I come like a beggar with a gift in my hand. These are the opening lyrics to a song by Sydney Carter that I learned as part of the Toronto Catholic Worker community many years ago. As we enter the season of Lent and its call to prayer, fasting and almsgiving, I find myself quietly singing it to myself. The song continues, “By the hungry I will feed you, by the poor I’ll make you rich, by the broken I will mend you, tell me which one is which.”

Sean Murphy was a Mountie for 37 years and a local coroner for years after that. Yet even he is astonished at how quickly Canadians have become comfortable with obliging health-care workers to perform medically-assisted homicide.

Bad match

Re: Missal updated in Canada (Feb. 21):

Changing the Collect Prayer to read “God, forever and ever” ignores the beauty of the English language itself, which clearly expresses the community of the Holy Father in His three divine personas: the Lord Himself, the Holy Son and the Spirit. Saying “One God” reminds the believer that God’s magnificence is embodied by three partners who are united in one form, the Trinity.

As Canada continues to hurtle toward being a world leader in helping people commit suicide, let us spare a moment to consider an alternative: Giving people a reason to live.

I had some concern about writing this column, worried that it might be construed as self-pitying or a way of drawing attention to myself. But as a Catholic I wanted to bring attention to myself so prayers would come my way. So this is why I am writing about the news I received a few weeks ago that my liver cancer had returned.

Recently I was listening to a report that explained why margarine was bad for you, which concluded that we would all be much better switching to butter.

Soon after moving to work at The Red Deer Advocate in 1978 I learned that Albertans do not fit the stereotype outsiders have of them. Even in supposedly redneck Red Deer, a rapidly growing centre servicing the petroleum and agriculture industries, there was significant diversity of opinion.

There has been a massive resurgence of a kind of Neo-Apocalypticism of late, due in no small part to the persisting coronavirus pandemic with all its fallout; the embrace of Socialism/Marxism/Communism by the West (particularly among the young); racism in the spotlight again; civil unrest and violence; emerging globalist totalitarianism; the dominance and imposition of gender ideology; the undermining of the family and rights of parents; ever more radical abortion and euthanasia policies; “surveillance capitalism”; the rise of “fake news”; and now, sweeping censorship of free speech by left-leaning Big Tech.

Special niece

Re: Is technology threatening our humanity? (Jan. 17):

I was impressed with Charles Lewis’ article. We have a niece who is Down’s Syndrome. Sarah is now 39. She was born with major heart and other problems. I was working in Kingston when her parents brought her as a baby to the Hospital for Sick Children in Toronto,  I was shocked what I saw — this little baby with tubes and machines keeping her alive.

It has been 15 months since Pope Francis made a pastoral trip outside Italy and that by itself makes his March 5-8 mission to Iraq newsworthy. But there’s much more at stake here than dipping his toe into foreign waters for apostolic purposes.