I won’t even pretend to have been aware of the 60th anniversary of the opening of the  Vatican II council (1962-1965) in April of this year. Pope (now Saint) John XXIII called Vatican II almost 100 years after the previous such council, to the surprise (and often shock) of CatholicsRead More

  1 Witch. When shall we three met again In thunder, lightning, or in rain? 2 Witch. When the hurlyburly’s done, When the battle’s lost and won. Shakespeare, Macbeth   Shakespeare’s Macbeth opens in the “fog and filthy air” of an “open place,” a no-man’s-land where three witches – theRead More

Back in the March 30th issue of The Cape Breton Spectator, I wrote about the two-year process leading to the 2023 Synod of Bishops, called by Pope Francis in 2021, which asked Catholics across the world to join in “discerning and listening together to the voice of The Holy Spirit”Read More

Recently, the deacons of Antigonish Diocese were honored on Mass For Shut-Ins for the generous and charitable services they perform in addition to their participation in religious services. The diaconate, as we have discovered since these ordained men were introduced into the diocese a few years ago, is open onlyRead More

The Catholic Church’s Synod on Synodality (from the Greek “syn” meaning “a way of living and working together”) hasn’t received much media attention, but it is a first for the Church – a two-year synod that began in October 2021 and will run until 2023. Synods have been held fairlyRead More

Reporters and religious writers who cover the Vatican are already going to great lengths to make sure that Catholics, especially LGBTQ Catholics, realize that Pope Francis’ statement re “civil unions” changes nothing as far as the Catholic Church’s stand on homosexuality and its definition of “marriage” is concerned. (The latterRead More

I will give Pope Francis a tip of the biretta for his latest act on behalf of some of the poorest of the poor in Rome, or as he refers to them “society’s rejects, victims of today’s throwaway culture.” He has turned the Palazzo Migliori, a 19th palace named forRead More

Author’s Note: Since September 2018, I have been reporting on the extraordinary story of the Kings Bay Plowshares Seven (KBP7), a group of veteran anti-nuclear Catholic activists currently awaiting sentencing for acts of non-violent ‘symbolic disarmament’ at the Kings Bay Trident submarine base in Georgia, home to America’s East CoastRead More

Timothy Schmalz, a renowned Canadian sculptor, has a reputation for producing pieces of art that are influenced by the Bible, including “Homeless Jesus,” a sculpture of a man sleeping on a park bench, wrapped in a blanket and identifiable as Jesus by the wounds on his bare feet. The workRead More

Amid the visions of airports and helipads, plus suggestions that Cape Breton should be a new province, a new territory or a partner with Membertou, and the publication of the financial position in which the CBRM finds itself, CBU Professor Tom Urbaniak’s notion that the seat of the Diocese ofRead More