Welcome to 2019! As I write, I’ve already used up 19 days of a brand new year, and by the time anyone reads this, there will be 342 days left in which to accomplish anything, whether of real value or not. Glancing back at the topics that grabbed my interestRead More

The Spectator, Tree!Umphant I found Albert Barbusci! He’s in Kissimmee, Florida where “the Lemieux and Barbusci families” own and operate the Tree Trek Adventure Park! Okay, he may not actually be there right now (although why not be in Florida in December?) but he could be. When I stepped backRead More

The Reverend Dr. David Jefferson Sr., Esquire is the founder, chairman, chief executive officer and president of JNET Communications LLC, which he established in 2003 and which  “includes among its family of companies” Vitel Communications, ServiCom and ServiCom Canada — all of which are now listed as “debtors” in courtRead More

More than 250 bishops from around the world came together at the Vatican from October 3-28 for the XV Ordinary Synod of Bishops on Young People, the Faith and Vocational Discernment. Also invited to participate were 30 young people, chosen (one assumes) for their engagement with the faith, representatives of bothRead More

On September 23, the town of Windsor in Nova Scotia commemorated the 100th anniversary of the training of the Jewish Legion, a battalion of the British army that fought to liberate Palestine from the Ottoman Empire during World War I. In 1918, a young Jewish man named David Ben-Gurion wasRead More

Nobody denies anymore the culture of secrecy and cover-up in the Catholic Church, but what if it is simply part and parcel of an even worse culture, one of pedophilia? How else to explain what has been revealed again and again as common practice among clergy? Especially as, hard onRead More

Summer is considered the best time for light reading, not for serious books that could actually destroy a beautiful sunny day on the beach or the deck, but I recently dove into Crimes of the Father, the 2015 novel by the prolific Irish-Australian author Thomas Keneally. Right off the bat,Read More

What do the Crusades, Slavery, the Inquisition, the Holocaust, and the Sins of the Church have in common? All have been the subjects of apologies from popes on behalf of the Catholic Church. In Bolivia in July 2015, the current pope, Francis, apologized for “the grave sins committed against the nativeRead More

Sunday will mark the feast of Easter which, as we who call ourselves Catholic have always been taught, is the most important feast in the church calendar. Yes, more important than Christmas, since the cornerstone of the Catholic faith is the belief that Christ rose from the dead. Easter hasRead More

The Rohingya, whom most of us had probably never heard of before their plight began to be shared via TV and newspapers around the world, are “the world’s most persecuted minority,” according to  Al Jazeera. They are an ethnic group, largely Muslim, that has lived for centuries in the majorityRead More