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.

Plunking down in a pew for Sunday Mass on Thanksgiving weekend brought a good deal of satisfaction and relief.

In Judeo-Christian terms we speak about the notion of abetting evil. A Catholic doctor will not only refuse to perform euthanasia but will not refer the patient to someone who will. The referral is a form of abetting evil; paving the way for the act to happen.

Store displays and front lawns are filling up with skeletons, ghosts and all things ghoulish in preparation for Halloween, a favourite occasion among most children.

Thanks is a word and a way of being. It seeks out the gift in what is. It assumes there is a gift to be seen here. In the hardest seasons of my life, thanks has been a ladder out of darkness. A therapist once reminded me through my tears that what we focus on is magnified. When we actively practise gratitude, the gifts of the present become easier to see.

Contrition needed

I wondered why the Indigenous peoples had a lukewarm response to the Canadian bishops’ apology. Could the reason be that it was termed an “apology”? 

Just in case any of us thought the abuse crisis in the Church has moved from a boil to a simmer, the report from an independent commission on sexual abuse in France has turned up the heat yet again — as it should.

Are you struggling with the rosary? Struggling with praying the rosary? You are not alone. Many Catholics feel super guilty for not praying the rosary very much or at all.