Joan Dower Kosmachuk (Winnipeg, Windflower Communications, 1992, pp85, $6.95) Pre-teen novel is no fairy tale As a pro-life parent, it is always difficult to know just when and how to introduce the topic of abortion to one’s own children. Ever though, as adult activists, we grapple with the issue on a regular basis, the innocence of children also needs to be respected. [...]
Late in 1990, Richard Snyder, chief executive of Simon & Schuster, read a book for which his firm had paid a large advance of $300,000. It was a novel entitled American Psycho by a writer in his mid-twenties, Bret Easton Ellis. Presumable Snyder had not read it before, but he was warned of the book’s contents by a Time article describing its [...]
In December, 1985, twenty married couples from around the world who were members of Cardinal Gagnon’s Pontifical Council for the Family met in Rome to discuss Pope John Paul II’s teaching on Humanae Vitae, Pope Paul VI’s prophetic teaching on the family and the transmission of human life. Their presentations, together with four papers presented by other members of the Council, have [...]
Toronto Cineplex Odeon Films, the distributor of Truth or Dare, starring pop star Madonna, inserted a condom in each of the press releases promoting the video documentary. Condoms were also passed out to guests attending the Canadian premiere on May 8. Patrons at regular screenings will receive a handbill promoting their use. Howard Lichtman, executive VP of marketing for Cineplex [...]
On April 19, 1991, Toronto Archbishop Aloysius Ambrozic issued a strongly-worded ‘no’ to condoms as a solution to the spread of AIDS or as a barrier to conception. The next appeared in a letter addressed to the five Catholic school boards within the Archdiocese of Toronto. However, the letter as also endorsed by all the bishops of Ontario, making it a [...]
Rev. Alphonse de Valk, 58, historian, author and editor of The Interim, celebrated his twenty-fifth anniversary as a priest on December 11, 1990. A few months ago, Campaign Life Coalition (CLC) President Jim Hughes told him that CLC wanted to celebrate the anniversary and honour him. He replied, "There is no need for a celebration because in our Basilian Order silver anniversaries [...]
As all book reviewers know, sometimes the biggest chore is preserving to read the book through to the end. Because I’m asked to review many ‘lifestyle’ books—about families, divorce, children, grief, etc.—a lot of trite and ‘junk-food’ genre publications come across my desk. So it’s with great delight I draw The Interim readers’ attention to a new publication Nazareth, a Catholic Family [...]
The U.S. media has run yet another in a long line of pro-abortion polemics. This time it was Abortion Denied: Shattering Young Women’s Lives, a half-hour pseudo-documentary, produced by the Feminist majority organization. It was aired December 7, on Ted Turner’s Atlanta-based TBS Cable Network. The program is a hysterical attack on ‘parental consent laws,’ and the recent U.S. Supreme Court decision [...]
The Moral Question of Abortion by Stephen Schwary is an excellent book. The author is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Rhode Island and a pro-life activist. He deals with every aspect of the abortion issue, arguing in great detail that the child in the womb is a human being from the moment of conception. He devotes a chapter to showing [...]
In this little book of just 120 pages, James Hanlon and David Forsyth make a powerful case for physically impeding access to abortuaries in order to save the unborn. They say, “Abortion has been legal in our country for twenty years now because we, as Christian churches, have not sacrificed to try and save our pre-born neighbors.” Given that failure, and the [...]
In this issue, The Interim’s Dr. David Dooley reviews the much-hailed film “The Handmaid’s Tale” It is closely based on a book by Margeret Atwood – grande dame of the ‘Can Lit’ (Canadian literature) establishment. Like the late Marion Engel and Margaret Laurence and others who make up the elite of Canadian writers, Atwood’s anti-life ideology is self0evident. The Handmaid’s Tale, in [...]
Author: Catherine Bolger Therapeutic Abortion, The Effect On The Mother, The Family, Society. Fidelity House (Toronto), 1989, 78pp. In this small text, Catherine Bolger assembles a vast amount of information from sources as varied as Hippocrates and the World Medical Association to document the pervasive effect on society of “therapeutic” abortion. The application of “therapeutic” to this procedure is part of the [...]
Counter Productive Booklet This publication, subtitled, “A workshop on Abortion,” was prepared by the Pastoral Team of the Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops Ottawa (CCCB). The Introduction adopts the rhetoric of the abortionists. We are told that “the abortion issue is very complex,” that “abortion is a highly emotional issue,” that we are to participate in a discussion about abortion with “compassion, [...]
“The Last Temptation of Jesus Christ,” a 1988 low-budget film by Hollywood standards, proved to be a low grosser as well, according to Larry Cohen, film editor of Variety, the entertainment trade journal published in New York. Mr. Cohen said that it cost six and a half million dollars to make and its actual earnings to date in the United States and [...]
Denyse O’Leary, ed. “No Easy Answers” Burlington, Ontario, Welch Publishing Co., 1988. 165pp. Can abortion be viewed as a necessary service for women? Pro-life organizations, of course, oppose this view; and in support they can point to the serious physical and psychological damage abortion may cause. In the last two essays in this collection, Mary Parthun and Anne Kiss describe the evidence [...]