At the end of a recent long run during which the state of the world is a staple of the conversational smorgasbord, my running partner asked a pressing perspicacious question: When, exactly, was conscience transferred from individual to collective ownership?

Necessity, as they say, is the mother of invention. Actually, it was Plato who argued that “our need will be the real creator,” a comment that eventually morphed into our more familiar adage.

The first responsibility of a journalist is to get the facts right. In that regard, I failed in my column “Lack of transparency shatters credibility” in the Oct. 17 Catholic Register. In that article, I took Canada’s bishops to task for failing to meet their responsibility to live up to agreements to provide healing and reconciliation to the survivors of residential schools.

Helpful solution

The Archdiocese of Toronto recently announced that, as of Oct. 8, it requires “all employees,” including priests, lay ministers and parish volunteers, at “the workplace, be fully vaccinated against COVID-19 or provide regular proof of … negative COVID-19 test results.” Essentially it has mandated vaccination but also offered an alternative.

The word “synod” is not in the average person’s everyday vocabulary, so when we’re confronted by the notion of a “synod on synodality” it’s no surprise many either run to a dictionary or simply roll their eyes. Maybe both.

Are you “hopelessly devoted”? No, not to your crush, your boyfriend/girlfriend or spouse, but to the Most High God?

She was only 16, a child by all accounts, and she had been sent to the big city from her home in northern Canada for treatment at a mental health clinic.

The board of a hospice society in suburban Vancouver is fighting for its pro-life life this October. It is also already looking ahead to new life for palliative care in a continent-wide network of euthanasia-free care centres.

Healing path

Re: Money will be raised, but how to spend it? (Fr. Raymond J. de Souza, Oct. 10):

On the night of July 28, 2012, an 82-year-old nun, along with two men, slowly climbed up a thickly-wooded hill surrounding the Y-12 National Security Complex in Oak Ridge, Tennessee, where enriched uranium was stored for use in nuclear weapons. They crawled through holes they cut in barbed-wire fences, walked to the main building and proceeded to spray-paint biblical slogans, wrap crime scene tape around pillars and hammer away at concrete.