The federal government’s May 30 tabling of legislation that stops handguns from being purchased, sold, imported and traded in Canada is a very welcome move.

We hear and read a lot about critical race theory (CRT). Most of it is raises serious concerns. The idea of CRT, as I understand it, is to teach young children that white people have always had a privileged place in society and that people of colour have paid the price for that supposed racial supremacy.

It was 15 years to the day that I started the ministry of the Church on the Street, walking late each Thursday night in an area of the city described by a local newspaper as “a patch of inner-city Toronto plagued by crack addicts, drug-dealers and low-rent sex trade workers.”

“Healing” is a hot topic today. Humanity seems to feel a keen need of healing today, but are we getting to the root cause of our maladies? Are we utilizing the proper remedies? Since human beings are a composite of body and soul, we can’t talk about healing one without healing the other.

We care. Human beings care about an enormous range of things. We are swept up with love for our families, both the families that nurtured us through our younger years and the families to whom we have given life and in whom we have invested our hopes for the future. We care about our nation, a much larger clan from which we have drawn our thought patterns, our culture with its hints of the eternal.

Listening is often referred to as an art. Reams of books have been dedicated to defining “how” to listen, and even define “types” — deep listening, full listening, critical listening, therapeutic listening etc.

The apparent defeat of Roe v. Wade in the United States Supreme Court has unleashed a wave of optimism for pro-life activists. It is a battle that’s been waged for nearly half a century in the U.S. and so for its opponents this is a sparkling moment.

Trust wasn’t the lesson I was expecting when my partner planned a surprise anniversary weekend away. Seventeen years later, we returned to the Cypress Hills where we stayed as newlyweds. The lodgepole pines appear not to have changed as much as we have.

A letter writer in the May 12 Globe and Mail asked on behalf of her 14-year-old granddaughter, “Are the people who oppose the right to choose an abortion the same people who protest vaccine and mask mandates?” Grandma declared that yes indeed, they are the same folks.

If you’re reading The Catholic Register, you’ve probably never said: “I’m spiritual but not religious.” However, you’ve certainly heard someone else state this now almost cliché phrase. Let’s count the ways this phrase is false… and dangerous. (What I generally say to people who tell me they are “spiritual but not religious” is: “You may want to be careful with that.”)