One of the problems of war is that its casualties are not limited to combatants; they include what military strategists euphemistically call “collateral damage” inflicted by “friendly fire.”

There was an interesting contrast in the news last month between the attitudes of today’s youth toward politics and the way it is practised at the highest levels in this country. Among Canada’s young, there was inspiring idealism and belief in the nobility of political life. Among our politicians, not so much.

There are whole generations alive who were born too late to remember this, but back in the late 1960s, there were grand predictions that within a decade or two we would all enjoy the Leisure Society, a time when we’d spend far less time working and far more time doing all those things we truly wanted to do.

The second anniversary of the infamous Bill C-38, the act that legalized same-sex marriage, will be coming up this year. It hasn’t taken two years for some of the dire predictions about the inevitable erosion to religious freedom to come true.

Every week brings new headlines of battles won and lost on the family front. Too often, they are depressingly familiar: another aspect of the traditional family bites the dust in the quest for personal self-fulfilment.

It’s fascinating to watch how we’ve all become so busy being green. Blame it on our weird winter, or the ever-increasing traffic gridlock in our cities, but Canadians are finally beginning to join the world in their concern about environmental destruction.

Many people will have their stories about Archbishop Anthony Meagher, who died Jan. 14 at age 66, but I will always remember him as the first-time visitor to my house who put his feet on my coffee table.

When Pope Benedict XVI was elected to replace the inimitable Pope John Paul II, he promised to carry on his beloved successor's work, particularly that related to ecumenism. As is often the case, the press of events can overtake the best laid plans and so ecumenism has often appeared to play second fiddle to other issues.

Every year in February, the Catholic Church marks the special place it holds in its heart for the sick, the suffering, the dying. The World Day of the Sick, held this year on Feb. 11, draws our attention to Christ's own compassion during His years on earth for those needing physical healing.

Each year the Pope delivers a wide-ranging speech to the 175 or so ambassadors assigned by their countries to the Holy See. It is an occasion for the leader of the world's largest church to turn a spotlight on some of those global issues that are too easily forgotten in the fickleness and superficiality of the daily news grind.