Funeral didn’t do justice to Jean Beliveau the Catholic
Upon the death of Jean Beliveau I devoted my National Post column to eulogizing the gentleman who exemplified the best that Quebec once produced, a model of what Quebec aspires to be. The treatment was even more generous here in the pages of The Register, with a cover story and a laudatory editorial. It was well deserved.
Christ is not an ideology
A colleague scolded me recently for my argument that any attempt to reconfigure the culture must avoid being a pretext for smuggling Christendom back into the story.
Constantinople an Orthodox relic
Fifty years ago Blessed Paul VI went to Jerusalem — the first papal trip outside Italy in our time, inaugurating the practice of apostolic journeys — to meet Patriarch Athenagoras of Constantinople, primus inter pares of all the Orthodox patriarchs. It was a historic moment that, after nearly a millennia of separation, the Bishop of Rome, Successor of St. Peter and universal pastor of the Church, would meet with the Patriarch of Constantinople, the “New Rome,” successor of St. Andrew and ecumenical patriarch of all Orthodoxy.
Forgiveness comes in different ways, times
The other day a real-life discussion between pals reminded me of Unbroken, a movie opening on Christmas Day and based on the best-selling book and true story of a courageous American airman during the Second World War.
- By Robert Brehl
A Christmas gift for suffering South Sudan
The world’s newest nation is in big trouble.
Following more than 20 years of civil war between north and south Sudan, the independent nation of the Republic of South Sudan was born in 2011.
But the birth of the new nation didn't come without pain. The many years of war brought not only much death, but also drained South Sudan of valuable resources, leaving it extremely poor.
Give a gift of Ratzinger's brilliance
The beginning of a new liturgical year is a suitable time to think about the liturgy in a broader and deeper way. Two recent books from Ignatius Press help us to do so in a devout and scholarly way. They are not for the casual reader, but parishioners looking to challenge their priests with some serious reading this Christmas would do well to consider them as gifts.
Cultural war is coming
In mid-November, Pope Francis gave an address to new communities and ecclesial movements in the Church that was, even by his high standards, utterly inspiring.
Over the rainbow is the King's Son
Is it just by coincidence that at the beginning and the end of the Bible there appears a rainbow?
- By Ian Hunter
Lessons rung up from a spill off the ladder
The other day, I fell off a ladder. More precisely, a ladder I propped up on a snow-slicked deck so I could clean out eavestroughs, slipped out from under me, dropping me seven or eight feet.
- By Robert Brehl
Merciful Father is always present
One of the highlights of the year just ending was the canonization of the greatest pope and dominant religious figure of our times, John Paul II. Over the years I had attended many such events as a reporter or broadcaster in the media section, but I thought that this time I would take it in as a pilgrim. That meant arriving in St. Peter’s Square some four hours or so before the Mass began. How to spend those hours in a suitably pious and productive way? After all, the breviary and rosary don’t take that long, even at a leisurely pace.
Catholicism key to mystery of Shakespeare
Before I became convinced that William Shakespeare was a Roman Catholic, I was one of those conspiratorially minded chaps who believed Shakespeare was not the person who wrote the greatest single cache of plays in the English language.