Our Lady of Guadalupe Seminary

• Chandler Kerr, Calgary, AB – 1st year of Spirituality
• Adrian Debow, Calgary, AB – 1st year
• René Holt-Perez, Combermere, ON – 2nd year
• Anthony Uy, Vancouver, BC – 5th year
• Brian McDonnell, Maple Ridge, BC – 6th year

The Seminary of Wigratzbad (Germany)

Seminarium Internationale Sancti Petri

• Jacques Breton, Saint-Hyacinthe, QC
• Juan Tomas, Markham, ON
• Alexandre Marchand, Gatineau, QC

There would seem to be two major ways of mistreating the past. The first is to look upon it nostalgically; the second is to not look upon it at all, or at least not seriously, to treat it as something which has little or no bearing on the present, and which therefore any brave, progressive, ever forward-looking people can afford to ignore.

A bit of nostalgia every now and then need not necessarily be a bad thing, but what I have in mind by referring to a nostalgic regard for the past is an attitude which is put in place by the practice of imaginatively doctoring and reshaping the past so that it becomes something which, in fact, it never was. It is a practice which fosters a dreamy, sentimentalized rendition of the past, transforming it into a kind of Never-Never Land, to which one is constantly appealing, usually as a standing indictment against every aspect of the present, and the obsessive commitment to which serves to prevent a person from living fully and responsibly…

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The essential spirit of any given age or society is often most directly revealed by what it estimates to be the principal virtues, and the most heinous vices. If we were to allow the mass media to be our guide in this matter, we could easily conclude our age rates tolerance as among the highest of virtues. There is certainly much emphasis given to tolerance today. We are constantly being reminded how important it is to be tolerant of one another. And, negatively, we are regularly warned of the evils of intolerance.

What are we to make of the emphasis that is currently given to the subject of tolerance? Should it be regarded as just one more sign of the vigorous moral health of the society in which we live? Or does it lend itself to another…

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It is an act of the will to deny free will, and those who insist upon doing so deserve to be put in the same category as those who refuse to accept the fact that the earth is a sphere. As Catholics, we of course take free will for granted, as well we should, for it was granted to us as a free gift. Besides, it would not contribute much to good mental or spiritual health to deny the obvious. There is no questioning the sheer factualness of free will, but that does not mean that serious questions concerning the nature of free will cannot be raised, as well as questions about how free will is to be properly understood with respect to our relation with the omniscient and all-powerful God.

One question which is often raised regarding the matter of free will is this: How is it related to God’s foreknowledge? Put more pointedly, how is our free will to be reconciled with God’s foreknowledge? Let us begin by stating the problem…

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By Dennis McInerny

The movement which was known as the Higher Criticism represented a particularly serious—perhaps we should say, the most serious—attack on language, understood as the bearer of truth, because the movement had the temerity to call into question the integrity of the Bible. Knowing as we do by our faith that the author of the Bible is no other than God Himself, it would be no exaggeration to say that the whole approach of the movement amounted to an elaborate exercise in something very much like blasphemy.

If modern intellectuals saw fit to show contempt for a divine author, it is little wonder that, over the course of time, human authors, and the language in which they expressed their ideas, became the objects of an even more thoroughgoing contempt. And that is precisely what is happening today on a rather large scale. The name to be given to…

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This Tuesday, the 29th of June, is the Feast of Sts. Peter and Paul. The more the Church faces attack, the more we need to be grateful that we are established on the rock established by Christ, against Whom the powers of hell will not prevail.

“Thou art Peter and upon this rock I will build My Church.” +

These days it is very sad but clear that our society is drifting away from Christianity, and I would argue that that is what inevitably happens, at least in the long run, when one departs from the only authentic, original Christianity given by Christ Himself directly to His Apostles with St. Peter as head. It is not uncommon these days to run…

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Language is one of our most precious possessions, and, like many other of our precious possessions, we have, alas, learned how to subject it to considerable abuse. Why is language so precious? Because it is the principal means by which we come to know the full truth of things. Language was created to be the bearer of truth. What a profanation of language, then, if it is used for any other purpose than that for which it was created!

People sometimes wonder why St. Thomas was so uncompromising in the stern attitude he took toward lying. The explanation for this is quite simple: seldom has there lived a man with a greater respect…

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The irony of certain situations is sometimes so overpowering that it fairly takes one’s breath away. Such was the situation when Pontius Pilate uttered his famous question, What is truth? The reality which he was having doubts about he could have literally reached out and touched. And that is often how it is with all of us: the truth is right before our eyes, but we do not see it, and we do not see it because we do not want to see it. A corrupted will has succeeded in blinding the intellect.

What is truth? If the question is to be taken seriously—and there are few questions more worthy of being taken seriously than this one—then it deserves a considered philosophical response. In answering the question, philosophy begins by making a distinction…

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