Bishop’s Opinion

In a couple of months, I will retire as Bishop of Toronto. I have already retired as Metropolitan of Ontario and Bishop of Moosonee. Many ...

In Chapter 4 of the Acts of the Apostles, we read of the strong emphasis by the early Church on the importance of community. Members ...

Racist graffiti was sprayed recently across property at the back of one of our churches. It was a vile display of bigotry and racism that ...

Texting is a non-negotiable aspect of staying in touch with our teenage daughters, and so I’ve adopted many of the abbreviations that make texting such ...

Twenty-five minutes seemed like an eternity on that warm, spring day in North York. Ordinary people were out doing ordinary things in the afternoon sunshine ...

God is good. When I was about 15 years old, there was “the incident of the running cows” that is forever seared on my mind, ...

I don’t remember how I first learned about prayer or how to pray. I guess it was as a small child. I was taken to ...

The wonderful seasons of Easter and spring are with us once again as we anticipate warmer weather, outdoor activities, longer days, gardening and enjoying spring. ...

In early March, I presided at the election of the Coadjutor Bishop of Niagara, my last as Metropolitan of the Province. I am delighted that ...

“A Church without youth is a Church without a future.  Moreover, youth without a Church are youth without a future.” Pope Shenouda III of Alexandria ...

Wikipedia defines “pilgrimage” as “a journey or search of moral or spiritual significance. Typically, it is a journey to a shrine or other location of ...

It’s never too late to go back to school, as the three not-so-new suffragan bishops in our diocese can attest. Since our consecration as bishops ...

When I was in seminary four decades ago, I spent part of Lent meditating on the life of Jesus. Over the period of those six ...

God is good. I have met the peace and beauty of God in living colour. By early January, we will have made it through the ...

In Luke 2:11 we read, “to you is born this day in the city of David a Saviour, who is the Messiah, the Lord.” We ...

William Temple – an Archbishop of Canterbury in the ’40s – once famously remarked that the Church is the only institution that exists primarily for ...

This is a pastoral statement on the commitment to diverse theological positions in the Diocese of Toronto, written by Archbishop Colin Johnson and endorsed by ...

As a boy growing up in the parish of Holy Trinity, Thornhill, there was a rule that you had to be 10 years old before ...

I stood on a street corner in London, Ontario after the morning service at St. Paul’s Cathedral. Mass had just ended at St. Peter’s Basilica ...

God is good. I have seen God at work through our vocational deacons in Trent-Durham. We can see them wearing their stoles over their hearts, ...

Did you know that a giraffe’s tongue is about a foot-and-a-half long, is black, and like a human hand, is prehensile, able to curl around ...

I came across a pastoral letter from the Bishop of Toronto to the clergy and laity proposing a significant fundraising effort. In it he proposed ...

I was privileged but deeply saddened to participate in the funeral of Archbishop Terry Finlay in March.  He was my mentor and friend. Twenty-five years ...

I am writing this shortly after Ash Wednesday, a day when we acknowledge to one another that we need God’s mercy far more than we ...

Fear motivates us to do many things. We often fall into the fight-flight pattern. We turn around and put up strong resistance, sometimes more than ...

Over the past two years, Anglicans across Canada have stepped up to sponsor hundreds of refugees, mainly from war-torn Syria. Many parishes across our diocese ...

I read The Picture of Dorian Gray, Oscar Wilde’s only novel, when I was a teenager. It contains the famous quip, “Nowadays, people know the ...