Angels are in the spotlight during Advent and Christmas. There is Gabriel’s appearance to Mary, the angels who came to Joseph in three separate dreams, the multitude of angels who appear to the shepherds and the angel’s warning for the wise men to avoid Herod. Then there is the plethora of angels who decorate our Christmas festivities, both secular and religious.

Recently, I have been thinking about indifference, which seems to me to be the defining attitude of our times. At least, I thought of indifference as an attitude. Then I was asked to reflect on a statement by St. Teresa of Kolkata which included these words: “The greatest evil in the world is the lack of love, the terrible indifference towards one’s neighbour.”

I love Israel. But I hate what it is doing in Gaza. I yearn for the establishment of a Palestinian state in the Middle East. But Hamas, especially its Oct. 7 raids on Israel, is the greatest obstacle to that state becoming reality.

This morning I filled the hatch of my car with donations of winter clothing from parishioners to be distributed to homeless people in Edmonton’s inner city. It’s the start of a Christmas collection by the ecumenical Inner City Pastoral Ministry, and this is early November. The donations will likely swell in the weeks ahead.

The first question in judging the morality of an action is not who performed the act but rather what action was performed. One would think that would be obvious, but in our day it isn’t. Too often otherwise immoral actions are given a nod of approval if it is our fellow partisans who perform those acts.

Canada’s dioceses should adopt new measures to recruit more young men to choose a priestly vocation, says a new study of Canadian seminarians and recently ordained priests.

Count me among the significant majority of Albertans opposed to our government’s proposed Alberta Pension Plan (APP). Despite our serious concerns, the province would like us all to support the plan. So we are headed to a season of “public relations” aimed at convincing us that a patently preposterous proposal is both realistic and in the interests of the people of this province.

Pope John Paul II’s encyclical, The Splendour of Truth, made a major contribution to moving Catholic moral teaching away from a litany of “do nots” to a call for all to become people of self-giving love. Released 30 years ago, it was criticized for cracking down on wayward theological thinking. However, it was in largest part a response to Vatican II’s desire for moral theology to be rooted in the Gospel. What a novel idea!

At least give Alberta Premier Danielle Smith and her government credit for chutzpah. During a summer when Canadian forests were burning at an unprecedented rate and tens of thousands of people were evacuated from their homes, the government imposed a seven-month moratorium on the approval of new projects using renewable energy to produce electricity.

Some World Youth Day pilgrims in Portugal were critical of Pope Francis for failing to condemn Russia’s brutal invasion of their homeland.