The Vatican Museums comprise 54 galleries of which the Sistine Chapel is undoubtedly the most famous. They exhibit more than 20,000 significant pieces of art, a mere fraction of the works in the collection of over 70,000. These include sculptures, paintings, maps and more, with the pièce de resistance being Michelangelo’s Volta della Cappella Sistina, a High Renaissance art masterpiece painted in only four years by the 33-year-old prodigy.
A war veteran, recovering from PTSD and a brain injury, approaches a Veteran Affairs Canada service agent to seek a treatment plan that would continue the progress he was making.
I come from a family of lead-foots. I think we have black-and-white checkered genes. Nunhood made no dent in my “need for speed” heritage. So here are a few of my encounters with law enforcement on the roadways of North America. (Be it known that I’m always dressed as a nun. I don’t really have any other clothes.)
I teach it and I preach it, but every so often I am reminded how difficult it is to live it. I am talking about laying our expectations on others.
Tone deafness
My heart sank to read an article as well as a letter to the editor in the July 24-31 Catholic Register. In both, the writers told Indigenous peoples they should extend forgiveness once our Holy Father presents an apology on Canadian soil.
Since 2020 while our attention has been fixed on living through the COVID pandemic, it seems an “end-demic” of medically delivered death has been raging around us almost unnoticed.
Mess is a theme in my life, and therefore also in my barefoot preaching. I think I return to the theme because mess challenges me so deeply. While I grew, I found relief in order, comfort in control, rest in simplicity. And I wandered into a world with a tendency toward disorder, a resistance to control and more complexity than I could have imagined. I tried and failed to eliminate the mess, and I crawled out of rock bottom (more than once) to make peace with the reality of mess.
The Pope’s visit to Canada and apology to Indigenous peoples was a profound occasion for our country. His visit also raises important questions about the proper relationship between political and religious institutions.
On my way to becoming a Catholic I kept hitting speed bumps. There were certain things the Church taught that I could not get my head around.
I have never had an easy devotion to Mother Mary. For most of my life it has felt rather contrived. There are a few possible reasons. Growing up in a bookish household meant that spiritual and intellectual pursuits were closely intertwined and many of the expressions of Marian piety were viewed as populist pablum. My mother is a convert and is naturally suspicious of anything smacking of folk religion. My father kept a Rosary in the drawer of his bedside table, but the placement was strategic. He once explained to me that the counting of the beads was a useful sleep aid.
At a recent convocation ceremony, I closed my commencement address with a reference to one of my favourite stories: that of the famed astronomer Harlow Shapley and his discovery that Argon atoms, which make up one per cent of our atmosphere, never fade. They recirculate indefinitely.