Paul Tuns On June 17, 73 per cent of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) voted during their annual spring meeting to draft a position paper on the “meaning of the Eucharist,” with an eye to reiterating the Church’s position that politicians who dissent from key moral teachings such as abortion should not present themselves to receive Holy Communion during Mass. [...]
Rory Leishman In a pastoral letter issued on May 1, the Archbishop of San Francisco, Cardinal Salvatore Cordileone, has spelled out with admirable clarity why no faithful Christian cleric should allow a politician who aids and abets in committing the evils of abortion to take part in Holy Communion. Having earned a doctorate in canon law from the Pontifical Gregorian University in [...]
John Carpay: Interim writer, John Carpay, Law Matters Sixteen months into lockdowns, governments continue to restrict our basic Charter freedoms of expression, association, peaceful assembly, religion, conscience, travel, and movement. Meanwhile, our economy lies in ruins. Our children and grandchildren will need to repay hundreds of billions of dollars of lockdown debt. What started out as a reasonable, precautionary response [...]
Paul Tuns The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is scrambling to tackle their demographic crisis. On May 31, CCP officials announced at a Politburo meeting that the limit on children would be lifted to three by 2025, a gradual relaxation of the two-child policy implemented in 2016 after ChiComms determined that the one-child policy inaugurated in 1980 and enforced with coercive sterilization and [...]
Rick McGinnis There’s an uncommon moment recalled in Norman Lebrecht’s bitter but celebratory 2007 book The Life and Death of Classical Music where the classical music industry, such as it had existed for just over a century, finally died. It was a dinner in a London restaurant in December of 2004, a small retirement party given for Peter Alward, the head of [...]
Josie Luetke: The sexual revolution is responsible for the rampant increase of abortion and a slew of other evils. This near-axiomatic notion was instilled in me early on, but as this upheaval was driven by social liberals, I thought of it as only affecting social liberals. Not so. Josh Duggar, the eldest of the kids on the show 19 Kids and Counting, [...]
Rory Leishman In a pastoral letter issued on May 1, the Archbishop of San Francisco, Cardinal Salvatore Cordileone, has spelled out with admirable clarity why no faithful Christian cleric should allow a politician who aids and abets in committing the evils of abortion to take part in Holy Communion. Having earned a doctorate in canon law from the Pontifical Gregorian University in [...]
Paul Tuns: From the Editor’s Desk As usual I will utilize this column to bring to your attention some stories that did not quite grow up to be full articles in the paper. Sometimes this is because of space or time limitations, sometimes because there is not much more to say about the topic. But it reminds me of something that Jim [...]
Rick McGinnis: Interim writer, Rick McGinnis, Amusements At the risk of repeating myself, we are being promised an end to lockdowns, though depending on where you live the timetable may vary. Attempting to spin sluggish vaccination numbers, Canada’s government has promoted a “one dose summer” that differs in no substantial way from last year’s no dose summer, but the news [...]
Paul Tuns: On May 5, the United States Centers for Disease Control (CDC) released data on the country’s fertility rate, revealing that it has fallen to its lowest rate since such figures began being collected in the 1930s. The total fertility rate -- the average number of times a woman will give birth in her lifetime -- fell to 1.64 births per [...]
Andrew Lawton: Earlier this year, Pastor Artur Pawlowski became something of a libertarian folk hero when he chased police and public health inspectors out of his Calgary church while barking that they were “Nazis” and “Gestapo.” After a year of the state’s heavy hand coming down hard on churches (and businesses, and families, and individuals), it was cathartic to see the little [...]
John Carpay: In recent months I’ve spoken at several peaceful gatherings, urging citizens to exercise their Charter rights and freedoms in the face of unscientific, arbitrary, irrational and unconstitutional health orders. But now I wonder if I will end up in jail, as Jason Kenney has effectively banned peaceful outdoor protests in what is supposed to be Canada’s freest province. In April, [...]
Rory Leishman In an attempt to justify their new, multi-billion dollar, “Canada-wide Early Learning and Child Care Plan,” the Trudeau Liberals maintain that infants and toddlers generally thrive better under the care and guidance of professional child-care workers than their own parents. Is that right? The Department of Finance claims: “Studies by Canadians Dr. Fraser Mustard and the Honourable Margaret McCain have [...]
Paul Tuns British Columbia Supreme Court Justice Sandra Wilkinson ruled on April 26 that the name of a second mother must be included as one of three legal parents on the birth certificate of a two-year-old boy, finding that the provincial legislature “did not contemplate polyamorous families” when it amended the Family Law Act (FLA) in 2011. Wilkinson said all three members [...]
Paul Tuns A new report from the Cardus think tank, “Look Before You Leap,” says the federal government of Justin Trudeau is dramatically underestimating the cost of creating a national daycare plan modeled on Quebec’s $10-a-day plan, leaving provinces on the hook for a much larger share than federal Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland suggests might be the case. The authors conclude, “the [...]