Concerns about an Ontario NDP MPP’s new bill to protect drag queens from protests have understandably focused on free speech encroachment but as a result have overlooked more pragmatic questions.

Germany’s Catholic bishops seem to have given Pope Francis the unequivocal answer to his famous rhetorical question: “Who am I to judge?” 

Rising from the dead, Our Lord was able to quickly arrange a meeting, and even a fish fry, with the Apostles.

Canada appears to be busting out with “special rapporteurs” this week, although one remains unnamed and the other remains unreachable at least to representatives of the Canadian Catholic Church.

An outwardly immovable obstacle to assessing Pope Francis’ papacy at 10 years is the indisputable and unalterable fact that he is the Pope.

As he steps into retirement at 76 with the Toronto archdiocese and, indeed, Catholics across Canada recognizing his remarkable leadership, Cardinal Thomas Collins leaves in the air a question at once riveting, chilling and Lenten.

The recent swarm of public stranger assaults or killings in Toronto and other Canadian cities is distressing enough. Arising from it, though, is a reaction from the intelligentsia that portends, unless persuasively curbed, an even more ominous civic outcome.

We need only look at the Gospels to see how doubt and even denial camouflage critique. 

Catholics appeared to reinforce our counter-cultural status by marking Epiphany with the Gospel reading of the Wedding Feast at Cana only to be told days later no safe level exists for consuming wine and other alcohol.

We can file the latest revelation about political assaults on the Catholic chaplaincy of the Canadian Armed Forces under the heading: “Another one blights the trust.”