Emma Castellino Review: The Lenten Cookbook by David Geisser with essays by Scott Hahn (Sophia Institute Press, $29.95, 224 pages) In the Kristin Lavransdatter trilogy, set in medieval Norway, we are told about one nursing mother who was exempted from her Lenten obligations. She took her accommodations just as seriously as she had previously observed the fast, and thrived. I was struck [...]
Abortion leading global cause of death WASHINGTON -- Worldometer is a database that keeps track of statistics on health, the global population, and other metrics in real time based on data obtained from the World Health Organization. It has released its 2021 causes of death for a number of health categories globally. If you watch the news, you would be forgiven for [...]
John Carpay: Have Canada’s Catholic bishops seriously evaluated lockdowns and vaccine passports through the lens of the Catechism of the Catholic Church? The Catechism teaches that a law is just only to the extent that it accords with right reason, and otherwise it “has not so much the nature of law as of a kind of violence” (1902). Are lockdowns and vaccine [...]
Andrew Lawton: Two years into the Covid era it may seem fruitless to call for nuance, let alone compassion. I hope you’ll permit me the opportunity to nevertheless try. In law, there’s a nifty tactic known as arguing in the alternative, in which counsel can advance one (or several) backup arguments with which a judge might agree, on the off chance his [...]
Rory Leishman: Jesus admonished: “Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and to God the things that are God’s.” What, though, should a faithful Christian do if Caesar decrees a law that conflicts with the natural and divine law of God? Sir William Blackstone addressed this issue in his magisterial Commentaries on the Laws of England. The natural and divine law, [...]
Josie Luetke: Interim writer, Josie Luetke, Talk Turkey One of my many pet peeves is critics showing what they’re lambasting others for showing. (Don’t show it!) The CitizenGO petition to “STOP the blasphemous film Benedetta” very helpfully displays the offending lesbian kiss that petition signers apparently don’t want viewers to see. I can’t tell you how many screengrabs I saw [...]
Paul Tuns: I began my review of Ted Byfield’s 1999 collection of columns, The Book of Ted: Epistles from an Unrepentant Redneck: “The American columnist George Will once said that before there was Ronald Reagan there was Barry Goldwater, before there was Goldwater there was National Review, and before there was National Review there was William F. Buckley … The Canadian equivalent [...]
By Jonathon Van Maren: Desire for a day of rest should find allies amongst labour, Christians On April 24, 1985, the Supreme Court of Canada struck down the Lord’s Day Act in R v Big M Drug Mart Ltd, nullifying centuries of tradition on the ironic basis that the Act contravened freedom of religion for the irreligious. According to Chief Justice Brian [...]
By Mark Wegierski: Thoughtful conservatives in Canada face a dilemma. Already in 1965, in his famous book, Lament for a Nation: The Defeat of Canadian Nationalism, Canadian traditionalist philosopher George Parkin Grant had pointed to the “impossibility of conservatism” in Canada. His writings have proved increasingly prophetic. Nevertheless, there are some thoughtful conservatives left in Canada, who could be called “George Grant’s [...]
By John Carpay: A friend of mine, a priest I have known for 32 years, recently told me to stop complaining about vaccine passports and various lockdown measures (masks, anti-social distancing, etc.) because they exist for the common good and are intended to save lives. Referencing the encyclical Diuturnum Illud, my priestly friend says that disobeying the law is a sin, unless that [...]
Rick McGinnis The biggest news since the tentative re-opening of movie theatres is the smashing success of the movie Dune – nearly $400 million worldwide for a film that only tells the story of half the novel it’s based on, and which was delayed for release for a year during lockdown. Critics are predicting the movie could create a franchise to overtake [...]
Mark Wegierski Editor’s Note: This article is based on a draft of a presentation read at the Fantastic Literature Conference (The Basic Categories of Fantastic Literature Revisited) at the University of Lodz, in Poland, October 21-23, 2012. It is argued that fantasy and science fiction are genres where traditionalist impulses can persist, in an increasingly desacralized, disenchanted, and “mundane” world. The four [...]
Paul Tuns The Scott Moe government in Saskatchewan introduced and swiftly passed Bill 48, The Public Health (Safe Access to Hospitals) Amendment Act, 2021, that creates a so-called “safe access zone” of 50 metres around hospital property in which any non-union protests will be prohibited. The Bill passed on Nov. 24 and the law has a sunset clause to expire in two [...]
Paul Tuns Bill C-3, An Act to amend the Criminal Code and the Canada Labour Code, is an omnibus bill that if passed will amend the Criminal Code to make it a crime to impede others from obtaining or providing health services. It will also amend the Canada Labour Code to provide employees with up to 10 days of medical leave of [...]
DSM: A History of Psychiatry’s Bible Allan V. Horwitz (Johns Hopkins University Press, $43, 215 pages) Allan V. Horwitz is a sociology professor emeritus at Rutgers known for his numerous books on psychiatry. His latest is DSM: A History of Psychiatry’s Bible, a slim but thorough look at the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders and how this handbook for psychiatrists [...]