The standing ovation for keynote conference speaker Camille de Blasi Pauley indicated the success of the Third Annual Culture of Life Leadership Conference, which was attended by 120 students from 14 high schools in the Halton and Hamilton-Wentworth Catholic District School Boards of Ontario. The conference is a joint effort by the Catholic Diocese of Hamilton, Halton Pro-Life, the Halton Catholic District [...]
Some 30 years ago, the United Church of Canada was just beginning her long discussion on homosexuality, which culminated in their recent acceptance of same-sex “marriage.” Back in the early 1970s, I remember reading in the church’s official magazine the call for tolerance and the call to reappraise the message of Scripture on this subject. At this present moment, Anglicans from around [...]
For years, we social conservatives have complained about the liberal bias in the media and the lack of coverage of issues of concern to us. And so we threw up our hands and sucked it up, figuring there was nothing we could do about it. In this day and age, we no longer have an excuse. There is one medium that is [...]
For far too long, the interests of the “vital centre” of Canadian society have been neglected. The term vital centre, while borrowed from American liberal thought, takes on a much different meaning in social conservative thinking. By vital centre I mean the real social mainstream – those decent, honest and hardworking people of whatever class, religion or ethnic background on whom the [...]
Supervised drug injection facilities, or “safe injection” sites, offer clean venues for the supervised intravenous abuse of illegal substances, reducing the sharing of needles and offering intervention for overdoses. These sites are intended to reduce HIV and hepatitis transmission, but do not necessarily stop addiction. •Such facilities are advocated by proponents of “harm reduction,” which is defined as a public health philosophy [...]
Notwithstanding inconclusive evaluations of its success, Liberal party leader Stephane Dion has praised Vancouver’s supervised drug injection facility and promised that as prime minister, he would support mayors of other cities who want to establish similar projects. Relying on favourable information from the B.C. Centre for Excellence in HIV/AIDS – including a notable study from November 2006 – Dion made two specific [...]
Earl Amyotte passed away peacefully Feb. 2 at the age of 74 with family by his side at Hotel Dieu Grace Hospital in Windsor. Affectionately known as “Earl the Pearl” to his pro-life colleagues, he frequently described himself as one who was meant to comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable. For nearly three decades, he was a leading Canadian pro-life activist [...]
It is a rare event when the secular press carries a Christian conversion story. Such an event, therefore, should be given additional attention. On Jan. 27, Canada’s National Post carried Dawn Eden’s conversion story under the slightly indelicate title, “Between my sheets, a lonely world.” It is both heartwarming and heartrending. Coming home, at long last, to the Catholic church is always a [...]
For several weeks in February, the Globe and Mail appointed itself the official opposition to the federal government, running numerous articles, columns and editorials criticizing the process by which the Conservative government of Stephen Harper is choosing judges. Last year, the government amended the composition of the federal Judicial Advisory Committees that examine government nominees to various courts. The makeup of the 12 [...]
Perhaps not surprisingly, the entity that oversees the conduct of judges in Canada – which, remarkably, is itself made up exclusively of judges – has ruled that Ontario’s chief justice did not act improperly in two matters: when he legalized so-called same-sex marriage in his province in 2003, despite the fact his daughter was involved in a same-sex relationship at the time, [...]
A Canadian representative to the United Nations, originally appointed under the previous Liberal administration and now supposedly acting under the direction of the current Conservative government, berated delegations from several Muslim countries for opposing the observer status of a Quebec-based gay activist group. The National Post reported on Feb. 2 that the Coalition gaie et lesbienne du Quebec (CGLQ) was rejected by the [...]
He is taking over the leadership of Canada’s largest English-speaking Catholic diocese – with some 1.7 million adherents, 225 parishes and four missions – at a pivotal time in this country’s history, when abortions now number over 100,000 yearly in Canada, same-sex “marriage” has been legalized, the traditional family is otherwise under assault by widespread divorce and co-habitation and pornography outsells Hollywood [...]
A meeting of Anglican leaders in Der es Salaam, Tanzania, which sought to find common ground over the increasingly divisive issue of homosexuality, was overshadowed by a report in the London Times that some within the Anglican communion will unite with the Catholic church. In recent years, there has been a rift between orthodox Anglicans faithful to Scripture, mostly in the developing world, [...]
Who’s trying to run a steamroller over our justice system and end our traditional family values? Here’s my list: the human rights tribunals (a sleepover for lib-leaning feminists). The lawyer who came up with house arrests. Lawyers who spend half their life in judges’ chambers making deals. Lawyers who are adept worshippers of the Golden Calf. Judges who think they’ve been elevated [...]
Thanks to a draconian new Equality Act that comes into effect in England, Wales and Scotland in April, faithful British Christians are about to undergo much the same persecution as their Canadian counterparts. The act includes a sweeping ban on discrimination on the basis of “sexual orientation.” In a letter to British Prime Minister Tony Blair and members of his [...]