On my way to becoming a Catholic I kept hitting speed bumps. There were certain things the Church taught that I could not get my head around.

I have never had an easy devotion to Mother Mary. For most of my life it has felt rather contrived. There are a few possible reasons. Growing up in a bookish household meant that spiritual and intellectual pursuits were closely intertwined and many of the expressions of Marian piety were viewed as populist pablum. My mother is a convert and is naturally suspicious of anything smacking of folk religion. My father kept a Rosary in the drawer of his bedside table, but the placement was strategic. He once explained to me that the counting of the beads was a useful sleep aid.

At a recent convocation ceremony, I closed my commencement address with a reference to one of my favourite stories: that of the famed astronomer Harlow Shapley and his discovery that Argon atoms, which make up one per cent of our atmosphere, never fade. They recirculate indefinitely.

Lead on, Milloy

Kudos to John Milloy for his July 10-17 column “Building a consistent culture of life.”

Whether Pope Francis proves correct that the Indian residential school system constituted “genocide,” he erred three times during the concluding media conference for his otherwise near-flawless penitential pilgrimage across Canada.

Pope Francis will lead a consistory to install new cardinals on Aug. 27. The 16 new cardinal electors, eligible to vote in the next election of a pope, come from surprising places, and many are involved with people on society’s margins. As observers note, the men this Pope has named princes of the Church often have no pretensions to royalty. They are God’s servants in the vineyard of life.

I don’t need to tell you that gender confusion is rampant among our youth today. Only 10 years ago, when I would ask an audience of adults or youth, everyone knew someone who was same-sex attracted, but no one knew someone who was experiencing gender dysphoria or identified as “trans.” Now everyone knows some young person fairly close to them in that situation: a son, daughter, nephew, niece, grandchild. Why?

The muting of approval following Pope Francis’ wholesale, emotional, and historic apology on Canadian soil for the “evil” done to Indigenous people has come in two forms.

Writing, for me, is both a part of how I make my living and how I make sense of my living. My summer reading has coincidentally connected around a theme that, in the end, a life is just a collection of stories.

“For a nation seemingly set on making people have babies, we sure don’t want to invest in them.”