{mosimage}If there is still any lingering scepticism among Canada’s opinion makers about the worrisome ambitions of the country’s human rights tribunals, it should be dispelled by the latest statement from Ontario Human Rights Chief Commissioner Barbara Hall.

{mosimage}Why doesn’t the church say something about ecology and the environment? Why doesn’t the church get with the program? Such questions never fail to surface after I give a talk on Christianity and ecology. 

The North American newspaper is a wonderful thing. Since its rise some 300 years ago, this medium has helped build civil society and advance democracy. It has linked people together over the vast distances of the continent, and it has provided these people with the facts about what is happening in the world, and why.

For many readers the notion of a Catholic novelist is simply Graham Greene. There is none better. After all, novels like The Power and the Glory, The Honorary Consul and Monsignor Quixote are replete with Catholic figures and themes. Other works, like The End of the Affair, The Heart of the Matter and  A Burnt-Out Case, are strong Catholic meat, even if inedible for those of a more pious taste.

{mosimage}China, the International Olympic Committee and diehard Olympic supporters continue to repeat the mantra that we should leave politics out of the Olympic Games. Since when? we might ask.

{mosimage}The dictionary defines misanthropy as “hatred or mistrust of humankind.” Over the last few months there has been an awful lot of that going around.

This attitude has displayed itself in increased chattering in the media (where else?) that responsible global citizens should refrain from reproducing in order to do their bit to save the environment. One less mouth to feed, or in contemporary terms, one less carbon footprint to mar planet Earth.

{mosimage}In his March 16 column, “Resist the culture of death,” John Bentley Mays argues that without the complicity of the local Polish population, the Nazis could not have carried out their murderous designs. The exception was Denmark, where collaboration was not forthcoming, and was actively resisted, and the Nazis could make no headway with the Holocaust, he says.

{mosimage}Canadian parents are likely breathing a sigh of relief over a recent decision by the Ontario Supreme Court. In the ruling by Madam Justice Cheryl Robertson released March 31, a father was acquitted of assault in an incident in which he used modest force to prevent his 15-year-old daughter from attending a drug party.

{mosimage}When a pet dies, it’s often a child’s first experience with death. This was the case with my son and his  Betta fish, Noel, a Christmas gift several years ago.