Issues, ethics, memory
There has been much to write about in my Pulpit and Politics blog during the past year. Please see a sampling below. If you would like to read any of these posts in full, just scroll down to the Archives section at the bottom of the screen and click on the appropriate month. In reviewing... Continue Reading →
When Britain declared war on Germany in August 1914, Canada was automatically at war as well. There were a lot of parades and bravado as young Canadians marched off to enlist, expecting to defeat the Germans, Austrians and Hungarians and to be home by Christmas. It did not turn out that way, as the sides... Continue Reading →
Faith groups continue to call for an international agreement that addresses climate change. On Dec. 7, groups in nine Canadian cities held vigils that coincided with the latest round of UN climate change talks in Lima, Peru. The Ottawa vigil took place in a downtown Lutheran church, where participates heard from representatives of Catholic, Anglican,... Continue Reading →
The countdown is on to celebrate the 200th anniversary in 2015 of Sir John A Macdonald’s birth. Author James Daschuk, however, says that Macdonald deliberately used “the politics of famine” to force Indigenous people into submission so that Canada could build a railway and populate the West with European settlers. Daschuk is an assistant professor... Continue Reading →
Recently, I attended a Saint Paul University symposium dealing with environmental and human rights abuses committed by Canadian mining companies — with the knowledge and complicity of the federal government. The Ottawa symposium was called the Global Cry of the People: Mining Extraction and Justice, and the presenters included a range of church-based and other... Continue Reading →
I am thinking today of my father Rudy Gruending who would have been 96 years old on November 15. He was born on a farm in Saskatchewan in 1918 several years before the Canadian Pacific Railway built tracks nearby and a small, false-fronted village called St. Benedict was built beside them. My dad was to... Continue Reading →
There was a little-noticed twist to this year’s Remembrance Day ceremonies at the National War Memorial in Ottawa. About an hour after the end of the official speeches, jet fighter flybys and canon salutes, a small group of people gathered at the memorial to lay a wreath decorated with white poppies to accompany the red... Continue Reading →
Saint Paul University in Ottawa has conferred an honorary doctorate on the Peruvian theologian Father Gustavo Gutiérrez during a November 7 ceremony in the university’s chapel. Rector Dr. Chantal Beauvais said that the degree is the university’s way of showing “profound gratitude to Father Gutierrez and to recognize his contribution to Catholic theology. We are... Continue Reading →
For most of September and into early October my wife Martha and I walked the Camino de Santiago in northern Spain. I had planned to post occasionally to my Pulpit and Politics blog but found that Facebook presented an easier format in which I could write while on the move, so I made multiple Facebook... Continue Reading →
In April 2014, scientists from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) issued their fourth report, which said more clearly than ever that climate change is occurring as a result of human activity. Carbon emissions are being trapped in the atmosphere and warming the planet. The scientists said that if we do not reduce fossil... Continue Reading →
Pulpit and Politics 