In today's society, the often excessive celebration of Halloween (particularly by adults and teens) could be seen as a symptom of a trend towards social breakdown and disintegration. In an increasingly secular and multicultural society, such apparently non-religious holidays as Halloween are celebrated all the more. The theologian and social critic Richard John Neuhaus has pointed out that current-day society delights in [...]
Does the UN still represent the best hope for mankind to peacefully resolve problems of violence, injustice, inequality and poverty or has the UN strayed from its original mandate, become saddled with impossible tasks, and is now careening toward abject irrelevance? Recently the UN has come under criticism, accused of inefficiency, waste, and fraud and inept handling of peacekeeping missions. Let's not [...]
The Preparatory Committee for the International Criminal Court (ICC) was addressed Sept. 25 by Jozias van Aartsen, foreign minister of the Netherlands, who told the committee that preparations in the Netherlands, where the ICC is to be located, are progressing rapidly to ensure that the court could begin operations from its very first day, which he said could be as early as [...]
Harriet D'Sa spoke at the Toronto office of Campaign Life Coalition to bring attention to the issues facing life and family in her native India. During the July 30 event, D'Sa, a principal at St. Joseph's High School in Bangalore in southern India, said her nation's anti-female attitudes are at the root of the problems of abortion and marital breakdown. D'Sa, who [...]
Farmers know full well that the operation known as castration is performed for good reasons. But why some bureaucracies choose to act as if they've had such operations performed upon them is beyond me. In Alberta, an Office of the Information and Privacy Commissioner has been set up. Its main task seems to be to issue orders that are not worth the [...]
Government control not necessary to ensure good schools Independent schools are now part of the educational landscape. The Equity in Education Tax Credit provides a tax credit against tuition paid for parents who send their children to one of the approximately 730 independent schools in the province. This tax credit legislation does two very important things for Ontario: First it establishes the [...]
September is the month of new beginnings for children across Canada who are going to public or private schools as well as the 100,000 students who, according to a recent issue of Time, will be staying home to school. The idea of educating children at home raises familiar questions such as, "Why would a person want to homeschool? What are the reasons [...]
As millions of Canadian children return to school this September, 81,000 kids will stay at home with mom or dad or some other adult to be homeschooled. The National Post has reported on several recent polls that show growing support for parental choice in education, in a variety of forms that include the creation of charter schools, school vouchers and tuition tax [...]
The problem, I fear, is that the whole country is going to pot - "pot," as in marijuana. There's a crazy campaign being carried on by the mainstream media to decriminalize pot. We'll be a nation of glassy-eyed potheads if this media blitz is a success, and I don't doubt that they'll succeed. Many will be getting into their cars stoned from [...]
At the end of July through the beginning of August, we suffered through the "gay festival" as Montreal became Sodom for a week. A particular arrogance and presumptuousness marked this year's activities. Some estimates had 750,000 people attending the gay parade on August 5, giving the occasion an appearance of having been a great success. Key politicians were present, showing their deference [...]
"Abstain and be faithful won't fight AIDS" was the headline of a column by Donna Laframboise in the National Post on August 2. She was ridiculing African Catholic bishops who condemned the use of condoms in fighting AIDS. She came to a very strong conclusion: "any religion that thinks you fight a public health catastrophe that threatens millions upon millions of lives [...]
Legislative and court battles over everything from child pornography to euthanasia are so common now that it is difficult to keep track of the ever-changing frontline in what Pope John Paul II has dubbed "the culture war." Nevertheless, pro-family groups in Canada believe they may have identified a political battle they can win and sustain: defending the definition of marriage in court. [...]
About the week in which Timothy McVeigh was executed by injection I read in an American newspaper that doctors are not allowed to administer the injections - "because it would be against the Hippocratic Oath." Hippocrates was a physician who lived in the fifth century before Christ, and the Oath is attributed to him. Up to relatively recent times, well into this [...]
I hate to say I told you so. But my goodness, I told you so. Not just me, of course. Everyone who believes in family, marriage and unchanging morality. All those people, in fact, who have been routinely chastised by the trendy powers that be and their fellow travellers. I refer to a report from Statistics Canada that concludes that people who [...]
When Juergen Severloh came to the Crisis Pregnancy Centre of Winnipeg on the Saturday morning of March 17, he found the words "Anti-Choice F---ers" spray painted in bright yellow letters over the window of the building, and what he estimated to be at least a gallon of blood-red paint splattered on the walls. Severloh, the centre's executive director, told The Interim that [...]