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Stories about the discovery of Herod's tomb:
Herod's tomb believed found
If verified, it will solve one of the Holy Land's greatest mysteries
CanWest News Service, May 9
Herod's tomb discovered
After 35 long years, archeologists uncover burial site of Biblical king who ruled over Israel
National Post, May 9
Unearthing the final secrets of Herod the Great
A team of archeologists believes it has found the tomb of ancient Judea's most powerful ruler
Globe and Mail, May 9
Stories about Elizabeth May and environmentalism:
Environmentalism the new totalitarianism
Even more dangerously, they were both millennial ideas. They held out the promise of a new beginning, a fundamental change in human society. Both matriarchy and environmentalism combined mysticism with a quasi-scientific stance, much like fascism and communism did. Like the older totalitarian ideologies, they were based on partial truths and appealed not only to the worst but also to the best side of our nature. Environmentalism, especially, promised to unite us with the cosmos. It identified the enemy as the masculine-humanist tradition of "biocide" -- a crime of which we were all guilty by virtue of being human. It was a kind of religion, addressing itself to true believers, the very types who have a need to be ruled by something greater than themselves. In 1994 I saw a bright and terrible future for both in the totalitarian horse race, with eco-fascism leading by a nose. In today's post-Kyoto world, it leads by a length.
George Jonas, CanWest News Service, May 3
Why can May mix pulpit, Parliament?
If a Conservative politician had said what she said, the media would have pounced
Lorne Gunter, Edmonton Journal, May 4
Earlier: Elizabeth May: an exclusive interview
Stories about Islam and the West:
Waiter, there's a Jihadi in my soup
'Blessed are the peacemakers," says the Good Book (King James Version) in St. Matthew, chapter 5, verse 9, "for they shall be called the children of God." I met a child of God in Burlington, Ont., this week, in a television studio of all places. TV studios aren't noted as hangouts for children of God, but there she was on the set of The Michael Coren Show, kindly inscribing her 2005 book to me. The slim volume, published by Basileia Books, has a cover that features two gun-toting gentlemen, one of whom looks like Osama bin Laden. The title reads Their Jihad? Not My Jihad.
George Jonas, National Post, May 5
Sharia-compliant finance is increasingly popular
It's an unlikely image: staffers at the Office of the Superintendent of Financial Institutions -- surely one of Ottawa's driest regimes -- are busy brushing up on the fine points of sharia law these days to cope with the anticipated expansion of Islamic financial services in Canada.
Globe and Mail, May 7
Virtue police remove women at Canadian education booths
A Canadian embassy booth and another for a private Montreal college were shut down at a Saudi Arabia education fair last week because they were being run by women. Organizers for the Canadian contingent say three women staffing the booths were forced to leave the fair by the country's religious police, the Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice, even though they had received permission to be there.
Globe and Mail, May 8
Loney calls forum a 'miracle'
In Iraq, being openly gay could have cost James Loney his life. In Whitby yesterday, it made him a hero. Speaking to 120 high school students at a conference on homophobia, the former hostage described what it was like keeping his secret from Muslim captors for four months. "I was in terror of my life. I didn't want to lie but I couldn't tell who I was," said Loney, 42, whose partner in Canada had to remain "invisible." The Christian peace activist was kidnapped with three colleagues in Baghdad in November 2005. One hostage was killed two weeks before the rest were freed by British soldiers, in March 2006.
Toronto Star, May 8
French broadcaster scoops up 'Little Mosque,' attracted by message of tolerance
French broadcasting giant Canal Plus has inked a deal to distribute Canada's "Little Mosque on the Prairie," attracted not so much by the show's comedy, but by its message of racial tolerance.
Canadian Press, May 8
Little Mosque on the Champs Elysees
CBC comedy about Muslims and Christians co-existing in Canada's rural heartlandwill be shown under new deal in France, Switzerland and some of Africa
Globe and Mail, May 9
What Did Muhammad Say? Who Knows?
In a new book, world-renowned iconoclast and atheist Christopher Hitchens presents his brief against God and those who worship Him. His conclusion:Whether in the form of Islam, Christianity, Judaism, Hinduism or Wicca, "religion poisons everything"
Christopher Hitchens, National Post, May 9
Earlier: Stories about Islam and the West
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Other stories from the past week:
Christian program to launch in Alberta public school
The Bible will be one of the textbooks used in a new public school in Cochrane, Alta., this fall. Elementary-aged students in the Rocky View School District, a public school division, will soon be able to attend a new Christian program at Mitford Middle School.
