Issues, ethics, memory
By Dennis Gruending Bob Carty is an Ottawa-based journalist best known for his consummate radio documentaries for the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation but he has another skill as well. He is a fine musician and singer and has released an album called Desert Eyes: Songs of Justice and Spirit. They are songs about justice with a... Continue Reading →
By Dennis Gruending Canada’s bishops have rejected allegations that the Catholic aid agency Development and Peace (D&P) provides money to organizations or projects in Mexico that promote abortion. The bishops created D&P in 1967 to support projects in poor countries and to undertake development education in Canada and two bishops sit on D&P’s board. The... Continue Reading →
By Dennis Gruending The Canadian Catholic aid agency Development and Peace (D&P) has come under attack recently from right wing Catholics in English Canada and the United States. The allegations, frequently repeated, became something of a feeding frenzy beginning in March. The claim is that D&P provides money to non-government organizations in Mexico that condone... Continue Reading →
By Dennis Gruending Richard Sanders described it as a “David and Goliath†contest. On one side, Canada’s military and weapons contractors (they prefer to call themselves the defence and security industry), along with Ottawa’s mayor, the bureaucracy and most city councillors. On the other side, a small and loosely organized group of citizens drawn from... Continue Reading →
By Dennis Gruending The federal New Democratic Party wants to reach out to faith-based groups and religiously motivated individuals through its recently created Faith and Social Justice Commission. Joe Comartin, NDP MP for Windsor-Tecumseh, is chair of the Commission’s provisional steering committee. “We are going back to our roots,†Comartin says. “The CCF-NDP was created... Continue Reading →
By Dennis Gruending Will Kymlicka says multiculturalism works and some prominent Canadian commentators have it wrong when they warn that it is failing. Dr. Kymlicka is the Canada research chair in political philosophy at Queen's University in Kingston and a visiting professor at the Central European University in Budapest. Since he received his doctorate in... Continue Reading →
By Dennis Gruending My wife Martha and I spent two weeks recently in Italy, where we paid several visits to St. Peter’s Square and Basilica, the Vatican Museums and Sistine Chapel. There were crowds throughout the day but I read in a guidebook that if one arrived at 9:45 a.m. at the visitor centre found... Continue Reading →
By Dennis Gruending The relationship between Preston Manning and Stephen Harper goes back a long way and has had its share of turbulence. Harper turned up on March 12 to give a speech at an Ottawa conference of Manning’s Centre for Building Democracy. Manning and his wife Sandra created the organization in 2006 to act... Continue Reading →
By Dennis Gruending It’s been a good month for the religious right in Ottawa. The Hill Times newspaper reports that Stephen Harper has promoted religious conservatives to two senior positions in the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO) – the government’s political nerve centre. Darrel Reid, Harper’s former director of policy, becomes his deputy chief of staff.... Continue Reading →
By Dennis Gruending Catholics have a rich body of social teaching but their universities don’t teach it, their priests don’t preach it, and many people in the pews either do not know about it or are indifferent, says Joe Gunn, a long-time Catholic activist. Gunn spoke to the Faith and Public Life class at the... Continue Reading →
Pulpit and Politics 