Thin disguise

It is so hard to understand how so many educated, God- loving people actually accept the lies poured out by Donald Trump (DT). DT looks for the hot topics that push people’s buttons i.e. abortion, then promotes his supposed stance on that topic for one solitary reason, to garner and stay in power. He does not care about abortion personally one way or another, but if saying he is against it garners him some votes he is against it. The devil comes under many disguises but when it comes to DT his disguise is very thinly veiled.

The race towards expanding assess to assisted suicide continues on Parliament Hill despite all the common-sense pushback.

The Boucher Report, released on Nov. 25 by the Archdiocese of Montreal, makes for distressing reading. The tale told therein also illustrates how failures in Canada may have contributed to the significant reforms made by Pope Francis last year aimed at changing the culture of episcopal governance.

It is late, dark and cold outside. Neve, our 97-pound dog, is standing in the middle of the road in front of our house. I think, silly dog, but just as quickly it occurs to me I am standing right beside her. As Neve and I look down Vincent Street I admire the Christmas lights which make our neighbourhood sparkle.

Truer words have never been spoken than Cardinal Gérald Cyprien Lacroix’s methodical castigation of the Quebec government failure to consult the province’s religious believers on COVID-19 planning.

COVID-19 has triggered many things, some of them predictable, many not. Who, for example, would have guessed that the first major response to the virus would be panic buying of toilet paper? A rush on cellphone cases and Lego were two other unexpected results of the pandemic. Apparently, our behaviour has become so unusual that it is negatively impacting artificial intelligence algorithms, with one AI consultant claiming that “automation is in a tailspin.”

Risky business

Pope Francis should be commended for his persistent attempts to reach a mutual agreement with the Chinese government on exercising the rights of the papacy in the governance of the Catholic Church in China. The probability of his success, in my opinion, is minimal, based on China’s recent unilateral abrogation of its “one country two systems” treaty with the UK.

In the weeks since the Vatican released its report regarding disgraced former Cardinal Theodore McCarrick, the blame game has been in full swing.

The acceptance of serious allegations swallowed up without proof is an age-old problem. It is also dangerous.

Rosa Parks, a poor, humble black woman, sparked the civil rights movement when she refused to relinquish her seat on a bus to a white person in Birmingham, Ala., in 1955. Moses, another introvert, was led by God to go to the Egyptian pharaoh and seek his people’s freedom. Lech Walesa, an electrician, organized illegal protests in the Gdansk, Poland, shipyard throughout the 1970s. He was arrested numerous times, fired from several jobs and placed under constant surveillance. His efforts bore fruit in the Solidarity trade union which led to the collapse of Eastern European communism.

Space was not on my mind when I began a dream job at 23, four months pregnant.