We Catholics are now perforce to ponder more deeply the limits of Magisterial authority – specifically papal pronouncements – in light of the current holder of the office. As we await whatever is in store for us in the Amazonian post-synodal exhortation, the reader may peruse this hard-hitting article from National Review writer Daniel Mahoney.

We should recall the quip of the great Oratorian Cardinal and Church historian Venerable Cesare Baronius, that what matters most is not how the heavens go, but how to go to heaven, which I, with Mr. Mahoney, wished the Magisterium, and the Church universal, spent more of its time and energy doing.

The Mohawk ‘nation’ has blocked Via Rail trains from travelling on the Toronto-Montreal corridor, in solidarity with the Wet’suwet’en First Nation, protesting the proposed LNG pipeline out west. As someone asked, where are the police?

I only have two questions concerning the whole Indigenous debacle:

Who counts as ‘Indigenous’, and how is this determined? Bloodline? Genetics? Adoption? Self-identification? Marriage? And is not this some sort of ironically inverse racism? The reader may recall a ‘law’ passed on Kahnawake reserve outside Montreal a number of years ago – that anyone marrying a non-Inidgenous person would be exiled. Is this still allowed in Canada? Or does a reserve still count as ‘Canada’?

The second question follows upon this rhetorical one: However one defines ‘indigenous’, are those who belong to this group under the rule of law in Canada? If not, then we are tottering towards a state of chaos and anarchy, if certain individuals of a certain ethnicity or religion can flout the law, while others cannot. The law either applies to everyone, or it applies to none, and becomes an arbitrary use of force.

A final note on the massacre in Thailand: The soldier who went a shooting rampage in a shopping mall has himself been killed, after murdering at least 26 people, and seriously wounding dozens more. We know not the motive or intent, but, as per our custom, pray for the dead, the wounded, the perpetrator and all those affected.

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