As society grapples with the rising cost of health care comes word of potential savings of up to $124 million annually from the legalization of euthanasia and assisted suicide. It turns out that lethal injection is good business. Who didn’t see this coming?

The concept of a guaranteed basic income for the poor has been around at least since St. Thomas More pondered the topic 500 years ago in the court of Henry VIII. Napoleon apparently liked the idea. U.S. founding father Thomas Paine was an active proponent after the American Revolution. Even disgraced president Richard Nixon floated its potential as a means to tackle poverty.

Following the shooting deaths of six men inside a Quebec City mosque, politicians quite rightly condemned the slaughter and affirmed Canada’s commitment to diversity, inclusiveness and tolerance.

Unlike chaotic situations that arise from unpredictable or uncontrollable circumstances, this one was unnecessary and entirely avoidable.

Early each year bishops from North America and Europe join bishops from the Holy Land on an information tour of those sacred but troubled lands. The visit this January had added significance because 2017 marks the 50th anniversary of the Six-Day War and the start of the ongoing occupation of Gaza and the West Bank.

First came the Year of Mercy, followed by the U.S. election and now the inauguration of Donald Trump as president. It’s as if, in encouraging mercy, Pope Francis anticipated this Trumpian age before any of us saw it coming.

Calgary Bishop Fred Henry said he knew it was time to retire when his pain became constant and his posture became stooped to the point that “my feet are much more familiar to me than the sky.”

Montreal was not quite 250 years old when Mark Twain, scanning a skyline of church steeples, called it the city of a hundred bell towers.

An iconic soft drink commercial in 1971 invited the world to sing in perfect harmony. But the ad was hardly original. It came three years after Pope Paul VI made a profound pitch to teach the world to live in peaceful harmony.

Christmas is a season of joy and hope but of the two hope seems harder to find.