As a young person, finding love can be extremely hard. While Catholics have historically turned to St. Joseph for help in this matter, this revered saint is perhaps overlooked by today’s young people for the guidance he can provide to those looking for their future spouse.

Time magazine’s choice of “the silence breakers” as its 2017 Person of the Year acknowledges the importance of a movement that is changing our culture for the better.

In today’s dating world, men who want to wait until marriage for sex are unicorns. People say they exist, but no one you know has ever dated one.

Over the years, I’ve been on a lot of dates. There’s been many that went nowhere, and three that turned into somewhat serious relationships. As a practising (if somewhat lapsed) Catholic over the last five years, I had certainly never dated a unicorn.

Archbishop Raymond Roussin’s life of dedication, faith, struggle and hope is over. The retired archbishop of Vancouver died in Winnipeg April 24. He was 75.

Vowed life is a mystery, but only in the Catholic sense. There’s no mystery in the vows themselves. Poverty, chastity and obedience are pretty straightforward — no money, no sex, no turning your back on the demands of the community.

As part of the Year of Consecrated Life, The Catholic Register is proud to present its Call to Service special feature highlighting the stories of religious nuns and priests across Canada and internationally.

You can browse the articles below and see all the advertisements on the Digital Edition. The original pull-out section appeared in the April 26, 2015 issue.

“Are you an engineer?” I ask, pointing to the slim, shiny ring on his pinky finger.

“No,” he replies. “This is my promise ring.”

OTTAWA - As Catholics mark the Year of Consecrated Life, the president of the Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops looks to a future of hope for Canadian religious.

School is finally out, and with the beach, the sun and all the adventure plans, it’s the perfect time for some sweet summer lovin’. However, summer romances tend to be about feeling good and having fun instead of authentic love.

To live a chaste life is not easy, not just for celibates, but for everyone. Even when our actions are all in line, it is still hard to live with a chaste heart, a chaste attitude and chaste fantasies. Purity of heart and intention is very difficult.

Why? Chastity is difficult because we are so incurably sexual in every pore of our being. And that is not a bad thing. It’s God’s gift. Far from being something dirty and antithetical to our spiritual lives, sexuality is God’s great gift, God’s holy fire, inside us. And so the longing for consummation is a conscious or inchoate colouring underlying most every action in our lives.

And so it is hard to pray for chastity because to pray for it, seemingly, is to pray that sexual yearning and sexual energy should lessen within us or disappear altogether. And who wants to live an asexual and neutered life? No healthy person wants this. Thus, if you are healthy, it is hard to put your heart into praying for chastity because, deep down, nobody wants to be asexual.