Indigenous anger

How Canada responds to the anger of the Wet’suwet’en community and other Indigenous groups may establish a precedent for how we approach the problem of racism at large. 

Reaction ranged from anger to relief after the Pope dodged a contentious debate about ordaining married men to the priesthood in his reflection on the recent Amazon synod.

How does tyranny arrive? And what does it look like once it has? At times it comes like a bomb that overturns all existing norms. Think of a military junta or the sudden collapse of order following massive protests and riots.

When I was a young journalist, I joined the Volunteers, a group associated with the Oblate Missionaries of Mary Immaculate (OMMI), a secular institute, and began to take part in their regular discussion groups. Early on, we discussed the five elements of the OMMI spirituality. 

A good friend of mine, a fellow scotch aficionado, sent me a story which is an adaptation of a well-known leadership story, popularized by Stephen Covey in The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. 

Francis Campbell’s column last week about a 200-year-old teapot, a story steeped in family history and faith, brought to mind a three-decade-old tale about another family heirloom.

Plain wrong

Regarding the government’s consultations on euthanasia, it is obvious that the justice department is making a pretence of listening to input from Canadians, as happened when euthanasia was legalized in 2016.

When Ottawa legalized recreational marijuana in 2018, Canada’s bishops were dubious about claims the new law would sharply reduce youth pot consumption or eliminate the black market.

It’s an impossibly tight deadline that the Trudeau government has deliberately created, but one we must respond to with great urgency. 

We celebrate this week — Feb. 8 — the feast day of one of the most remarkable saints of recent times, the slave girl who became a beloved religious mother. St. Josephine Bakhita was born 150 years ago (the date is uncertain, perhaps 1869 or 1870) but is a saint for today’s world of Islamist persecution and human trafficking.