Columns

Christianity and secular liberalism both hold the enhancement of human dignity to be one of society's key goals. However, what those two traditions each mean by "human dignity" is quite different. To understand what is happening in today's society, it is helpful to explore those different meanings.

FR. RON ROLHEISER, omi

One of my jobs as a priest is to preside and preach at funerals. Never an easy task.

JOHN CONNELLY

Corpus Christi
June 2, 2013

Imagine a sleeping giant suddenly beginning to awaken. A massive giant with great power and wisdom. A giant so large that its body literally covers the entire world.

GORDON SELF

Earlier this month, Covenant Health opened two newborn safe havens in Edmonton at the Misericordia and Grey Nuns Community Hospitals. They are the first newborn safe havens in Alberta, intended to augment the existing safety net and to help prevent unsafe abandonment that threatens the life, dignity and respect owed to vulnerable newborns.

FR. ROBERT BARRON

Classical philosophy and science sought to understand things in terms of Aristotle's four causes: material (what something is made of), formal (a thing's essential structure), efficient (how it got the way it is) and final (its purpose or destiny).

MARK PICKUP

Pope John Paul II once said that the answer to the "why" of suffering depends on the ability to comprehend the sublimity of divine love. Unfortunately for most of us, it is beyond our ability to comprehend the wonder and perfection of God's love. Left to my own means, I could not comprehend it; the "why" of suffering would remain unanswered.

SR. LOUISE ZDUNICH, NDC

The Catholic Church maintains it has the line of apostolic succession but some Protestants believe that line was broken during the Middle Ages when there was confusion as to who the real pope was. How do we still justify apostolic succession in view of Church history?

FR. RAYMOND DE SOUZA

It was just a year ago that the latest media priest crashed and burned. Father Thomas Williams, a priest of the Legionaries of Christ and a well-known writer and television commentator, acknowledged in May 2012 that he had fathered a son many years ago. He took a leave of his public ministry.

DR. GERRY TURCOTTE

Another Mother's Day has come and gone, and it is with quiet marvel that I look back on the occasion. Certainly, like so much else in western culture – from Christmas to Easter to Valentine's Day – the event has been commercialized until you feel not another drop can be wrung out of it. Sales, gifts and wrapping paper.

Our human desire is to project an aura of confidence, of success, of being in control. We want to know it all and to have others believe we know it all.