We’ve often heard that someone “read their way into the Catholic Church,” but have we ever considered that we can read our way out of something negative? I can attest to the possibility, because I basically read my way out of decades-long radical feminism.

In its April budget this year, the federal government pledged a $5-million fund to “combat residential school denialism.”

It might have been appropriate to raise the white flag of Ugly Ville over the April 23 meeting of the Toronto Catholic District School Board. 

Pope Francis’ address to members of the Global Researchers Advancing Catholic Education Project meeting in Rome on April 22, 2024

Some readers who, like me, have a fondness for a good English novel, particularly those with a Catholic bent, will be familiar with the works of Fr. Robert Hugh Benson (1871-1914). Benson ranks among the great 19th and early 20th century Anglican converts along with Evelyn Waugh, Ronald Knox and St. John Henry Newman. Each of them left behind a significant corpus of writing that continues to delight and inspire us today. 

This column is a thank-you to 52,629 people — everyone who signed our Stand for the Land campaign letter to the Honduran Ambassador to Canada.  The letter draws the attention of the Government of Honduras to the struggles of people in Guapinol and the San Pedro sector. Since 2015, these communities have been protesting an open-pit iron mine that was irregularly set up in Carlos Escaleras National Park. Their struggle has come at great cost. Community members have been unjustly detained and three have even been murdered. 

An apology has great power to heal a wrong suffered. 

I witnessed an apology by a Catholic deacon (having no involvement with the case) offered to a Baptist woman who alleged abuse by a pastor in her denomination. She broke down in tears saying how meaningful it was to see a man wearing clerical garb providing an expression of compassion and regret as to how a fellow cleric had acted towards her.

The scene had a loopy, feckless, cosplay pathos about it. Then I discerned the menace. I came face-to-face not with the dictatorship of the proletariat, but with the dictates of the phone-atariat.

As duffers and pro prospects alike tune their golf games for another season of lightning strike joy and thunder cloud frustration, the world’s number one player models three words of sage advice: Say your prayers.

“Although I am a stranger, please know I hold you in my heart and in my prayers. You are loved regardless of the obstacles that you may face. I hope this letter brightens your day, and this care package helps you along the way. Please stay safe, stay happy and stay blessed. With love, from someone who cares.”