On the feast of St. Augustine 100 years ago the doors to the Scarborough seminary named in the saint’s honour officially swung open to welcome 51 aspiring priests into this new masterpiece of the Canadian Church.
My eldest child, my daughter, graduated with honours from high school this year and is about to head off to university. By the grace of God, her Catholic faith remains intact. In looking back at her school years, I can honestly say that raising a daughter in this culture is among the most difficult tasks I have ever undertaken.
It is both proper and gratifying to see the success of World Youth Day in Rio as a massive, marvelous “yes” to Christian faith.
“Who am I to judge?”
Pope Francis is the first pope from Latin America and he ensured South America was the destination for his first foreign trip. So it was no surprise that the Argentine Pope was welcomed to World Youth Day in Brazil by huge, adoring crowds who brought his motorcade to a standstill.
On June 12, in another of the seemingly inexorable movements in the developed world to normalize euthanasia and assisted suicide, Quebec tabled Bill 52, “An act respecting end-of-life care.” Given that only 16-30 per cent of Canadians have access to comprehensive, quality end-of-life care, according to the Canadian Hospice Palliative Care Association, we ought to receive news of efforts to improve care at this crucially important and vulnerable time for dying persons and their loved ones with universal enthusiasm. But what vision of “end-of-life care” is presented here?
On July 5 Pope Francis released his first encyclical, a newsworthy event in itself, but then he knocked himself from the headlines by approving the sainthood causes of two of his renowned predecessors. If the rapid-fire announcements seemed unusual, well, that should come as no surprise from a Pope who keeps doing things his way.
Sometimes the obvious needs to be stated: euthanasia is homicide.