It is Saturday and we arrive to a house in a middle-class neighbourhood of west Amman. There is quite a crowd gathering for the day’s events. Inside, the Franciscan Missionaries of Mary have a full-morning planned. In the back room there are dozens of children participating in an activity. They are all Iraqis displaced because ...read more

It is my hope that, with Bishops from around the world gathered for this year’s Synod on the Middle East, the eyes of the world will be turned to Rome for new insights on how to respond to issues in the Middle East. When I was in grade 10, we had a foreign student come ...read more

The census is back in the news with the government potentially voting on keeping or scrapping the mandatory long-form. Several years ago (either 1991 or 1995), I was fairly unemployed and Fr. Bert Foliot, SJ, my pastor at the time, hooked me up to work for the Census Canada. All I had to do was ...read more

The Holy Land is considered holy because Jesus lived here. It is also holy because most of the prophets lived around here. But it is also important because here is where it all began: Christianity was born here. Today though, 2000 years later, we equate the Middle East with Muslims. We hear about Jews and ...read more

A couple of weeks ago I went back to camp. I was reminded of my first job in Canada: I was a counsellor at Camp Wahanowin in Orillia. Camp Wahanowin is a Jewish camp and before every meal we used to say the blessing of the bread: Barukh attah Adonai eloheinu melekh ha-olam, ha-motzi lechem ...read more

Last Saturday night, in Calgary, Catholic artists from across North America gathered for the 10th annual United Catholic Music and Video Awards and Conference, under the theme “Called to Serve”. The UCMVA was founded with the aim of bringing together Catholic presenters from around the world who celebrate their faith through various forms of media, ...read more

We are all familiar with award ceremonies –the Oscars, the Junos, the Grammys, the Genies and Geminis – there are also Catholic film and TV awards, the Gabriels – for the last two years S+L TV has won the award for TV station of the year – but have you heard of Catholic music awards? ...read more

What’s happening to Perspectives: The Weekly Edition during the summer?  That’s the question many of you are asking yourselves this week as you log in incessantly, hour after hour, to our facebook page and our Perspectives page, looking for a new question and for new updates. We’re taking a break. That’s the short answer. The ...read more

Today I’m thinking about summer… ahh summer… I remember very clearly, as if it was yesterday, the last day of school before the summer break – not sure why we even went to school that day, ’cause it was one big party. We would celebrate the end of the school year and then… hello freedom! ...read more

So far we’ve looked at sin and at the reasons why the Sacrament requires that we confess to a priest. I know some of you still struggle with that. Perhaps going through the ritual will help a bit. Remember that every Sacrament has a ritual – but the Sacrament is not just the ritual. In ...read more