As part of our poetry series, here is a poem by Viola Athaide, a student in the Windows on Theology program at Regis College, Toronto. She grew up in Mumbai, India and currently teaches Scripture at her local parish church....
Most Jesuit provinces have an infirmary for Jesuit priests and brothers who require nursing care and cannot easily live in our more active communities. The Jesuits in English Canada have our infirmary in Pickering, just east of Toronto. René Goupil House is on the grounds of Manresa, a retreat centre, and the La Storta Jesuit Community. Before my present assignment as Superior of the Pickering Jesuits and Director of René Goupil House, I spent five years as novice director at the Jesuit Novitiate in St. Paul, Minnesota. In St. Paul, I was among the oldest members of the community. The novices were mostly young men in their 20s. Here in Pickering, at 57, I am easily the youngest member of the community....
On August 7 of this year, the Jesuits will commemorate the 200th anniversary of our restoration, having been suppressed by Pope Clement XIV in July 1773. Clement caved in to pressure from European kings and shut down the Society of Jesus in its entirety. However, two regions of the world refused to be dictated to by Rome. Thus, the Society of Jesus remained alive in Prussia under Frederick the Great and Russia under Catherine the Great. The Jesuits in those regions remained active throughout the suppression....
Dragons' Den is a CBC TV show that extols entrepreneurship and capitalism. Five eminently successful entrepreneurs (the "dragons") hear pitches from budding entrepreneurs who are looking for financial support to develop their business plan, and in most cases they fail to make their case and leave empty-handed. The show of November 13 offered junior entrepreneurs a chance to make their pitch, and the last segment featured a group of youngsters from our neighbourhood in Halifax. They wanted a loan of $10,000 to further develop their business of growing vegetables and herbs to make salad dressings, the profits going to scholarships for disadvantaged youngsters in the area....
The retelling of classic tales has never been my cup of tea. Perhaps it is because I am a purist, in that I appreciate preserving the spirit of the original. I also think that some retelling attempts have their own agendas. This is especially the case when the villain is seen in a much more sympathetic light. The evil one turns out to be the one with truth on his side, while the good one is just pretending to be righteous. Black becomes white, and white becomes black. There is no truth....
Whenever I return to the house, I marvel that seven children and three adults could have managed to live there. For a start, it had just one bathroom. The boys shared a bedroom and the girls another. We were all getting ready for school or work at the same time. Perhaps I have a selective memory, but I don't recall any raging fights, just the usual squabbles. Needless to say, there was a lot of sharing and hand-me-downs. How is it that we still manage to get along and we are all healthy! Whenever I deal with the political and social realities of life in Jesuit community and in any ministry, I am grateful that I grew up in a large energetic family where I had to let go of my own ego, because I was just one of seven children....
In 1926, T.S. Eiot converted to Anglo-Catholicism and his poetry took on a decidedly religious character. the For the Feast of the Epiphany, we've chosen Eliot's poem which retells the story of the Magi who travelled to Palestine to visit the newborn Jesus according to the Gospel of Matthew. It is a narrative, told from the point of view of one of the magi, that expresses themes of alienation and a feeling of powerlessness in a world that has changed....
As an experiment, igNation will post a few short Vlogs on the site. This first Vlog takes a look at two of the best films of 2012 - The Life of Pi and Beasts of the Southern Wild. Your comments would be much appreciated....
The year 2014 marks the 200th anniversary of the papal document - Sollicitudo omnium ecclesiarum - issued by Pope Pius VII on August 7, 1814. This document officially restored the Society of Jesus (the Jesuits) which had been supressed forty years earlier in 1773. In the first of a two part series, Philip Shano, SJ looks at the reasons behind the suppression....
For many years I nurtured two travel destination wishes: Tibet, and Upper Mustang in Nepal. Our golden jubilee as Jesuits in 2010 was an excuse for Roger Yaworski, Winston Rye, and I to visit Mike Parent in Tibet. This year, 2013, was the sixtieth birthday of our mobile clinic benefactor, Christopher Fussner and I gladly accepted his invitation to visit Mustang....
