She was only 16, a child by all accounts, and she had been sent to the big city from her home in northern Canada for treatment at a mental health clinic.

The board of a hospice society in suburban Vancouver is fighting for its pro-life life this October. It is also already looking ahead to new life for palliative care in a continent-wide network of euthanasia-free care centres.

In Judeo-Christian terms we speak about the notion of abetting evil. A Catholic doctor will not only refuse to perform euthanasia but will not refer the patient to someone who will. The referral is a form of abetting evil; paving the way for the act to happen.

Store displays and front lawns are filling up with skeletons, ghosts and all things ghoulish in preparation for Halloween, a favourite occasion among most children.

Thanks is a word and a way of being. It seeks out the gift in what is. It assumes there is a gift to be seen here. In the hardest seasons of my life, thanks has been a ladder out of darkness. A therapist once reminded me through my tears that what we focus on is magnified. When we actively practise gratitude, the gifts of the present become easier to see.

Are you struggling with the rosary? Struggling with praying the rosary? You are not alone. Many Catholics feel super guilty for not praying the rosary very much or at all.

The doctrine of the Trinity provides the clearest insight into the nature of God as love as well as into the fullness of the human person. Christianity is best understood in the light of three divine persons who are infinite, overflowing love. Society could benefit enormously if it understood God as trinitarian love and our call as that of living in light of such love.

Even in the world of what the late, great Allan Fotheringham called the “shy egomania” of journalism, moments of humility tilt unexpectedly upward their beautiful faces and make you see anew.

The Catholic bishops of Canada have made a “financial pledge” with a “target of $30 million” over five years “as a tangible expression of their commitment to walk with the Indigenous Peoples of this land.” Local parishes will be “encouraged” to take up special collections “to support healing and reconciliation initiatives for residential school survivors, their families and their communities.”

Alberta residents will have their say later this month on the legitimacy of Canada’s system of equalization payments to poorer provinces. The United Conservative Party government of Jason Kenney has ordered a referendum, as part of municipal elections across the province, on whether the constitutional provision for tax sharing with poorer provinces should be abolished.