Here is THE LINK to purchase or donate a seat for the dinner. Editor’s Note: This article originally appeared in the Feb. 1991 Interim. Since then he has added another 20 years to being a priest, left The Interim to found and edit Catholic Insight for nearly two decades, been the subject of a human rights complaint, and much [...]
A new form of pre-natal genetic screening may be able to predict future ailments using only a sample of the mother’s blood. Scientists led by Stephen Quake of Stanford University published their findings on July 4 in Nature journal. The findings were released a month after another technique was announced by scientists led by Jay Shendure of the University of Washington that [...]
A venerable observation, offered by a range of writers from Samuel Johnson to Pope John Paul II, has it that: “A society will be judged on the basis of how it treats its weakest members.” It is an expression of ancient wisdom, echoing the Greek laws of hospitality for strangers and travelers, as well as the Christian regard for the weak. Christ [...]
Is being pro-life just choosing a side? Or does having a profound respect for all human life from conception to natural death define the way you live your life? On June 9, Jill Stanek had a blog post featuring the following question: “Should pro-lifers date/marry abortion proponents? The ideological divisions are quite deep, but are they surmountable for compatible coupling?” When asked [...]
I suppose I’m old-fashioned. I thought teachers were supposed to teach, to make sure young people could read and write, do math, know some history and geography, perhaps some economics, and certainly some science. I don’t think media studies is a real subject, and sociology should only be a graduate level course. But this is nothing compared to what is [...]
The Canadian Medical Association, the largest association of doctors in the country, voted August 15 to maintain the current wording of the Criminal Code definition of human being and oppose M-312, a private member’s bill that would require Parliament to examine scientific evidence as to whether the child in the womb is a human being and the human rights and Criminal Code [...]
Since abortion became legal in the United States in 1973, many abortionists and abortuary staff have switched sides. But how do people so ensconced in the abortion industry abandon the profession and become pro-life advocates? What is the spark that moves them to reconsider not only their employment, but their worldview? In many cases it’s nothing less than “the great awakening.” [...]
A Catholic parents’ group is urging Catholic trustees to refuse to comply with Ontario’s anti-bullying law that forces Gay-Straight-Alliance clubs into separate schools. Instead, the parents are asking trustees to follow the bishops’ “Respecting Difference” strategy for tackling bullying. “A legal opinion we obtained (from lawyer Geoff Cauchi of RZCD Law Firm) argues Catholic trustees are obliged to refuse to implement Gay-Straight [...]
The long awaited 2010 nationwide examination of the euthanasia law in the Netherlands was published in the July 11 Lancet. The study found: the number of euthanasia deaths has grown significantly since 2005 (4050 in 2010, 2425 in 2005); the under-reporting of euthanasia in the Netherlands has grown since 2005 (23 per cent in 2010, 20 per cent in 2005); there is [...]
In a controversial five-to-four ruling on July 28, the Supreme Court of the United States upheld the Affordable Care Act, otherwise known as Obamacare. From a Canadian perspective, this judgment is particularly notable for the degree of restraint exercised by the Court in arriving rightly or wrongly at the conclusion that the act is constitutional. In reasons for the majority, Chief [...]
No one denies that something radically new was fecundated in the mud of Woodstock. But whatever it was, it was not from the marriage of true minds. Taking their cues from the Orwellian discourse of revolution (war is peace; dictatorship is democracy), the sexual rebels prettified lust as love. For all of their free-thinking and iconoclasm, they lacked the courage to forgo [...]
A survey of the headlines shows us our crises at a glace: in addition to mounting economic turmoil, growing unemployment, and spiraling debt, there is the simmering international kulturkampf which has emerged in the aftermath of the pax Americana. The world is broke and broken: insolvent sovereign powers have segmented the world into mutually opposed spheres of influence. And these twin dilemmas [...]
Canada Day celebrations in the nation’s capital were given a new twist this year as youth activists with the New Abortion Caravan descended on Ottawa with billboard-size abortion images. At 2 pm on June 30, they formed a funeral procession and delivered a white child’s coffin to 24 Sussex Drive – the residence of Prime Minister Stephen Harper. “Today we are [...]
The pro-life movement is on the rise in many European countries. Marches with thousands of attendees were held in Madrid, Rome, and Paris, while other Western European nations, long purported to be bastions of so-called progressivism, have also seen some surprising signs of life. In Munster, Germany in 2011, a pro-life march of 200 participants carrying white crosses took place. A police [...]
CNN singled out LifeSiteNews over its criticism of Melinda Gates’ funding for contraceptives. “Responding to simmering controversy among Catholic bloggers about her new birth control program, Melinda Gates – a practising Catholic – said she will not shrink from her role as an advocate for poor women,” CNN stated. “One blog in particular, LifeSiteNews.com, has frequently published diatribes against Gates, calling into [...]