At the recent meeting of the Association of Catholic Colleges and Universities in Washington, discussion was rife in the corridors and around the dining table on the relationship of reason and faith. The times demand it.

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.

Conventional wisdom can only take you so far. Take the notion that talk is better than fighting. On the surface it seems obvious. With experience you learn that it all depends on the nature of the talk and the people doing the talking. The perfect lesson for this took place at Innis Hall at the University of Toronto on Feb. 6.

Last month in Ottawa, the Anglican Catholic Church — not to be confused with either the Anglican Church of Canada or the Catholic Church — consecrated two new bishops. According to all reports, it was a moment of celebration for the small denomination, which, some 30 years ago, split off from mainstream Anglicanism over the ordination of women.

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.

Among the initiatives of the Second Vatican Council aimed at making the church’s ancient rites more accessible to God’s people, the reforms and translations of the Mass have been the most successful, as well as the most controversial. Less successful, however, have been the attempts to bring the Liturgy of the Hours — the church’s majestic daily prayer — out of the cloister and the priest’s study and into the daily life of Christians.

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.

I have long been a keen student of writers from Atlantic Canada. Wayne Johnston, Alister MacLeod and Lisa Moore are but a few of the more recent novelists who have managed to capture not only a national but an international audience. And their work is good. Very good.

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.