Laying down the Lawton While I’m not generally one to set New Year’s resolutions, I may take it upon myself to assign one. Make 2019 the year you get involved. Not just in church and community, but also politics. I know, it sounds like a snoozefest. Try to embrace politics for the importance of it, if not the excitement. The [...]
9. Fr. Van Hee charged with violating Ontario bubble zone law On Oct. 24, Fr. Tony Van Hee, a long-time pro-life presence on Parliament Hill, was arrested for violating Ontario’s Safe Access to Abortion Services Act, which bans any pro-life activity within 50-metres of abortion facilities. Fr. Van Hee was not demonstrating against abortion or counselling women, but rather was holding a [...]
The Coddling of the American Mind: How Good Intentions and Bad Ideas Are Setting Up a Generation for Failureby Greg Lukianoff and Jonathan Haidt (Penguin Press, $37 hardcover, $14.99 Kindle, 352 pages) The reference to Allan Bloom’s The Closing of the American Mind (1987) is surely no accident. Bloom, who taught at the University of Toronto for most of the 1970s, was [...]
Because of the Irish referendum earlier this year on the repeal of the Eighth Amendment, which recognized the equal right to life of the mother and the unborn child, the Irish pro-life movement became somewhat known around the world. Much lesser known are the pro-life movements in other European countries. As part of a project for Campaign Life Coalition, I had the [...]
Father Tony Van Hee Police slapped an 83-year-old Roman Catholic priest with a summons to appear in court Oct. 24 for allegedly intimidating or attempting to intimidate abortion clients at The Morgentaler Clinic in downtown Ottawa. Fr. Tony Van Hee is facing the charge under Ontario’s new “bubble zone” law, the Safe Access to Abortion Services Act (Bill 163). Under [...]
A leaked memo suggests that the Trump administration is considering an official definition of “sex” that rejects gender confusion in favour of strictly biological criteria, much to the consternation of pro-LGBT voices. On Oct. 21, the New York Timesreported that it obtained a draft memo from the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) stating that, “Sex means a person’s status as [...]
LifeSite news reporter Lianne Laurence interviews Bill Whatcott after his court appearance Oct. 16. Christian activist Bill Whatcott flew to Toronto from Alberta in mid-October because there was a bench warrant for his arrest if he didn’t appear in court Oct. 16. Whatcott, 52, is charged with criminally inciting hatred against the “gay community.” But after his matter moved from [...]
Joan Didion I was reading The White Album, Joan Didion’s 1979 collection of essays when I came across a passage describing student unrest at San Francisco State University in 1968. Didion admits that she had missed the really big student protests earlier at Berkeley and Columbia, and that while she was expecting much of the same at SFSU, she was [...]
Pro-life Halton Catholic school board trustee Helena Karabela was re-elected on Oct. 22nd. Halton’s Catholic school board killed its eight-month-old Sanctity of Life policy last month, but the bitter controversy the motion provoked didn’t die with it. Instead, it raged on in the campaign for Ontario’s municipal election, with the winners decided at the ballot box Oct. 22. The local [...]
Law Matters John Carpay The abuse of university applying security fees as a censorship tool to suppress unpopular speech on campus will be considered by the Alberta Court of Appeal on Nov. 28. In 2016, the University of Alberta demanded a $17,500 security fee from the student group UAlberta Pro-Life, as a condition for setting up a stationary display on [...]
LifeSiteNews.com reports that 12 Canadian Catholic bishops are investigating the Canadian Catholic Organization for Development and Peace (Development and Peace or D&P) over revelations in early 2017 that it partnered with 40 groups in developing countries that were pro-abortion or pro-LGBT. The Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops (CCCB) asked for a review after the Catholic Women’s League raised concerns about some of [...]
When Harry Became Sally: Responding to the Transgender Momentby Ryan T. Anderson (Encounter Books, $36.99, 264 pages) Ryan T. Anderson, the William E. Simon senior research fellow at the Heritage Foundation, has written a new book When Harry Became Sally: Responding to the Transgender Moment. Anderson takes a thorough look at the transgender moment, from physical, mental, and psychological challenges the transgendered [...]
Population Bombed: Exploding the Link Between Overpopulation and Climate Changeby Pierre Desrochers and Joanna Szurmak (Global Warming Policy Foundation, $15.99 pb, $7.75 Kindle, 259 pages) Worries about over-population are a seeming constant in debates of world issues, returning regularly to stoke fear about the rising number of people inhabiting the planet. Earlier this year, Paul Ehrlich, author of the 1968 book The [...]
For the past 30 years, Canadians have been increasingly inundated with the most disgusting exhibitions of pornography on television, in the movies, and on-line. How can that be? Throughout this period, the Criminal Code of Canada has clearly stated that everyone commits an offence punishable by up to two years imprisonment who (a) makes, prints, publishes or circulates any “obscene” thing whatever [...]
British Columbians will vote by mail in a referendum on what voting system the province should use for its elections. The referendum is being held by mail from Oct. 22 to Nov. 30. All B.C. residents over the age of 18 can vote in the referendum. This is the third time provincial voters will have their say on electoral reform, having [...]