Over breakfast recently in Parliament’s Centre Block cafeteria, a good friend and I drifted into a conversation about the evolutionary significance of death.

We’ve heard a lot about forgiveness lately, especially the immediate forgiveness from victims’ families to the shooter in the heinous murders in a Charleston, South Carolina, church.

When the massacre at Mother Emmanuel AME Church in Charleston, S.C., took place, I was in the United States. I heard the news from another priest who, clearly devastated by the bloodshed in the house of God, added quickly thereafter a comment about the debate over gun control. I was struck at how even such a great wickedness was seen so quickly through the prism of politics. And indeed, in the days after the massacre, the talk shifted to political debates over gun laws and the confederate flag. The pastor of Mother Emmanuel, Clementa Pickney, murdered in his own church while leading a Bible study, was also a member of the South Carolina state senate, a pastor holding political office.

The Book of Job, one of the great masterpieces of not only biblical literature, but all literature, is rarely read at Sunday Mass. Yet it was there last Sunday, a brief excerpt from the devastating speech of the Lord God to Job, who has dared to question Him: Where were you when I laid the foundations of the universe?

Some Catholic friends and I recently had a discussion on the constant renewal of faith being necessary for faith to be truly faithful.

A woman offered up an intensely self-critical testimony about her frustration at how much she must struggle to keep her faith a matter of vital assent rather than mere acquiescence.

Two recent papal-related events highlighted that Catholicism is meant to be a religion of culture. Every culture, as St. John Paul II taught, answers the fundamental questions of life and different cultures are differentiated by their response to the mystery of God.

A Facebook friend took it upon himself to post on my home page for all my other friends to see an article entitled: “Religion is disappearing. That’s great for politics.”

It’s ordination season time to praise God for the incomparable blessing of being a Catholic priest. Every so often the calendar brings together various events that remind me that the priestly life is really like no other, offering a privileged witness to the work of God’s grace in the world.

Claims of Jacques Parizeau’s grand stature as a statesman might seem exaggerated to some outside Quebec but the pomp around his funeral was expected and understandable.

From his bureaucratic days in the Quiet Revolution through the political twilight that followed his performance during the 1995 referendum, Parizeau, who died June 1, was a critical catalyst in the transformation of French Canadians into Québécois. Quebecers love to send off their own with panache, and the former premier was indisputably one of their own.  

On the solemn feast of Corpus Christi a counterintuitive thought occurs: Are too many people receiving Holy Communion too often?