Distressing as it is that Canadians need urging to step up efforts against the scourge of human trafficking, it remains commendable that the Church continues to provide leadership and leaders for the fight.

The decision of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops to close the domestic operations of Catholic News Service strikes at the heart of the notion of synodality which Pope Francis is encouraging through the Catholic Church. The current reflections on synodality call the members of Christ’s Body to consider the proper way for authority in the Church to be shared.

There is perhaps no more apt word to describe the grim advance of euthanasia legislation in Canada than that of juggernaut. The word derives from the Sanskrit, Jagannātha, and translates as Lord of the world, and is one of the titles used for Krishna, a Hindu god. 

Publicity about the residential schools has focused on the presence of graves on the grounds of or near those schools. Questions are raised about whether the objects identified by ground-penetrating radar actually represent bodies. If we suppose these are indeed graves, what can we conclude regarding what happened in residential schools? 

See and do

It seems Lise Anglin’s letter to the editor regarding my article of May 15 did not take into consideration the advisory committee report on racism and discrimination in the Canadian armed forces, let alone the audience to whom it was directed. 

In the august pages of a leading American business newspaper, a previous head of government relations for the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops has excoriated his former employers for their failures on abortion.

The federal government’s May 30 tabling of legislation that stops handguns from being purchased, sold, imported and traded in Canada is a very welcome move.

We hear and read a lot about critical race theory (CRT). Most of it is raises serious concerns. The idea of CRT, as I understand it, is to teach young children that white people have always had a privileged place in society and that people of colour have paid the price for that supposed racial supremacy.

It was 15 years to the day that I started the ministry of the Church on the Street, walking late each Thursday night in an area of the city described by a local newspaper as “a patch of inner-city Toronto plagued by crack addicts, drug-dealers and low-rent sex trade workers.”

It may seem strange that a prolonged power outage has caused me to reflect on truth, goodness and beauty. (And whether my computer battery will die before I hit save. I digress.) Most of us have a stronger emphasis in one direction — either truth, or goodness, or beauty. But we need, if not down to the per cent, a third of each for our society to remain civil.