Every so often a song comes into my life that makes me cry in a flood of deep spiritual emotion. The latest one made my wife cry first. She heard it at a performance where our kid is a Grade 12 student at the Etobicoke School of the Arts. It was a choral rendition of Low Lily’s song “Hope Lingers On,” arranged by Andrea Ramsey. She inspired an online search for it. This article is best read to that soundtrack.

We humans need to be tended. Sheep are tended by a shepherd. Gardens are tended by a gardener. Even databases are tended by experts.

As we progress along any journey, we are faced with countless distractions, our own laziness or lukewarmness, and temptations that can lead us astray.

Catholic experts are expressing concern after a recent Pew Research Center survey found that only 35% of U.S. Catholic parents say that it is extremely or very important to them that their children grow up to hold similar religious beliefs.

Rev. Andrew Bennett offers timely wisdom that, as Paschal people, we can find hope even in the distressing report by think tank Cardus on Canada’s shocking loss of religious faith.

For much of the past 50 years the received wisdom has been that religious observance and belief is relentlessly declining in Canada. The secularization theory is that as a society progresses by becoming more educated and affluent, the ties to traditional religious belief inevitably decline. 

“Our manuscript has gone safe to the Printer.” So wrote Sheldon Vanauken (“Van”) in A Severe Mercy, after his beloved wife’s painful and young death.

There were 10.9 million self-identified Catholics in Canada in 2021, a sharp drop of two million from 2011, according to the latest census religion numbers. 

“I believe in God, the Father Almighty.” These words we utter as Christians quite often, but what do they mean? Although it appears to be an acknowledgement of God’s existence at first glance, it means so much more.

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.

VANVOUVER - While she was executive director of the pro-life group Vancouver’s Life Community, Annabelle Chong heard many stories from faithful Catholics who had to be cautious what they said in the workplace when hot-button subjects like abortion, same-sex marriage and transgender rights came up for discussion.

Compelling new research out of Cardus and the Angus Reid Institute should encourage Canadian religious leaders to take a deeper look at why some people remain religiously faithful and why others do not, says Rev. Dr. Andrew Bennett.

On June 3, 1886, the Feast of the Ascension, St. Charles Lwanga and companions were martyred. They were pages for King Mwanga, a pedophilic and violent ruler in Uganda who forced himself onto his young attendants.

The best thing to say about a recent report to the minister of national defence from an advisory panel on systemic racism and discrimination in Canada’s military is that it’s not wholly bad.