When I was growing up I can remember being so excited about going out and trick-or-treating. Images of costumes that didn’t quite fit, reduced vision and streets full of parents accompanying their children to neighbours’ houses resound in my memory.

It is very easy to forget that Christianity has something to teach us about our responsibility toward the environment. After all, ecotheology was not invented by Jesus of Nazareth, nor did humanity in first-century AD have the potential to destroy the planet.

I have lately taken to reading about God’s holy ones, as we find their doings and sayings condensed and compiled in such compendia as Butler’s Lives of the Saints and The Oxford Books of Saints. It’s an activity I can recommend to anyone who wants to broaden his or her understanding of God’s wonderful work in transfiguring and renewing human life. It is also fascinating to visit far-distant Christians (and not so distant ones) and get a sense of their struggles — which are often quite similar to the ones we face in modern times.

With every in vitro fertilization (IVF) procedure, many more embryonic human persons are created than are transferred to the mother’s womb. The “extras” are frozen and stored in the fertility clinic. Their fate is uncertain.

The federal government came under attack earlier this month because of leaked reports that it was preparing a Defence of Religions Act to deal with the disappointing fallout from Ottawa’s change to the legal definition of marriage. Now that it is out of the bottle, the same-sex marriage genie grows larger and uglier with each passing day.

It is nasty and brutish out there. And I am not talking about the world of international politics or the world of colliding ideologies. I am talking about the world of inter-Catholic relations.

Pope Benedict XVI told the Ontario bishops during their September ad limina visit to the Vatican, that, "In the name of tolerance your country has had to endure the folly of the redefinition of spouse, and in the name of freedom of choice it is confronted with the daily destruction of unborn children."

The immediate furor in the Islamic world over Pope Benedict's University of Regensburg speech has abated, thanks largely to the Vatican's efforts to reassure Muslims that nothing has changed in the Catholic Church's attitude toward Islam. What continues, however, is the universal media characterization of the Pope's reference to Islam and violence — The Quote — as a gaffe.

Last week, I went to see director Neil Burger's seductively charming (and faintly sinister) new film The Illusionist. The story has to do with a young magician (excellent Edward Norton) in Vienna, circa 1900, who falls in love with a titled aristocrat (Jessica Biel), much to the annoyance of the lady's suitor, the Austrian crown prince (Rufus Sewell). This tale is intriguing and the photography is sumptuous — though that's not why I am bringing up the film now.