On Jan. 31, there was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to watch a presentation by Jean Vanier, the founder of L’Arche, and Dr Balfour Mount, the founder of palliative care in Canada. The title of the presentation was A Journey to Personal & Social Transformation. Mount, who has cared for dying Canadians for more than 30 years, presented first. He stated that he is [...]
As we celebrate the Feast of St. Joseph (March 19), I thought this great saint would be a suitable subject for this month’s spiritual reminder. Who was Joseph? The first time we hear of him is in the Gospel of St. Luke, Chapter 1. We are told that an angel appeared to a virgin who was betrothed to a man named Joseph [...]
St. Clair McEvenue is being remembered as a man who was zealous about the things he believed in, had a special heart for spreading the Christian Gospel to young people and performed countless, quiet acts of charity. The 81-year-old deacon in the Roman Catholic church passed away on Jan. 2 after a brief illness in Mississauga, Ont. Born in Toronto, “Sinc,” as [...]
We all do it, of course. Imagine whom from history we would like to meet and whom we would like on our side in these profoundly addled times. As a writer, I look to the literary world. C.S. Lewis for his pristine logic and camaraderie, G.K. Chesterton for his wit and wisdom. But for sheer hardness and toughness of argument and character, [...]
On the way home from the theatre, after seeing The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe, I was troubled with doubts. I had heard from various sources, just as I had about the Greatest-Christian-Movie-of-All-Time-that-Will-Change-Your-Whole-Life-and-Convert-the-Heathen-Liberals-and-Probably-Cure-Cancer (aka, The Passion of the Christ), that Narnia was going to be the answer to our wildest evangelistic dreams. The mainstream media’s anti-Christian fortification had finally been breached [...]
John Muggeridge, a Catholic writer and retired teacher, passed away at the age of 72 at Princess Margaret Hospital on November 25 after a long battle with cancer. Muggeridge, an editorial adviser to LifeSiteNews.com and senior editor at the New York-based Human Life Review, was the son of noted English author and journalist Malcolm Muggeridge, the husband of Catholic author Anne Roche [...]
It was perhaps appropriate that Dr. Andre Lafrance should have passed away while coming back from a demonstration in support of one of the causes close to his heart. Lafrance collapsed and died Nov. 23 while walking from a prayer vigil he had held with Father Tony Van Hee on Parliament Hill in Ottawa. Van Hee is a Catholic priest who has [...]
Michael Coren The Interim C.S. Lewis was arguably the finest popular communicator of the Christian message in modern times and he is about to become very big business, indeed. There are five movies being made of Lewis’s seven-book Narnia series, the first and most famous being The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. Each book is self-contained, but as a whole, the [...]
Some months ago, I was in a Catholic bookshop looking for a certain book. By chance, I spotted a book entitled, Saint Gianna Molla. At the bottom of the cover, it said, “Wife, mother, doctor” under the picture of a beautiful young lady holding two babies in her arms. As I had never heard of Saint Gianna Molla, I purchased the book [...]
Tony Gosgnach The Interim Des Burge has held a number of positions within the church and other Canadian institutions. A graduate of St. Dunstan’s University in P.E.I., he worked for awhile as a reporter and night editor at the Charlottetown Guardian newspaper. He then joined the RCAF and spent seven years with the air force, mainly in public relations, before becoming director [...]
Peter Gerretsen directed 20 feature films and captured more than 30 awards of merit Paul Tuns The Interim Peter Gerretsen, a film producer, Ryerson University instructor and a longtime pro-life supporter, died August 16 after losing a battle with lung cancer. Born in the Netherlands in 1939, Peter emigrated to Canada as a teen. He later married Patricia, whom he met in [...]
A Concise History of Euthanasia: Life, Death, God and Medicine by Ian Dowbiggin (Rowan and Littlefield, $25, 176 pages) Reviewed by Alex Schadenberg The Interim If you do not know the history, you are doomed to relive the errors of the past. Ian Dowbiggin, the chair of the history department at the University of P.E.I. and author of A Merciful End: The [...]
Tony Gosgnach The Interim Musician David Vogel was diligently preparing for the 2005 edition of the Festival for Life Tour – a pro-life musical event that brings together over 100 Catholic and Christian performers – when a little thing called the Terri Schiavo case got in the way. Learning that there was a plan to starve and dehydrate the disabled woman to [...]
God’s Politics: Why the Right Gets It Wrong and the Left Doesn’t Get Itby Jim Wallis Harper San Francisco 416 Pages, $32.95 (Cdn) Review by David Bolton The Interim Jim Wallis is the founder and editor of the magazine Sojourners. He is also convener and president of Call to Renewal, an evangelical political action group created out of Wallis’s perceived need to [...]
What a warrior. What a Pope. twenty-six years ago, when John Paul II became Pope, what dilemmas he faced. An insurmountable mountain, some would say. “Have courage.” That’s what he said to the world and that’s what he personally displayed fighting fires all over the world. Communists had taken over eastern Europe and big red Russia was not making idle threats to [...]