Focus

• Food for thought

  Apr 02, 2014

  Last year, Easter brought with it a new pope, and the new pope brought with him a classic, timeless message: “Christ is risen!”

  

• For Christians, death leads toward, not away, from life

  Apr 02, 2014

  The household’s older children erupted into endless shrieks of delight when the phone call came from the hospital announcing the birth of their baby sister and our newest grandchild. Two of the children, overwhelmed by excitement, raced out the door to tell the good news to their neighbours.

  
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  The life of Christians extends beyond death

  Apr 02, 2014

  The book A New Catechism: Catholic Faith for Adults, also known as the Dutch Catechism, tells the story of Christian missionaries who visited a pagan king.

  

• Combat the ‘epidemic plague’ of porn by becoming pure

  Mar 27, 2014

  The growth of pornography use, particularly on the internet, is “a matter of utmost urgency for every son and father today,” Bishop Paul Loverde of the Catholic diocese of Arlington, Virginia said in a letter to his flock released this week.

  

• What dark nights do for us

  Mar 27, 2014

  After Mother Teresa died, her diaries revealed something that shocked many people, namely, during the last sixty years of her life, from age 27 until she died at age 87, she struggled to imagine that God existed and had no affective experience of either the person or the existence of God.

  

• Pope Francis, Obama have much in common

  Mar 27, 2014

  Pope Francis and President Obama met at the Vatican on Thursday, March 27.

  

• Trust in politicians is at an all-time low ...when inequality is at an all time high

  Mar 27, 2014

  The riots and demonstrations in Cairo in 2011, and the similar breakdown in public order in Kiev last month, were both fuelled by popular resentment at corruption.

  

• Food for thought

  Mar 27, 2014

  Last year, in his last public homily as a sitting pope, Pope Benedict XVI said during Ash Wednesday that “by the grace of God, we are called to transform (the Gospel) into a concrete attitude and behaviour during Lent.”

  

• Transformed by grace

  Mar 27, 2014

  The story of John Newton is generally well known. He was a captain in the African slave trade during the 1700s and eventually had a conversion to Christianity. He later joined with his friend William Wilberforce to bring about the end of the British slave trade.

  

• Lenten lessons to help us throughout life

  Mar 27, 2014

  The Lenten Gospels take us through a bleak and dry landscape. To some, this bleakness signals death. To others, it signals a death of the old self and a transformation to a new self.