Democrat posturing

Stan Swamy is an 83-year-old Jesuit priest and for the past 30 or more years has helped the poorest of the poor to exercise their human rights, for which he has now been accused of being a terrorist by Narendra Modi’s BJP government and is now languishing in jail.

The news that the Vatican and the Chinese government extended their ground-breaking but controversial 2018 provisional agreement on the appointment of bishops was met with a mixture of skepticism, hope and dismay.

I would not blame you if you sighed in frustration at yet another column about euthanasia. You may think others and myself have made the point repeatedly.

Who is your favourite saint? Do you know something about the life of the saint? 

If “The Church on the Street” were a weekly contribution to The Catholic Register, then I would frequently have the wrath of the editor on my shoulders as I submit, “Walked around downtown; nothing happened. The end.” Especially in these COVID-ridden times the streets are devoid of much of the activity that unfortunately led one journalist to write-off the area as “plagued by crack addicts, drug dealers and low-rent sex trade workers.”

Saving the open document on my computer, I close my door with intention, mentally leaving the worries of work inside my office. I wish my co-workers a good evening and check in with myself as I walk to daycare to get my littlest one. We drive to school to pick up the big three while I review the evening’s supper plan. My oldest is finally big enough to sit in the front seat and we chat about our days while the small three connect in the back. The days blend together and I am keeping my heart fixed on Barbara Brown Taylor’s question: “What is saving your life right now?”

If the 20th century was the “age of anxiety” (W.H. Auden), the 21st century is shaping up to be the “age of rage.”

Active bishops

Re: Letters to the Editor (Sept. 13):

Mr. Ray Temmerman, a past National President of the Canadian Catholic Organization for Development and Peace - Caritas Canada (CCODP), in his letter states: “In 1967, the Catholic Church in Canada chose to give birth to a new life, the organization we have come to know as D&P. It was to be an independent, lay-led, Catholic institution delivering competent, professional development aid.” Further, he states that in founding the organization the bishops then became its “fathers.”

Religious leaders across Canada are making a valiant attempt at slowing down this speeding train called Medical Assistance in Dying, and we can only hope their appeal is not falling on entirely deaf ears.

Amy Coney Barrett, who will likely soon be confirmed as a justice of the United States Supreme Court, is the nightmare selection that America’s progressive elites hoped was no longer possible. A Catholic mother of seven who subscribes to the judicial philosophy of originalism must, in the progressive view, be someone afraid of change and especially of the future.