JERUSALEM - Where is it safe for Jews to live?

The paradox of technology has always intrigued me: it offers great benefits, but not without costs. This interest in the paradox goes back to high school when at Neil McNeil in Scarborough we studied science fiction books like 1984, Brave New World, The Last Western, Future Shock and others that predicted and exposed sinister sides of technology.

In the 33-year life of the Charter of Rights and Freedom the federal government has never invoked the notwithstanding clause to override a court ruling. But Canada has never faced a decision quite like the Feb. 6 edict by the Supreme Court that will usher in assisted suicide and euthanasia.

In 35 years of journalism, I’ve had two significant encounters with jailhouse views of life and death. Memories of both came back sharply standing in Canada’s Supreme Court earlier this month when nine justices declared doctor-assisted killing legal.

One of the dynamics of last year’s Synod on the Family was the contrast between the German-speaking bishops, who have been preoccupied with finding a way for those in invalid marriages to receive Holy Communion since Joseph Ratzinger and Walter Kasper were young theologians, and the African bishops. The latter, not to put too fine a point on it, objected that it was not possible for the Church to teach that simultaneous polygamy was immoral for poor black Catholics in Africa while serial polygamy was okay for rich, white Catholics in Europe.

The role of chaplaincy in Catholic education has a long history. When Catholic high schools were founded, by religious orders, it was often with great sacrifice that a community would identify a chaplain who had theological training, often a priest or professed religious. Those early communities understood the value of chaplaincy.

The history books will remember 2014 as a devastating year for people of the Middle East.

And so it begins. The Supreme Court of Canada decision to legalize assisted suicide (and by extension euthanasia) is chilling but no surprise. Poll after poll has shown Canadian public sympathy moving steadily in favour of some form of state-sanctioned killing.  

“Benedicite glacies et nives Domino; laudate et superexaltate eum in saecula!”

During the ice storm of 1998, a friend of my uncle took a photograph of an outdoor crucifix in Montreal, thinly covered in ice and surrounded by trees encased as if in shimmering glass.

The Supreme Court of Canada’s historic decision on assisted dying immediately took me back 15 years to the longest week of my life.