{mosimage}TORONTO - Guidance for participation in Canadian political life can be found in the church’s social teachings, but that doesn’t mean there is a simple formula for voting, according to Catholic observers interviewed by The Catholic Register in advance of the Oct. 14 federal election.

“We do not believe people are just individuals. We really are about working for the common good,” explains Ottawa-based Jesuit Father William Ryan. “That’s the basic premise. We’re social beings. . . . We believe that you’re social by nature, and for that reason you’re political.”

{mosimage}TORONTO - As several Catholic school boards across Canada prepare to offer the vaccine targeting cervical cancer this year, recent reports suggest a need for more studies.

In a Sept. 1 editorial in the Canadian Medical Association Journal, Dr. Neal A. Halsley said cases of severe adverse reactions among Australian children to Gardasil — the vaccine targeting the human papillomavirus, also known as HPV, which can cause cervical cancer — was five to 20 times higher than for other school-based vaccines. Of the 12 suspected cases, eight were confirmed as anaphylactoid reactions. There were 269,680 vaccine doses administered in Australian schools starting in April 2007.

{mosimage}WOODBRIDGE, Ont. - Vita Nova is one addictions rehabilitation centre that isn’t shy about its Catholic colours. On the staircase wall of the building’s main entrance hangs a large painting of a young woman, head in hands, with a statue of Mary in the background facing away.

Franca Carella, the centre’s founder, explains that the painting, the handiwork of a former client at the Woodbridge centre, expressed the artist’s struggle with faith while battling addiction — in her case, the belief that Mary had turned her back on her.

{mosimage}TORONTO - For many people suffering from addiction, the belief in a higher power, or the belief that such a higher power actually cares for them, is often a difficult concept to grasp, addictions counsellors say.

Feelings of shame and guilt because of the hurtful things they have done or said during their addiction can make it difficult for recovering addicts to forgive themselves. The concept of a Creator who loves them and wants to help them seems very unlikely.

{mosimage}CALGARY - Two Catholic school boards in Alberta have refused to allow an in-school vaccination to guard against a sexually transmitted disease that can cause cervical cancer.

In September Calgary Catholic District School and St. Thomas Aquinas school board, south of Edmonton,voted against making the human papilloma virus (HPV) vaccination available in its schools.

{mosimage}While global capitalism went into convulsions at the Wall Street end of Manhattan Island, Archbishop Celestino Migliore was at the midtown headquarters of the United Nations wondering about the economic fate of 1.4 billion people who live on less than a dollar a day.

“How are we able to find funds to save a broken financial system yet remain unable to find the resources necessary to invest in the development of all regions of the world, beginning with the most destitute?” Migliore, the Holy See’s representative at the United Nations, asked delegates to a high level meeting on the Millennium Development Goals Sept. 27.

{mosimage}TORONTO - For 138 years the dogma of papal infallibility has inspired waves of harsh condemnation and deep suspicion from other Christians. The irony is that the church approved this teaching in the name of church unity.

Margaret O’Gara, president of the Catholic Theological Society of America and professor of systematic theology at the University of St. Michael’s College, has been thinking about papal infallibility more than 30 years. She thinks it’s time to rethink what the dogma means, and how Catholics put it into practice.

{mosimage}In the 14th century the Italian writer and scholar Dante Alighieri wrote his famous poem, the “Divine Comedy,” in which he presented a Catholic vision of the Inferno, the Purgatorio and the Paradiso — Hell, Purgatory and Heaven. But the Christian doctrine of the afterlife did not start with Dante. It predates the poet by more than 2,000 years and has its roots in ancient Jewish thought.  

The Old Testament speaks of the deceased descending to a subterranean place of the dead called Sheol. Part of Sheol was reserved for the righteous, who found rest and comfort there; another part, however, was set aside for those who did not keep God’s Covenant. This dark side of Sheol was identified with Hell or Gehenna.  

{mosimage}WINNIPEG - Any anthology of Christian writing in Canada cannot help but examine the intersection of faith and politics. In Northern Lights, readers can examine this through the eyes of someone who has lived it for almost three decades.

After almost 30 years as a member of Parliament, United Church Minister Bill Blaikie has taken on a different campaign — to encourage Christians to talk to each other, and the world, about who they are.

{mosimage}TORONTO - Science can't adequately explain the role of God in the universe, says Fr. George Coyne, S.J., the former director of the Vatican Observatory who, at one time, was referred to as “the pope's astrophysicist.”

But as a religious believer, the American professor said he is able to answer the question of God's role.