Ten years ago, a friend took his then eight-year-old son to Buffalo to see their favourite football team, the St. Louis Rams, play the Bills. Both father and son are diehard Rams fans and the son wore a Rams jersey to the game. 

Fr. Raymond Gravel died on the feast of St. Clare and was buried on Assumption day with great laudations from Quebec’s political class. The flag at Montreal city hall was lowered to half-mast by order of the mayor, and former Bloc Québécois leader Gilles Duceppe spoke at the funeral Mass. 

As we celebrate Canada Day we may not have a team in the exciting World Cup soccer tournament this month, but events surrounding it remind us that we’re so fortunate to live here. One news story really drove this point home: people in soccer-mad Africa are being killed by Islamist extremists for watching the games on television. 

Last week I wrote about ordination of a friend for the Archdiocese of Kingston. Priestly ordinations are joyful occasions. They are not as common as they should be, but they are not rare. This coming Saturday something truly rare will be celebrated when Msgr. Vincent Foy will celebrate the 75th anniversary of his priestly ordination, which took place on June 3, 1939. 

A colleague and good friend of mine is an intractable Leafs fan, meaning he is generally unaware that NHL hockey exists after the palest first quarter moon of April.

Religious and conscientious freedom is at the heart of several ongoing news stories. Some of the stories involve institutions and others individuals, but they all raise the troubling spectre that these rights may exist more in theory than in practice.