Entering the season of Lent can seem like a blessed relief. The harsh mark of ash on the forehead, the stark words of truth, “you are dust,” the stripping away of the distractions and pleasures of our earthly life to stare our mortality square in the face — all these can be received with a bracing joy.

In late February, an Ontario Superior Court ruled in the case of divorced parents who did not agree about vaccination for their two youngest kids, age 10 and 12. The facts in brief: a man and a woman separate after seven years of marriage. They have three kids and remain in the family court system some seven years later. The eldest lives with the father and is vaccinated. The younger two live with the mother and are unvaccinated. The father wants them to be vaccinated; the mother is hesitant.

It can be a cruel, cruel world. The stories from Ukraine, at times either heart-breaking or heart-lifting, are testament to that.

It may seem to us that just a few weeks ago we were celebrating the Christmas season — the season of joy. Yet, in the midst of an unusually cold winter and with snow still on our parishes’ parking lots, our journey of faith brings us to the season of Lent — a season of reflection.

It has become fashionable in certain Roman Catholic circles to attack critical race theory as if it were an all-encompassing ideology that threatens to destroy the Church, the university and the whole of society. These attacks risk plunging the Church into a divisive culture war instead of inviting us to reflect on racism as a form of social evil that Pope John Paul II called “structures of sin.”

We find ourselves in difficult times as Canadians, and in her Feb. 9 column, “Divide and conquer? Never in Canada,” Sr. Helena Burns is attempting to bring us together — particularly now, when there are people who are seeking to divide us.  In our Jewish tradition, we learn that humanity was created through one being so that no one could ever say that someone is better than another.

At least since the 1960s publication of The Population Bomb, many of us have believed there are too many people on this planet. Today, some overbearing environmentalists propel this myth forward by asking everyone from Prince William on down whether it is wise to have a third child. Or even a second. In Vancouver in 2020, a public campaign offered this slogan: “The most loving gift you can give your first child is not to have another.”

The Christian faith acknowledges three theological virtues: faith, hope and charity (today usually rendered “love”). The greatest of these may well be love (as St. Paul told the Corinthians) but in real life the most difficult virtue to practise — particularly in this broodingly ominous time — is hope. 

A true mob is terrible to witness, much less get stuck in. Something happens when humans are pressed together in fear and anger: a feral scent is emitted, an emboldening and anxious spirit. Once unleashed, it crashes over and draws down all in its wake.

Pregnancy. An injury? Run-of-the-mill event? Special circumstance? Choice? A recent report in the National Post highlighted the indignation of Olympic athletes in learning that pregnancy is often categorized by the I-word — “injury” — in their contracts.