CBC News, May 2
Teddy camera leads to child porn charges
A 24-year-old man described as "very active" in the Salvation Army's Bowmanville church faces charges of child pornography and voyeurism after police found a video camera hidden in a stuffed teddy bear. Another camera was discovered in a wristband device, similar to a watch, in a girl's bedroom.
Toronto Star, May 3
God is in his details
From that red Kabbalah string anchored around Madonna's wrist to Katie Holmes' weekly donations to the temple of L. Ron Hubbard, there's no sexier trend these days than spirituality. Though it's doubtful he would've dug Like a Prayer, French painter Maurice Denis (1870-1945) broke artistic ground in his day by marrying the spiritual with everyday life through high art. The first-ever North American show of Denis' work, currently at the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, provides many examples, with the Garden of Eden depicted as more Bois de Boulogne than Amazon jungle. Here, Leah Sandals forges a spiritual connection by phone with Nathalie Bondil, director of the museum and one of the show's curators, to better understand Denis and his surprisingly contemporary sense of soul.
National Post, May 3
In the Vatican gardens, faith meets reason
Not everyone who comes here does so to exercise the soul. There are many who come, not to seek the Lord, but to understand something more about history, or to behold the sublime achievements in art and architecture, or simply out of curiosity. There are also a few who come to exercise the mind -- scholars who find in the Vatican a congenial home for the work of scholarship. I am here for the annual meeting of the Pontifical Academy of Social Sciences, which, in Vatican terms, was established only the day before yesterday, in 1994.
Fr. Raymond J. de Souza, National Post, May 3
The a word
How did abortion, that most contentious of issues, become one that is simply not discussed publicly?
National Post, May 5
Age of consent bill moves to Senate for final debate
Canada's age of sexual consent, which has been 14 years old since 1892, is one step closer to being raised to 16 after a bill passed in the House of Commons yesterday and is headed to the Senate for final consideration.
Ottawa Citizen, May 5
Earlier: Move to raise age of consent causes stir
What we need here is a bias in favour of truth
Certainly, there is considerable pressure to offer a balanced presentation of controversial issues. This is nowhere more apparent than in the case of global warming. Witness Mike Chernoff's recent attempt to get copies of The Great Global Warming Swindle into high school classrooms to "balance" Al Gore's An Inconvenient Truth, and his statement that "without balanced information on a subject, an unbiased decision is difficult." Similarly, when I write about evolution and creationism, I am invariably accused of bias -- a lack of balance -- for explaining that evolution is a scientific theory and creationism is not. To repair this problem, certain letter writers tell me that I should simply present both positions equally, without editorial comment, and let my readers decide the truth.
Peter McKnight, Vancouver Sun, May 5
Superstitious minds
God haunts even the non-believers in this historical tale
Kevin Chong, Vancouver Sun, May 5
The ghosts of what might have been
The Church of the Holy Trinity, established in 1847, is surrounded. The Eaton Centre shoulders up against it to the east, casting it in cool shadow, a towering Marriot looms high above it to the north and west; and from Bay Street, Bell Canada's squat headquarters curls toward it from the west and south.
Toronto Star, May 6
Prayer meeting draws Christian MPs together
It's a Parliament Hill event that attracts hundreds of people every year and almost no publicity. Many participants want to keep it that way. Scores of MPs and former MPs were among the more than 600 diplomats, priests, pastors, teachers and students from across Canada who flocked to three meeting rooms on the Hill this week to attend the annual National Prayer Breakfast, a non-denominational Christian affair marking its 42nd year.
CanWest News Service, May 7
Two gay moms just as good, if not better, for children: study
Parenting by same-sex families is just as good -- if not slightly advantageous -- for children when compared to heterosexual families, a Justice Department study has concluded. Commissioned by the then-Liberal federal government in 2003 at the height of the same-sex marriage debate, the academic study was not released until recently when its main author, professor Paul Hastings at Concordia University, obtained it under the Access to Information Act.
Ottawa Citizen, May 7
Lynch's cure for social ills: meditation
Director plans to fight school violence with mantras, physics
National Post, May 7
Biomedical ethics expert says Body Worlds exhibition pushes the limits
More than 20 million people around the world have already seen Dr. Gunther von Hagens' real human bodies and body parts which have been preserved through the process of Plastination. The show has travelled to 35 cities in 10 countries since it opened in Japan in 1995. The exhibit, which runs until Sept. 16 in Montreal, has already made Canadian stops in Vancouver and Toronto since 2005. . . . Dr. Carolyn Ells, a member of McGill University's Biomedical Ethics Unit, is not comfortable with some of the exhibits, including the "Exploding Body."
Canadian Press, May 9
Earlier: Body Worlds draws large crowds -- and controversy
May 10/2007
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