Saving the open document on my computer, I close my door with intention, mentally leaving the worries of work inside my office. I wish my co-workers a good evening and check in with myself as I walk to daycare to get my littlest one. We drive to school to pick up the big three while I review the evening’s supper plan. My oldest is finally big enough to sit in the front seat and we chat about our days while the small three connect in the back. The days blend together and I am keeping my heart fixed on Barbara Brown Taylor’s question: “What is saving your life right now?”
If the 20th century was the “age of anxiety” (W.H. Auden), the 21st century is shaping up to be the “age of rage.”
Active bishops
Re: Letters to the Editor (Sept. 13):
Mr. Ray Temmerman, a past National President of the Canadian Catholic Organization for Development and Peace - Caritas Canada (CCODP), in his letter states: “In 1967, the Catholic Church in Canada chose to give birth to a new life, the organization we have come to know as D&P. It was to be an independent, lay-led, Catholic institution delivering competent, professional development aid.” Further, he states that in founding the organization the bishops then became its “fathers.”
Religious leaders across Canada are making a valiant attempt at slowing down this speeding train called Medical Assistance in Dying, and we can only hope their appeal is not falling on entirely deaf ears.
Amy Coney Barrett, who will likely soon be confirmed as a justice of the United States Supreme Court, is the nightmare selection that America’s progressive elites hoped was no longer possible. A Catholic mother of seven who subscribes to the judicial philosophy of originalism must, in the progressive view, be someone afraid of change and especially of the future.
The timing of the photo op couldn’t have been better. A defiant, COVID- sick Donald Trump popping out of hospital to wave to his supporters from a vehicle, putting the driver and security detail in extreme danger, illustrated so perfectly one of Pope Francis’s key concepts in his latest encyclical, Fratelli Tutti , On Fraternity and Social Friendship.
It doesn’t diminish Pope Francis’ message on the urgency of climate change action to wish he had put a little less of the Church’s faith on what is commonly meant by “science” today.
They often say that one of the difficulties of discussing racism and prejudice in Canada is our reputation for being “nice.” Our supposed “niceness” acts as a veneer that covers up serious underlying issues.
The four nuns who arrived in Toronto (population 30,000) on Oct. 7, 1851 had a single task — to care for children orphaned by the typhus epidemic that had ravaged the Irish Catholic immigrant community.
The United States is in the midst of political crisis; divisions among Americans are at a fever pitch. I do not think the country has been this polarized since the Vietnam War era.
After effectively dying briefly three weeks ago, I’ve been thinking whether my survival really means God wants me to remain on Earth for a while yet.