Some questions for the average Catholic in the pews: Do you know what the Vatican’s Dicastery for Promoting Integral Human Development is? How about the Episcopal Commission for Justice and Peace of the Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops? Have you ever heard of the Social Affairs Commission of the Assembly of Catholic Bishops of Ontario?

Way back in Grade 10 religion class at Michael Power High School, Sr. Virginia had us read Man’s Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl. In this memorable book about the Holocaust, Frankl writes about why some of his fellow prisoners survived the concentration camps, while many didn’t. 

As someone who — thanks to his mother’s birth in Scotland and her emigration to Canada — enjoys both British and Canadian citizenship, never have I felt more of a “resident alien” living in the United States than when it comes to the issue of guns and the so-called right to bear arms which gets invoked after every atrocity, such as the Aug. 31 shootings that left seven dead in Odessa, Texas.

Is secularism good or bad?  

Canadians of faith are struggling with that question these days.  Our increasingly secularized world seems intent on removing religion from public life.  

George Orwell wrote in “Politics and the English Language” that “political language ... is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind.” 

With the death of Bishop John Michael Sherlock on Aug. 12 at the age of 93, I expect that I am not the only member of the sprawling Diocese of London whose sense of bereavement is mixed with bursts of jubilation at a race that was so well run. 

“We’ll be coming to visit from July 22 to July 30,” I told my mother-in-law, who had come to Windsor from her home across the border in Michigan to see my son play soccer. 

Sleeping late on a Sunday morning a few weeks back, I decided to substitute the 9 a.m. Mass at the church just down the road in our home parish for an 11:30 Mass in a nearby parish.

It was Mother’s Day when Anne Margaret McAvoy said her last goodbyes, spoken more with quiet groans than with words. She was a wonderful woman who loved deeply with a gentle heart. Through her words and deeds mom taught us to stay close to God.

Graduation season is upon us. Universities, high schools, elementary schools and these days even kindergarten cohorts celebrate and move forward to places unknown to them.