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Editorial: What is normal?

Premier François Legault vowed in advance of a truckers’ convoy arriving in Quebec City there would be zero tolerance for antics that interfered with residents enjoying “normal” life.

Sr. Helena Burns: Divide and conquer? Never in Canada

Perhaps the oldest strategy of war is: “Divide and conquer”— which can take many forms. Physically divide a land mass into north and south. Encourage a portion of a country to secede. Partition. Physical divisions create smaller spaces and populations to overtake, can leave families separated and citizens stranded. But the most insidious division is spiritual, psychological, social. If planned from without and then wormed into a once-harmonious (even if not homogenous) group, division can be made to feel organic and even righteous through… you guessed it: fear-mongering.

Robert Kinghorn: The lethal absence of hope

I am often asked to speak to groups about my experiences on the streets of the city, and what it means for each of us to be the Church on the Street. Recently at the end of one of these talks I was asked, “What do those on the street need the most?” I could do no better than to quote one of my heroes, Fr. Greg Boyle who works with the gang members in Los Angeles and who said, “Gang members need hope. They live with a lethal absence of hope.”

Ian Hunter: Rejoice in hope

The Christian faith acknowledges three theological virtues: faith, hope and charity (today usually rendered “love”). The greatest of these may well be love (as St. Paul told the Corinthians) but in real life the most difficult virtue to practise — particularly in this broodingly ominous time — is hope. 

Readers Speak Out: February 6, 2022

Sacramental solution

Sr. Helena Burns concludes her Jan. 30 column about media literacy with St. Paul’s description of the end times when humankind will be subject to a “powerful delusion” (2 Thessalonians 2:11). She believes our vulnerability to delusion stems from a failure to love the truth.

Editorial: Bishops, take a bow

Critics across the Church spectrum habitually accuse Canada’s Catholic leadership of ducking what “must” be done — must inevitably being defined by what a given critic wants.

Charles Lewis: Wild days, Church ways gave us Dorothy Day

It was a celebration of a woman many hope will one day be declared a saint. It was held at St. Patrick’s Cathedral in Manhattan and the man who gave the homily was New York’s Cardinal Timothy Dolan.

I saw a mob; it wasn’t truckers

A true mob is terrible to witness, much less get stuck in. Something happens when humans are pressed together in fear and anger: a feral scent is emitted, an emboldening and anxious spirit. Once unleashed, it crashes over and draws down all in its wake.

Luke Stocking: ‘I will be with you’

We arrived in the Eternal City with the dawn. On the in-flight screen, as we flew through the darkness, I could see the sun racing towards us. It reached Rome the same time as we did.

Cathy Majtenyi: Pandemic risks a password for private health care

Add one more item to the list of COVID-19’s destructive impacts: the concept of private health care may be becoming more palatable to a majority of Canadians, a claim that a national survey made early last month.

Glen Argan: A united church will need divine inspiration

In last week’s column I recalled Pope John Paul II’s call for “a patient and fraternal dialogue” among Christian leaders and theologians on possible reform of papal primacy. The day after I sent that column to TheRegister for publication, I received my copy of the British Catholic magazine TheTablet in which Rowan Williams, the former archbishop of Canterbury, discussed the same topic.