St. Patrick driving the snakes out of Ireland falls into the category of beloved mythology — unless you happen to be a snake, in which case you might have a lower estimate of it.

Statement of Dublin Archbishop Dermot Farrell prior to the votes on Ireland’s constitution that rejected proposed changes to marriage and family life.

Give your children L-O-V-E

It’s legislation long overdue. The introduction of Bill C-63, the Online Harms Act, is badly needed protection for the vulnerable — particularly children and youth — against traumas arising from an unsafe and unregulated digital world.

The proposed act identifies seven categories of harmful content, three of which directly relate to children. These include content that sexually victimizes a child or revictimizes a survivor, bullies a child and induces a child to harm themselves.

Do you understand what you are reading?

Acts: 8: 30

The art of reading is rapidly disappearing. According to a study by the National Endowment for the Arts, nearly “half of all Americans ages 18 to 24 read no books for pleasure.” Even more alarming given my line of work, “College attendance no longer guarantees active reading habits.”

“Is Toronto finally shaking off the sexual stigma of polyamory?” reads the recent headline in the Toronto Star. News outlets have been peddling polyamory apologetics after a middle-aged woman released a book about her life-changing adventures pursuing polyamory in January 2024.

Alexey Navalny was surely a hero. Perhaps he was also a saint. Little evidence is available to buttress the hope that he might someday be recognized as such. Navalny, the Russian dissident who died/was murdered Feb. 16, spoke little of his conversion from militant atheism to Christian Orthodoxy during his abbreviated life.

The world can be a cold, unfriendly, even hostile and angry place — online and offline. It doesn’t have to be that way. It’s not supposed to be that way. God created an earthly paradise for us, but when we reject Him and His ways, we reject our true selves, each other and everything we’re actually longing for. We become prideful and selfish. Put a bunch of prideful and selfish people together and you have a recipe for guaranteed misery.

My family and I visited the Holy Land more than 40 years ago and witnessed discriminatory treatment of Palestinians. After 75 years of such treatment, the Oct.7 event should not be a surprise.

If posthumous praise could be turned into retroactive votes, the late Brian Mulroney might be poised for resurrection as Canada’s prime minister.

Timely Lenten advice from the Archdiocese of Ottawa-Cornwall website