From the editor's desk: From the editor's desk New York City-based Orthodox Jewish university, reversed its decision to permit an LGBTQ club, Hareni, from operating on campus. In March, the university, with campuses in Manhattan and the Bronx, agreed to official club status for Hareni. However, on May 9, in a letter to the school community, the university said that [...]
John Carpay: In Latin, the word secular simply means “of this world,” and neither affirms nor denies any “religious” doctrine as such. Over time, the word secular has come to mean “non-religious.” After more than four centuries of loyal devotion to Catholicism, Quebecers in the 1960s began the process of ejecting the Church from schools, universities, hospitals, nursing homes, hospices, unions, orphanages, [...]
Josie Luetke: The mistake was in believing Pierre Poilievre was our political saviour. From the sense of crushing disappointment amongst friends and family members in the wake of the 2025 federal election, you’d almost think the leader of the Conservative Party of Canada is pro-life. Almost. April 28 was disappointing to me for another reason. At the Waterloo Catholic District School Board [...]
Donald DeMarco, Review: How We Got Here: A Guide to Our Anti-Christian Culture by Jonathon Van Maren (Christian Heritage Press, 311 pages, $25) Version 1.0.0 “Our world is utterly different from the one that existed just a few decades ago. But how did this happen? Why did everything change?” These words provide the focus of this important book. The author, Jonathon [...]
Rod Taylor, Special to The Interim: Editor’s Note: Christian Heritage Party leader Rod Taylor delivered these remarks at the Parliamentary Press Gallery on May 7. Greetings fellow Canadians. I’m Rod Taylor, national leader of the Christian Heritage Party of Canada. In the next few minutes, I want to propose—to our newly elected Prime Minister and the government he will lead . . . [...]
Paul Tuns: On May 8, white smoke emerged from the chimney of the Sistine Chapel to indicate that the Conclave had chosen a new pope. Cardinal Robert Prevost, the Chicago-born bishop of Chiclayo, Peru, appeared on the balcony in St. Peter’s Square, have chosen the name Leo XIV. Much was made that Leo XIV is the first “American pope” but he has [...]
God on Stage: 15 Plays that Ask the Big Questions Peter Kreeft (Word on Fire, $32.50, 216 pages): Peter Kreeft’s God on Stage examines 15 plays, three each on five different themes (life and joy, relationship with God, suffering, death, damnation), one that is pre-Christian, one Christian, and one that is post-Christian. Kreeft says “reading and reflecting on great dramas, great plays, [...]
Paul Tuns, Review: The Mystery of Joy by Peter Kreeft (Ignatius, $18.95, 241 pages) Version 1.0.0 Peter Kreeft’s latest book offers 95 pensées about joy, short, (two to four page) thoughts on what joy is, and isn’t. Joy, says Kreeft, “is to happiness what happiness is to pleasure: the next step up.” According to Kreeft, way up, up to heaven. He [...]
T.S. Eliot: Culture and Anarchy: James Matthew Wilson (Wiseblood Books, USD$8, 66 pages) T.S. Eliot is probably the greatest literary and social critic of the 21st century, as well as one of its greatest poets. There is no shortage of treatments of his work, but James Matthew Wilson’s T.S. Eliot: Culture and Anarchy is a worthy edition to any library. Eliot was [...]
Paul Tuns, Review: We Have Ceased to See the Purpose: Essential Speeches of Aleksander Solzhenitsyn edited by Ignat Solzhenitsyn (Notre Dame University Press, $38, 195 pages) The novelist and essayist Aleksander Solzhenitsyn is best-known as a Soviet dissident who spent time in communist concentration camps known as the gulag, of which he became their most famous chronicler. He is one of [...]
From the editor’s desk: We live in an age in which far too many people live lives of anguish because they lack meaning or are searching for it in the wrong places. In Be not Afraid of Life: In the Words of William James (Princeton, $24.99, 377 pages), John Kaag and Jonathan Van Belle say that seekers looking for meaning could do [...]
Paul Tuns Catholic Bishops of Saskatchewan (CBS) released a pastoral letter, “Dying with Hope: Living and Walking Together,” on March 25 calling for a Christian response to so-called Medical Assistance in Dying. In 2017, the CBS released a pastoral letter, “On Living through our Dying,” in response to the legalization of euthanasia the previous year. The bishops said in its latest letter, [...]
King: A Life Jonathan Eig (Picador, $31, 669 pages) Martin Luther King Jr. is probably the most famous civil rights leader in American history and as such biographies tend toward hagiography. Jonthan Eig’s King: A Life, released in hardcover in 2023 and paperback earlier this year, avoids that mistake, offering a rich and deep exploration of the slain civil rights leader. Eig, [...]
Catholic Heroes of Civil and Human Rights: 1800-Present Matthew Daniels and Roxanne King (Ignatius, $18.95, 205 pages) In Catholic Heroes of Civil and Human Rights Matthew Daniels and Roxanne King profile 16 Catholics who championed civil and human rights in different parts of the world (although mostly the United States) and in different eras. What all 16 men and women have in [...]
Paul Tuns, Commentary: Pope Francis died on April 21 at the age of 88, after leading the Catholic Church for 12 years as its 266th pope. There were numerous articles and essays exploring his legacy. One cannot help but think of the apocryphal comment by Zhou Enlai, the Chinese Communist revolutionary, in the 1970s, when asked what he thought of the French Revolution: [...]