Originally Published in the National Post: Friday, December 29, 2006
With interest in spirituality on the rise and church attendance in a freefall, a week-long National Post series considers the state of Canadian Christianity and whether the way forward may in fact be the way backward.
Originally Published in the National Post: Thursday, December 28, 2006
BOMBAY – About 18 months ago, the Post ran a series on India that reported two extraordinary facts. In the next 10 years, India will add 91 million new workers aged 25-44 to the workforce; and that fully one-quarter of the world’s youth are Indian.
Originally Published in the National Post: Saturday, December 23, 2006
Earlier this week, we criticized Time magazine’s choice of “you,” – as in everyone – for “Person of the Year.” It struck us as a rather lame news judgment, but also a decision infected with the anodyne affirmation that leads to automatic advancement in elementary schools, or to giving trophies to both winners and losers in youth sports. Time’s editors, marvelling at the skill with which ordinary people – even children! – use the Internet and its transformative power, patted everyone on the head and said, “Well done.” It was condescending.
Originally Published in the National Post: Saturday, December 23, 2006
SALIGAO, GOA – I have come to the home village of my grandparents for the first time. And in the proximity of Christmas, the extraordinary thought occurs: God, too, has a hometown.
Beth Tzedec Synagogue, Toronto
21st December 2006
My dear elder brothers in the faith,
I am honoured by your invitation to address you in this house of prayer, and I greet you with the favoured expression of the late Holy Father, John Paul II, for the Jewish people – “our elder brothers in the faithâ€.