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The Catholic Register offers its readers dependable information and opinion as a joyful servant of God's pilgrim church.

Widespread abuse of prescription painkillers is a major problem that governments are right to address. But Ontario’s recent move to become the first Canadian jurisdiction to eliminate high-dosage opioid medications from its provincial drug plan goes a step too far.

The Pope gets it

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Next to the Pope, the Vatican’s most quoted person is probably the papal spokesman. In an often thankless job, the spokesman makes official announcements, corrects misinformation, fields reporters’ queries and, generally, is the public face of a Church that is frequently misunderstood.

Heed Brexit lesson

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British bishops were quick to condemn a surge in racist and xenophobic incidents that followed the divisive vote that saw Great Britain bid adieu to the European Union. In the aftermath of the Brexit referendum, police reported a 57-per-cent spike in verbal and physical assaults on visible minorities, immigrants and even on some long-time residents born abroad.

Protection for all

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Give credit to the federal government for recently acknowledging that the systematic murder, rape and enslavement of the Yazidi people of Iraq and Syria constitutes genocide. But why stop there? 

Get it done

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The prevailing legal vacuum around assisted suicide is unacceptable and begs a speedy end to the head-butting between the elected House of Commons and the unelected Senate — even if that means politicians forgoing summer vacations.

It’s about time

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Change comes slowly at the Vatican. On the issue of clerical sexual abuse of children, Rome’s methodical approach has caused Pope Francis to endure barbs for dallying on a pledge to get tough on abusers within the Church.

Women in the Church

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Much ado followed a recent impromptu promise by Pope Francis to study the role of women deacons in Church history. His  simple pledge to convene a commission to look into what Francis called an “obscure” historical question was widely — and wildly — interpreted as a thumbs up for a female diaconate.

Bill C-14 a total mess

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Just when you thought the slide into assisted suicide couldn’t get worse, the Prime Minister elbowed into the fray to underscore, once again, the madness of Parliament’s dizzy sprint to pass a new law as if MPs were working on a 30-minute deadline to deliver a pizza.

Abortion arrogance

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The most impactful accomplishment of Stephen Harper’s years as Prime Minister might have been his selling G-20 leaders on the need to spend billions of dollars to improve maternal and child health in some of the poorest nations on Earth.

A nation that cares

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In recent decades Fort McMurray and the oil industry it symbolizes has divided Canadians. The Alberta oil hub was regarded as either a badge of national prosperity or symbol of ecological disgrace. The arguments were fierce.

Bridges over barriers

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Good fences make good neighbours, wrote Robert Frost. But don’t try telling that to the bishop of Eisenstadt, Austria.