Vibrant public discourse is highly desirable, but it demands thoughtful application.

During climate negotiations at December’s UN conference in Durban, the discourse was sour. On Day 1, disgruntled environmental activists presented Canada with a “Colossal Fossil” award after Environment Minister Peter Kent declared “Kyoto is the past.” Following media reports that the Canadian government planned to withdraw from the Kyoto Protocol, Kent clarified on Dec. 5 that Canada was not actually withdrawing but would simply not agree to a second commitment period.

That was followed by a torrent of exaggerated invective launched in Canadian media in response to a full-page ad published in the Globe and Mail. The ad, signed by South African dignitaries, including the Nobel Peace laureate,  Anglican Archbishop emeritus Desmond Tutu, praised Canada for its role to end apartheid in South Africa but also questioned Canada’s current commitment to prevention of climate change, which was called “a life- and-death issue” for Africans. The ad went on to criticize the sacred cow of Canadian energy policy: the Athabasca oil sands.

Anyone who has been passing newsstands lately will have noticed that magazine covers aren’t what they used to be. They’re more showy and sensational, much different from days gone by.

At Christmastime especially I have noticed more magazines and advertisements shouting out “Happy Holidays” instead of “Merry Christmas.” It drives me crazy.

My 86-year-old mother has also noticed this change. She made a comment the other day that made me pause.

Writing in this paper more than 30 years ago, Cardinal Gerald Emmett Carter wrote that parents in Ontario would lose the Catholic school system when they stopped caring about whether it was Catholic. We might be approaching that moment.


Faced with a premier who seems determined to force issues and teachings that go against Catholic teaching, and a Catholic educational establishment that thinks there is nothing to worry about, parents will have to either fight back to preserve Catholic schools or watch them fade into distant memory.

As far as I can tell, there is no such thing as a Christmas resolution. It seems resolutions belong exclusively to New Year’s Day and normally involve such self-help promises as lose weight, exercise more, quit smoking, pay off the credit card, learn a new language or take dancing lessons.

But maybe Catholics should shift their emphasis to resolutions that reflect the birth of the Saviour and make promises that align ourselves to what the Incarnation means to us in our Christian pilgrimage.

At Advent I’m flooded with memories of childhood and growing up in a devout Polish immigrant home. My family’s life revolved around Toronto’s St. Stanislaus Kostka Church at Queen and Bathurst. I would be there several times a week for catechism classes, Polish school, youth group, Polish folk dancing, my dad’s choir practice, mom’s Legion of Mary.

During Advent there were church rehearsals for the parish Nativity play, one of the biggest Sunday afternoons of the year when we’d await the spectacular visit from St. Nicolas. Dressed like a bishop, he brought goodies for all the kids.

My mother died on Nov. 13, age 99, just a few weeks short of her hundredth birthday. She had lived a long, productive life, including careers as medical secretary, teacher, librarian and homemaker. Her last three years were spent in a nursing home where, by the way, she received good care.

As the surly manifestations of age and decrepitude became more prevalent, she was oftimes spiteful and angry, but when death came it was quite peaceful. So, after a long life and calm death, who could ask for more. Certainly not me. G.K. Chesterton cautioned against looking a gift universe in the mouth, and I have always thought that sage advice.

There really is such a thing as the sound of a jaw dropping. And you can hear it over the phone.

“Dorothy, you’re home? You are not in Spain? I just wired you $500!”

That’s when my friend’s jaw dropped, and I got an instant pain in my stomach. Earlier that morning I learned that hackers had invaded one of my e-mail accounts. A professional ring of scammers, pretending to be me, told everyone in my address book I had been burglarized and left stranded at the embassy in Valencia. And I was desperate for financial help.

Armed with the extraordinary social teaching of the Roman Catholic Church, I recently made a deputation to a City of Toronto committee examining contracting out work currently being done by unionized cleaning staff.

As a concerned citizen, father, grandfather and former educator who has taught social ethics to thousands, I am appalled at the attack on the workers’ rights to earn a living wage. But, sadly, this is not an isolated case involving one group of low-paid cleaners. There is a trend evident across many levels of public life and private enterprise to squeeze wages from working families.

Writing in the National Post Oct. 25, Terrence Corcoran insists that even more important than criticizing the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace for talking about the “ideology of markets” is a need to “head off the Roman Catholic Church’s mad rush into global statism and authoritarianism.”

Corcoran was commenting on the recent statement by council president Cardinal Peter Turkson, entitled “Towards Reforming the International Financial and Monetary Systems in the Context of Global Public Authority.”

The Vatican bureaucracy has been known to make a mess out of public relations. This is not my own unique discovery. Last September I attended a course for journalists at the Vatican and this was a major topic of discussion.

Even journalists from the Catholic press could not believe how poorly the Vatican handles the dissemination of information. There were journalists based in Rome who spoke of the gross incompetence of the Church in trying to explain itself to the world.