Quebec’s “religious neutrality” Bill 62 has passed the Quebec legislature and will come into effect immediately, although there are no specific guidelines for those who will have to enforce or administer said law, which, strangely enough, has neither penalties nor fines attached to it. Critics see the bill as aRead More

Earlier this year, the idea of a guaranteed annual income (GAI) was in the news, including in The Cape Breton Spectator where yours truly wrote about Ontario’s plan to “launch a pilot project to assess whether a basic income can better support vulnerable workers, improve health and education outcomes forRead...

Pope Francis has introduced a new path to canonization for would-be Catholic saints. Now, in addition to martyrdom, living a life of heroic Christian virtue and “exceptional cases” (where someone has been venerated as holy since ancient times), Christians who lay down their lives for another will be eligible forRead...

Catholics, especially those of us who’d like to see changes to much accepted as “Gospel” over the centuries, have always been informed that if changes in church doctrine or practice happened at all, they would not happen “in our lifetimes.” Of course, many changes followed Vatican II – altar railsRead More

  t. Augustine’s Confessions do not repeat DO NOT make for light summer reading but there are times when one must do what one must do, so the Confessions have been on my agenda for the past while. It all started with Stephen Greenblatt’s article in the June 19/2017 issueRead More

News the Vatican has banned the use of gluten-free hosts in the celebration of the Eucharist hit like a bombshell this weekend, but the rules re: gluten-free hosts go back at least to Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger (later Pope Benedict XVl) who in July 2003 declared gluten-free hosts “invalid.” In MarchRead More

David Wells, Conservative senator for Newfoundland and Labrador, has every right to his opinion that no change should be made to our national anthem. Wells is one of 20 senators who have tied up Bill C-210 — which would change the lyrics from “in all thy sons command” to the gender-neutralRead More

There is a camp at Beaver Cove, Beaver Cove. And there we always love to roam, love to roam. And spend our time mid laughter free Where we were happy as can be. B- e-a-v-e-r beaver, we will never want to leave her To our happy days we’ll never wantRead More

Today is Aboriginal Day in Canada so it is quite fitting that we tell the story of a group of happy pilgrims from Membertou First Nation who will be boarding a bus on Friday, June 23, having attended Mass at St. Ann’s Church at 8:30 a.m., to begin their annualRead More

Hunger and homelessness are urban problems being tackled in interesting ways in cities on both sides of the Atlantic. In Edinburgh, for example, “social entrepreneurs” Josh Littlejohn and Alice Thomson have launched Social Bite, a chain of soup and sandwich shops where customers can pay “for a coffee or a sandwichRead More