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Michael Swan, The Catholic Register

Michael Swan, The Catholic Register

Michael is Associate Editor of The Catholic Register.

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{mosimage}TORONTO - 鱿鱼视频app 15 per cent of the world鱿鱼视频app diamonds are mined by 1.3 million artisanal diamond diggers, many of them living on less than a dollar a day. In addition, diamond fields in sub-Saharan African countries are often controlled by whichever militia has the most guns, and diamonds have generated the cash to fuel some of the most horrific and enduring wars of our time.

A single gold ring creates as much as 20 tons of waste, while about half the gold mines currently in production are on the traditional lands of indigenous people 鈥 often against their will.

{mosimage}Michele Chaban doesn鈥檛 want the option of asking her doctor to kill her, but she thinks she鱿鱼视频app probably going to get it.

Chaban is one of Canada鱿鱼视频app leading experts on how we die and the care we provide to the dying. She counsels dying patients and their families and teaches the subject at the University of Toronto and the University of Wales. She has also lived with a spinal cord injury for 26 years.

鈥淚 get scared sometimes that somebody is going to say, 鈥榃ell, you鈥檙e not really a helpful member of society, and you鈥檙e not producing anything, and so we don鈥檛 need you any more,鈥 鈥 Chaban told The Catholic Register.

{mosimage}MARKHAM, Ont. - Probably every Catholic knows what bad preaching feels like 鈥 all the perplexing, irrelevant, boringness that comprises the whole tortuous experience.

Deacon Peter Lovrick encountered what might be the deep mystery of bad preaching when he met a priest finishing his third year of priesthood in Taiwan years ago.

鈥淗e told me, 鈥極h thank goodness! Now I don鈥檛 have to write any more homilies,鈥 鈥 recalls Lovrick, who serves at St. Patrick's parish in Markham. 鈥淗e had simply stored all of them on a computer and he planned to reuse them. The one-size-fits-all homily which is completely independent of space and time and groups of people and what is happening in the world 鈥 if I were to go out on a limb and talk about good preaching and bad preaching 鈥 I would say that鱿鱼视频app not good preaching.鈥

{mosimage}If you haven鈥檛 heard a tweet out of Canada鱿鱼视频app Catholic hierarchy, keep listening 鈥 and surfing. Catholic twittering is coming.

As the world witnessed a revolution on the streets of Tehran that was fueled and organized on and , the church in Canada was appraising the new technology.

This fall, the National Standing Committee for Communications of the Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops will seriously examine how the Canadian church can be present on these types of social media Internet-based services that rely on users to generate content, promised committee secretary Gerald Baril. 

{mosimage}TORONTO - With four months to go in 2009, Toronto parishes and religious orders have welcomed 45 per cent more refugees than they did in all of 2006. There will be five more landing in Toronto the second week of September.

The 53 refugees welcomed in the first eight months of 2009, the 72 sponsorship applications submitted to , the 37 parishes and six religious orders actively sponsoring refugees are just numbers. Every number masks a story.

{mosimage}Long before Jesuit Father Daniel Berrigan became famous for getting arrested 鈥 the 鈥渞adical priest鈥 in Paul Simon鱿鱼视频app song 鈥淢e and Julio Down by the Schoolyard鈥 鈥 he was a poet, a man of letters and imagination.

At 88 Berrigan can still combine words in ways that startle readers awake. Which doesn鈥檛 mean that he鱿鱼视频app given up getting arrested. This man with eight others burned 378 stolen draft files using homemade napalm in 1968. He hammered on nuclear missiles then poured his own blood on documents and files at the bomb-maker鱿鱼视频app headquarters in 1980. When U.S. President George W. Bush decided to invade Iraq in 2002, Berrigan decided to sit in at the Times Square recruiting office in Manhattan, getting arrested along with several of his students.

{mosimage}If every modern church has a box full of microphones and a covey of speakers perched around the sanctuary, why do so many people complain they can鈥檛 hear the readings, the prayers or the homily?

鈥淚鈥檝e seen around the world a kind of misuse of technology where it becomes counterproductive,鈥 said Richard Osicki, a Winnipeg communications consultant and Catholic studies lecturer. 鈥淚t distracts. It emphasizes things they don鈥檛 intend to emphasize 鈥 priests forgetting to turn on their microphones or blasting through the microphone.鈥

{mosimage}TORONTO - A 鈥渢heology of the street鈥 put forward by retired Sen. Doug Roche could be the basis for Catholic participation in the peace movement, said spokesman Deacon Steve Barringer.

Delivering the annual chancellor鱿鱼视频app lecture at the University of Toronto鱿鱼视频app Jesuit faculty of theology, Regis College, Nov. 20, Roche proposed a Catholic response to modern warfare which would replace just war theory with a call to dialogue and peace building.

{mosimage}TORONTO - A good Catholic can pressure cook their dearly departed in an alkaline solution so that most of the body can be flushed down the drain before the remaining clean white bones are crushed into a white powder, put in an urn and buried in consecrated ground, according to a Catholic ethicist.

This technique for disposing of human remains is variously known as 鈥 ,鈥 鈥渂io-cremation鈥 or 鈥渞esomation.鈥 Backers claim the process has a carbon footprint 20 times less than regular cremation. It鱿鱼视频app not yet legal in Canada, let alone approved by any Canadian bishop, but Transition Sciences Ltd. is betting Canadians 鈥 including Catholics 鈥 will warm to the newest technology in mortuary science.

{mosimage}TORONTO - What are the chances an illiterate, alcoholic, drug addicted, bipolar, paranoid schizophrenic woman is going to pull it together, learn to read, hold down a job, stay on her medications and begin a mini-career as a stand-up comedian?

Linda Chamberlain is that woman, and at 60 she looks back at her 25 years of fear, despair and homelessness with disbelief. She also knows precisely what saved her life.