Every few years or so the culture presents us with another empty mantra, intended to dismiss opponents of the status quo and ridicule their arguments. Not long ago we had the racism fetish. Conservatives and everybody else on the assumed right were racist and their policies based on racism.

Toronto is still writhing after a series of fatal shootings in its black community and still in shock that a white teenaged girl became a Christmas victim of the slaughter. But if truth be told it doesn't really make very much difference if the shootings are in Toronto, Winnipeg, Edmonton or anywhere else in Canada and it shouldn't matter if the communities in question are black or not.

It's very comforting for us to dismiss as extreme, unreasonable and even insane all of the demands and complaints of Islamic fundamentalism. In an unstable age it reassures us of our own decency and righteousness.

I have opposed the war in Iraq from the very beginning. I also opposed the sanctions imposed on that country. But I support the liberation of Afghanistan and refuse to embrace any of the simplistic solutions of either Left or Right.

Clive Staples Lewis was a lecturer at both Oxford and Cambridge University and considered one of the finest minds of his generation. But it is Lewis the Christian who changed the world. His genius was the ability to convey highly complex ideas in a straightforward and understandable manner. Like some grand champion of common sense he sliced away at cluttered thinking and double-talk.

The first question is why Celine Dion was on the Larry King show at all. Presumably Larry's team of producers did not sit around all day discussing who would be the most astute commentator on the New Orleans disaster, settling not on a state governor or a Nobel laureate engineer but on a singer from Quebec.

This summer NDP MPs Charlie Angus and Joe Comartin claimed to have been deeply hurt by the Roman Catholic Church. The first was told that he could not receive communion. The latter has been prevented from teaching marriage classes in his local church.

I'm about to make my annual visit to Britain, the land of my birth and where I spent the first 27 years of my life. Also the country of John Wesley, who was born a little over 300 years ago. Wesley was, of course, the founder of Methodism, an evangelical grouping that began within the Church of England but eventually found life more comfortable as a separate denomination. Today, sadly, it is in decline throughout most of the world. In Canada most Methodists joined the United Church, a denomination shrinking away before our eyes.

So another Harry Potter book is about to be published and the critical e-mails are already doing the rounds. But those who wrote the entire world about the hellish horrors of HP may well be correct. Harry, Hermione and Ron could simply be lulling us into a false sense of security before they turn us all into collective newts. Thing is, the problem goes much further than J. K. Rowling and all her sordid works.

The following is one of the most significant stories I have ever heard. If its moral and morals were followed to a lesser or greater extent by the world's governments, leaders, businesses and citizens the entire universe would change immediately, and change for the better.

I'm not a poet, not a politician, not an actor, not a student, not an anarchist and don't pick up every fashionable cause that lands within my reach. But I am a Christian. And it is my faith that leads me to have severe reservations about globalization and the lack of fair trade, which seems a likely consequence.

Earlier this year the sordid culture of death found another hero. Marcel Tremblay killed himself in Ottawa, after announcing that he wished to "die with dignity". One of the many tragedies of this event was that dignity was the very last thing with which the 78-year-old man died.

We've all been supremely generous over the suffering in southern Asia and the tragedy has moved individual and government alike. So let's all go a little further and be just a little more generous. Let's insist that our governments forgive Third World debt.

The Supreme Court opinion on gay marriage delivered in December is only one chapter in the long history of the issue in this country. Fundamental arguments aside, what is so surprising is how self-congratulatory people have been because the ruling claims to respect freedom of religion. In other words, we have been assured that clergy who refuse to marry gay couples will not face pressure or prosecution.

It really is extraordinary how little most media people know about the Christian faith and its adherents. The period since the election in the United States has been a disgrace for journalism. Especially for Canadian journalism. Especially for liberal Canadian journalism. Unable to tolerate losing in the game of democracy, left-leaning pundits decided to blame the participants. Welcome to the hellish world of The Christian Right.