Peter Stockland

On the doorstep of what would become the COVID-19 crisis of spring 2020, a wise woman I encountered called me out on the distinction between hope and expectation.

We need not sit sipping Lysol lemonade and Clorox cocktails in the left field bleachers with Donald Trump to insist that recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic is too important to be left exclusively to politicians and health care technocrats.

Given his bad-boy-again half-smile and love for re-playing clichés as humourous surprises, it’s understandable to hope word of John Prine’s death during Holy Week is a prank of cosmic timing that he okayed with God first.

In his recent letter to Register readers, Publisher-Editor Jim O’Leary reminded us all that “the need has seldom been greater for us to unite spiritually as communities of faith.”

The Church in Quebec, many parts of Ontario and even in Rome appeared late last week to say “No Más” in the face of the novel coronavirus pandemic.

Friends, acquaintances and the general commentariat have all been roiling over the revelations about Jean Vanier as a serial sex abuser.

Esteemed theological thinkers will doubtless spend the coming months scratching their parses on the latest exhortation from Pope Francis, Querida Amazonia. 

It’s true there’s a challenge, to say the least, in seeing the “bigger picture” when the picture’s focus is life and death itself.

In the week when the Quebec government announced cancellation of the last substantial religious element of provincial school curriculum, Concordia University’s Catholic Students Association was reaching out to those starting the winter term.

During a pre-Christmas trip to Toronto, New York Times columnist David Brooks offered a small vignette that can provide us with a new year’s resolution but, more, a spiritual shift for life.