Israel was born on May 14, 1948. The newly birthed nation had time for only a few breaths before her Muslim neighours – Jordan, Syria, Egypt, Lebanon and Iraq – hurled themselves on her in a war of annihilation. However, Israel repulsed the invaders and survived to fight four more major wars, plus innumerable minor conflicts, over the next 58 years. [...]
The Charter of Rights of 1982 continues to dismantle the last remnants of our Christian culture in Canada. On Sept. 22, the Quebec Tribunal of Human Rights ordered the City of Laval, a suburb north of Montreal, to stop the traditional practice of prayer before the monthly city meetings. Mayor Gilles Vaillancourt has continued this good tradition despite a citizen’s formal complain [...]
The Sept. 9 editions of the Toronto Sun and the Toronto Star, two newspapers having pretensions to cosmic significance, carried the same hard-hitting storyline: “Pope slams Canada.” They were reporting on the comments Pope Benedict XVI had made on the previous day to seven Ontario bishops. Typical of secular newspapers, being more concerned with words that startle than with thoughts that nourish, [...]
Interim Staff It’s strange how priorities change. What is more important to the individual parent: the education and welfare of her child or the tax policy of the federal government? While both are important, this is not always borne out by the relative interest that people take in local versus national election campaigns. Perhaps they should think again, especially in light of [...]
Benedict XVI’s speech on Sept. 12 to scientists at the University of Regensburg, where he served as a professor, set off an unintended furor of controversy. It also highlighted an important dynamic in what Samuel Huntington describes as “the clash of civilizations.” The target of Benedict’s speech was not Islam, but modernity. Benedict took modernity to task for limiting reason to the [...]
Judy Parejko will never forget her ninth birthday. She was recovering from the funeral of her mother, who had passed away after a year-and-a-half struggle with cancer.” It was just my dad, my four sisters and me,” Judy tells The Interim. This childhood tragedy became the first step in Judy’s journey as one of North America’s most outspoken opponents of “no-fault” divorce. [...]
Adultery harms the relationship between parents and between parent and child. Theresa Smyth explores the issue. No-fault divorce has spawned an entire industry which family court mediator Judy Parejko has said no to. How does adultery impact children? The high-profile affairs of public figures and parents like Tie Domi and Belinda Stronach serve as a challenge to defenders of traditional marriage. We [...]
It’s hard writing about Queen’s Park, an institution that needs 175 Peter Kormoses to liven it up. This is a dreadfully boring era. Years ago if this happened, a good duel would lighten things up. Now for excitement, you’ve got Premier Dalton McGuinty doing hopscotch for the media on the first day of school, only to find that the minister of education, [...]
Pope Benedict XVI received Canadian bishops from the province of Ontario Sept. 8 at his summer residence of Castelgandolfo. The Pope noted that while Canada seems to have sufficient efforts in the area of “justice and peace,” it is sorely lacking in protection for life and family. “Canada has a well-earned reputation for a generous and practical commitment to justice and peace,” [...]
As I write this column, I am about to rejoin Newstalk 1010 CFRB, the largest private radio station in the country and one of the most famous in North America. It is based in Toronto, but has an audience throughout Ontario on radio and across the country and abroad through the internet. It is an institution, the best of its kind. I [...]
How is it that the world’s smallest sovereign state is creating so much news? The Roman pontiff, Pope Benedict XVI, sparked a firestorm of controversy last month when he quoted from a 14th century Byzantine emperor. The quotation, which was quickly taken from its context, was widely disseminated in the Middle East. The larger point of Pope Benedict’s address (which, as Gerald [...]
A visiting celestial wanderer might easily conclude that we earthlings think happiness is utterly dependent on constant sexual stimulation and condomized activity from the time we cut our teeth. Very few of the activities that preoccupy us today are without sexual overtones. (Except maybe war.) So if that is the standard by which we measure happiness, our world should be happy, indeed. [...]
Communist authorities jailed three lawyers for a blind Chinese activist in a bumbling attempt to disrupt a fair court hearing for the activist who exposed local officials forcing women to undergo late-term abortions and sterilizations according to the Associated Press. According to the AP, the lawyers represent Chen Guangcheng, 34, who was arrested by local authorities after documenting claims by villagers in [...]
The Tower of Babel, once a localized edifice, apparently has been extended to the point where it now covers the entire world. Language is no longer intelligible anywhere and, as a direct result, people throughout the globe no longer think. In our bizarro world, contradictions abound: good means bad, morality means slavery and inclusive means exclusive. A new “educational” program in Australia, [...]
Is government doing enough to protect kids from pedophiles? Interim Staff The recent capture of pedophile Peter Whitmore has prompted Canadians to debate his surprisingly lax treatment at the hands of this country’s justice system over the past decade. Writing in the Toronto Sun, pundit Linda Williamson noted several consistencies about Whitmore’s criminal behaviour: “his predilection for befriending and ‘grooming’ his young [...]