by Truth, Enlightening Minds for the Church in Canada and Throughout the World
*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[…]
*The photo op of Justin Trudeau and Kathleen Wynne welcoming Syrian refugees at Pearson airport warmed the cockles of many hearts. There was Prime Minister Trudeau, offering a parka to one poor soul stepping off the plane, stating the obvious that ‘it gets cold in Canada’. No kidding, eh? And the current refugees are being[…]
*Today is the feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe, declared patroness of the Americas, and bumped up to a feast day, by Pope Saint John Paul II. The image left on the tilma in those December days of 1531 resist scientific explanation to this day. No one knows why the frail tilma has not decomposed,[…]
*Buried in the headlines is the notice that at least 30 Afghanis are dead, killed in an attack by the Taliban at Kandahar airport. God rest their souls, and so goes life if you are unfortunate enough to live in a fundamentalist Islamic backwater almost devoid of the rule of law, except so-called Sharia ‘law’.[…]
*Today is the memorial of Saint John Damascene, who lived in what is in now Syria and died on this day in 749, in a land that even back then, in the early days of Muslim expansion, lived under Islamic domination. A polymath, gifted in many subjects, he was a great foe of the then-rampant[…]
Today is the feast of Saint Andrew, Apostle, brother of Saint Peter, patron of Scotland, Russia, Ukraine and Greece, for what reason are somewhat historically obscure. Here is the Wikipedia take on the matter, whether accurate or not: According to legend, in 832 AD, Óengus II led an army of Picts and Scots into battle against the Angles, led by Æthelstan, near[…]
I am not surprised: Peter Jackson now admits that he made up the Hobbit trilogy more or less as it went along. From the very start, I was suspicious of taking a relatively small children’s book (we would say ‘young adult’ nowadays, I suppose), and making a full three two-plus hour movies out if such[…]
Masked, armed Muslims stormed the Radisson hotel in Bamako, Mali, taking 170 hostages. As I write, there is an operation underway to free them, but I suppose we should get used to this, and not just in Islamic countries like Mali. The tentacles of the ideology of ISIS, a virulent form of Islam, which bears[…]
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 Tallis Choir is holding a choral concert, Charpentier’s Midnight Mass for New France, on the evening of November 28th at the beautiful Saint Patrick’s church (141 McCaul St. in Toronto, north of Dundas, near St. Patrick Station). I will be posting an article on the power of beauty, and few things are as beautiful[…]