The overriding “reform” of the Second Vatican Council was a renewed call to mission to the world. The reform of the liturgy, the expanded sense of Church as the pilgrim people of God, the openness to ecumenism and the paring back of Catholic triumphalism are all to be of service to that central idea.

If you are feeling discouraged about the state of the world and the Church these days, please remember that hope is one of the three theological virtues infused into you at your baptism. St. Paul tells us that “…these three remain: faith, hope and love, and the greatest of these is love” (1 Corinthians 13:13); but perhaps the “hardest of these” can be hope.

Communion, Participation and Mission are the three key words the Vatican has outlined for the synodal process. My last column was the first of a three-part series that tells the tale of living synodality through these three key words. The tale continues this month — moving on to the key word  “participation.”

Once in a blue moon someone asks me what we can do to shake our fellow citizens, including fellow Catholics, out of their apathy.

Perhaps you’ve heard some recent rumours and rumblings from Rome about the possibility of the Catholic Church reconsidering, re-looking at, revamping, re-working or redacting Humanae Vitae (Of Human Life), the 1968 encyclical by Pope Paul VI on contraception (synopsis: the document says “no” to contraception).

Owning less has been a necessity and a goal as we downsized our home with our last move. And last fall, I took up the wooland.com challenge to wear the same dress for 100 days in a row. I was intrigued (as a knitter) by the prospect of wearing wool, exhausted by the choices in my closet every morning, and challenged by the impact fashion has on the environment.

There is a wonderful cartoon that shows a driving instructor testing his young charge.

The aspect of the proposed Alberta sovereignty act which most gives me pause is not the legal chaos into which it will throw this province if enacted — although that is worrisome enough — but the spirit of division which it seeks to codify in law.

We are about to turn a corner into madness. In March of next year, the mentally ill will be eligible for euthanasia.

At lunchtime on a beautiful summer’s day many years ago, I walked downtown in the heart of Toronto. A makeshift stage had been set up, and a woman was singing one of my favourite songs from the world of musicals, “On My Own” from Les Miserables, about romantic rejection and hopelessness. But there was something wrong. It took me a little while to figure out what the problem was, but gradually it dawned on me. She had no passion! Technically, she hit every note perfectly, yet it was as though she had never felt the pain of loneliness. There was no conviction that she had ever in her lifetime experienced being on her own, deserted, and heartbroken.