“Eventually all things merge into one, and a river runs through it,” wrote Norman Maclean in his classic novella, “A River Runs Through It.” The river “runs over the rocks of the basement of time…. Under the rocks are the words, and the words are theirs.” This leads to Maclean’s stark confession, “I am haunted by waters.”

Much has been written in a short time on Fiducia Supplicans issued by the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith on Dec. 18, 2023. The backlash it has provoked is unprecedented in the post-conciliary Church. I wish to respond here to those who suggest that the faithful ought to absorb its teaching by evoking three perspectives.

Holy Spirit Catholic Church in Calgary recently hosted a Theology of the Body Conference at which I spoke. My assigned topic? “Authentic Femininity.” Collectively, we were going to talk more about gender ideology, but Antifa, yes Antifa, was threatening for weeks to shut the whole conference down. Inside a Catholic church. These are the times we’re living in. However, this opposition got us thinking: Why not turn away from addressing the woes of gender confusion and toward positively outlining what authentic masculinity and femininity are? To boot, we got a free police detail who put the protesters on notice that if they went into a house of worship and disrupted the goings on, they would be arrested for hate crimes.

We who celebrate Easter are those who have died and risen with our Lord.

The reality of life-giving sacrificial love is at the core of our 2,000-plus year existence as the community of believers. How we are called to live this existence together has been a matter of reflection from the very beginning. The first fruits of this reflection are famously captured in Acts of the Apostles, “Now the whole group of those who believed were of one heart and soul, and no one claimed private ownership of any possessions, but everything they owned they held in common” (4:32).

A letter from Toronto Archbishop Francis Leo on the Consecration to the Blessed Virgin Mary on the Solemnity of the Annunciation of Our Lord.

The movie Mother Cabrini is a beautiful tribute to this strong missionary who, overcoming obstacle after obstacle including her poor health, founded schools and orphanages all over the world.

Yet another media story slides by portending discouragement of the Faith in a political atmosphere that sometimes seems concocted to deny breath to religious belief.

I alternate my Sunday Mass going equally between a Traditional Latin Mass church in downtown Montreal and a boisterous French-speaking Novus Ordo parish on the West Island.

Further to Andrew Bennett’s recent article on Fiducia supplicans, here is a quotation from Bishop Gemma of Isernia, Italy on June 29, 1992:

First, it was the unlikely Chardonnay-and-ketamine like pairing of Margaret Atwood and Elon Musk that raised alarms about the federal government’s proposed Online Harms Act. Now, someone with years of practice adjudicating human rights law has launched a fusillade against Bill C-63 that should set the ears of all Canadians, including Liberal caucus members, buzzing.