When I arrived to my mother’s house in Montreal Friday evening, where I am spending the weekend, I found this thoughtful letter from theologian and United Church of Canada minister Douglas John Hall on my recently published book I Have Demons… As my book explores the nature of the Divine’s presence in our world and in the lives of my…
Year: 2019
We know from the revelations of the past nearly two decades that some of the men who joined the Roman Catholic priesthood were socially and emotionally maladjusted, and used their position of authority to abuse the most vulnerable in their community. There are also today a number of priests, sometimes younger ones, who not only subscribe privately to the most…
Theologian Richard Hooker lived and wrote with the activities of those Puritans in mind, who were looking to radically reshape the Church of England. At the centre of Hooker’s study “Of the Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity” is the relationship between Scripture, Authority and Tradition, and the role of human reason in embracing Christ’s salvific message. Hooker wrote in an era…
Set against the misery of the Great Depression, the Ottawa Little Theatre brought to life John Steinbeck’s story of how two men who journey together in search of work struggle to overcome a dehumanizing situation through their frustrating, yet ultimately genuine friendship. Ottawa actor J.T. Morris played George Milton poignantly and Dan DeMarbre, cast as George’s friend Lennie Small, gave…
Occasionally my line of work requires that I be in the office most of the weekend. When this happens, I try to take Monday off. My camera had been mostly gathering dust for some time now, while a combination of treacherous sidewalks and overall busyness caused me to neglect going for walks. Today was as good a day as any…
“A door opens to me. I go in and am faced with a hundred closed doors…” Those thoughts from Argentinian poet Antonio Porchia lay some of the foundations of a theological study written in 1972 by Henri Nouwen that encourages Catholic priests and other ministers to reach out to the vulnerable they serve by recognizing their own personal vulnerability. As…
My collection of literary fiction, I Have Demons, is a finalist in the “Books for Adults (fiction)” category of The Wishing Shelf Book Awards. The annual competition is the brainchild of British children’s author Edward Trayer and has, over the past five years, grown to attract hundreds of English-language book submissions each year, from children’s books to adult fiction and…
The Tenth Man, a story written originally in 1944 exploring the consequences of a wartime decimation order, only saw the light of day in 1983, when the unpublished typescript was found by accident in the archives of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. Everyone seemed to have forgotten about its existence, including the author himself, Graham Greene, who was 79 years old at the time…
British novelist Evelyn Waugh was what one might call a traditional Catholic and Catholicism is central to his 1945 novel Brideshead Revisited: The Sacred & Profane Memories of Captain Charles Ryder. Waugh was outright despondent following the liturgical transformations of the Second Vatican Council (1962-1965) and felt as though he was losing the church and faith that he embraced after his…