European Politics

As the October deadline approaches for the extension of the Vatican's agreement with the Chinese government, the newly appointed editor of the news agency of the Dicastery for Evangelization said the deal has been instrumental in allowing Catholics to practice their faith openly and in communion with the church.

After years of internal struggle and uncertainty, the Knights of Malta have a new papal mandate, a new constitution, a new legal code and a Canadian lawyer seeing the whole process to completion at an extraordinary general chapter of the sovereign lay religious order in the new year.

Pope Francis has named the Archdiocese of Vancouver’s vicar general, Fr. Gary Franken, as the new Bishop of St. Paul, Alta.

Distinctly Indigenous

Beyond apologies and reparations, the Canadian Catholic Church needs to make fundamental changes to its relations with Indigenous peoples. After almost 400 years, the Church has produced only a tiny number of Indigenous clergy. The main reason is the requirement of clerical celibacy that goes against the fundamental Indigenous values of family and kin relationships.

The commonplace complaint that the Church exists in a post-Christian society tends to misplace the common sense fact that the Church emerged from, and transformed, pre-Christian society.

Perhaps you’ve heard some recent rumours and rumblings from Rome about the possibility of the Catholic Church reconsidering, re-looking at, revamping, re-working or redacting Humanae Vitae (Of Human Life), the 1968 encyclical by Pope Paul VI on contraception (synopsis: the document says “no” to contraception).

Owning less has been a necessity and a goal as we downsized our home with our last move. And last fall, I took up the wooland.com challenge to wear the same dress for 100 days in a row. I was intrigued (as a knitter) by the prospect of wearing wool, exhausted by the choices in my closet every morning, and challenged by the impact fashion has on the environment.

There is a wonderful cartoon that shows a driving instructor testing his young charge.

The aspect of the proposed Alberta sovereignty act which most gives me pause is not the legal chaos into which it will throw this province if enacted — although that is worrisome enough — but the spirit of division which it seeks to codify in law.

For Catholics who have for years heard Mary’s first words in the Gospel of Luke as the defining moment of her life, it may seem the Pope is flipping the script on the Lord’s mother.