Nancy Brown, Sister of Charity, has fought against human trafficking for more than 20 years.

Catholic faithful have witnessed the death of two spiritual giants, Benedict XVI and Cardinal George Pell, within a few short days of each other. The news of Cardinal Pell’s death hit me hard. I can claim no relationship with Pell. I shouldn’t feel the loss personally. But I do, nonetheless. 

There’s a strange tenderness in harsh Prairie winters. In the midst of deep fog, the temperature swings slowly, visibility declines, ice and frost coat the roads and the windows, and the hoar frost wraps the power lines and the trees. We can easily get lost in fog, and our movement through it is reduced to wandering one miniscule and tentative step at a time, our senses attuned to the tiniest and most immediate signals of our place in space and time.  

Is Artificial Intelligence (AI) a good thing? The Oxford Dictionary defines AI as “the theory and development of computer systems able to perform tasks normally requiring human intelligence, such as visual perception, speech recognition, decision-making and translation between languages” …and a whole lot more. 

It’s hard to get rid of labels. I don’t mean from jam jars before we throw them in the garbage, but from people. Labels such as, “addict,” “homeless” or “dangerous offender” stick as if permanently attached to the forehead, and often they tempt others to mentally throw the person into the garbage of life. Even worse, the person may become the label, and at that point it requires extraordinary acts of love to call them back to who they really are. 

Catholics appeared to reinforce our counter-cultural status by marking Epiphany with the Gospel reading of the Wedding Feast at Cana only to be told days later no safe level exists for consuming wine and other alcohol.