Pietro Parolin

In our examination of the issues related to residential schools, we looked last issue at the problems of state power in evangelization. But what about evangelization itself?

In a quick, COVID-constrained, snap federal election, the Archdiocese of Toronto has decided against trying to stage the kind of big, public, regional all-candidates event that was a highlight of the 2019 election campaign.

Kiara Mavalwala is heading to York University this fall to study engineering in hopes of one day being able to ensure all people living in Canada have access to clean drinking water.

As fully vaccinated, real-life students abandon their Zoom classrooms and filter back onto the University of St. Michael’s College campus, a new campus minister will be ready to provide face-to-face encounters of the spiritual kind.

Canadians have a lot to think about before the Sept. 20 election. But for Catholics, it’s getting harder to be political and to contribute to public debate, says the author of a brand-new book about faith and politics in Canada.

Cautionary tale

Fr. Raymond de Souza rightly cautions that “Church-state alliances lead to a dangerous path” (Aug. 15), particularly evident in the injurious collaboration between the Catholic Church and state in the operation of residential schools. He acknowledges the 16th-century involvement by the Jesuits with Central American Indigenous peoples as an exemplary and cautionary tale. This involvement saw the Jesuits organize Indigenous people into armed military militias who defeated Bourbon-sanctioned efforts by some Europeans to enslave them. For these and other reasons, in 1759, bowing to Bourbon pressure, Pope Clement XIV ordered the dissolution of the Jesuits. 

It’s easy for Canada to be smug about its COVID-19 vaccination rate, but we can’t afford that luxury — not when so much of the world is still starving for vaccine relief.

Anyone who believes this coming school year will be normal is kidding themselves or is a politician preparing for an election.

A priest friend of mine was recently talking about the current state of affairs as it relates to religious freedom in Canada.

“My body, my choice. No one is going to tell me what to do with my body.”