My sister, Cecile, and her husband, Philip, who live in Florida, recently spent two weeks visiting in our area.

When I was growing up I can remember being so excited about going out and trick-or-treating. Images of costumes that didn’t quite fit, reduced vision and streets full of parents accompanying their children to neighbours’ houses resound in my memory.

With every in vitro fertilization (IVF) procedure, many more embryonic human persons are created than are transferred to the mother’s womb. The “extras” are frozen and stored in the fertility clinic. Their fate is uncertain.

It is nasty and brutish out there. And I am not talking about the world of international politics or the world of colliding ideologies. I am talking about the world of inter-Catholic relations.

Pope Benedict XVI told the Ontario bishops during their September ad limina visit to the Vatican, that, "In the name of tolerance your country has had to endure the folly of the redefinition of spouse, and in the name of freedom of choice it is confronted with the daily destruction of unborn children."