So, I’m Catholic.

Irish Catholic, in fact. Every Irish Catholic knows what that means, pretty much. Uncles who were priests, aunts who were nuns, Church every Sunday, the sacraments, all of it.

When they were younger, my four kids came to church with me. Most of my closest friends, like my Sun colleague Brian Lilley, are Catholics too. We talk about it.

Still proud I was taught by Jesuits. Still wear a blessed Joan of Arc medal around my neck. Still went to church when I was in a punk band in Calgary, even, sitting at the back in a biker jacket and wearing a homemade Clash T-shirt.

Still pray every night: Our Father, Hail Mary, Act of Contrition, Glory Be. Every single night. I pray for all of you, even the jerks. (Especially the jerks.)

So I was and am a Catholic. But then I kind of stopped.

The pandemic was part of it, of course. All around the world, churches and synagogues and mosques were forced to close their doors, to prevent the spread of the virus. That was sad, because that was probably the time we all needed them the most.

But if their doors had still been open, I still wouldn’t have gone to Catholic Mass. Because they had kind of broken my heart. And enraged me. And shocked me. And disgusted me.

It was the discovery of those 200 bodies in Kamloops that did it. Children and babies, whose only sin had been to be born indigenous.

And who were stolen from their parents and their families, and taken to prisons — because that’s what they were, really, prisons for children — where they would be beaten and tortured and abused. And sometimes killed.

Thousands of them, dead. And we know that many of them were killed, because they were dropped into unmarked graves, like they were garbage.

Murderers favour unmarked graves. So, apparently, did the Catholic Church.

So I stopped going. Or, at least, stopped believing.

I wasn’t alone. When I wrote about the subject, I heard from many Catholics — friends, family members, total strangers — who had reached the same decision. We had put up with serial stupidities in our church for years. But the residential school genocide? That pushed us out the door.

For me, there was a personal reason, too. My oldest, my daughter, is Indigenous. She is a citizen of a Yukon First Nation. And I love her dearly.

After the revelations came out about what the Catholic Church did at the Canadian residential so-called schools, how could I still be a practicing Catholic, and look my daughter in her beautiful face? How could I be her dad, and still be a Catholic? I didn’t know how to do that.

On Friday, the Pope finally did what long needed to be done: He accepted responsibility. He apologized for what the Catholic Church had done to Indigenous children, the ones from not so long ago. The ones who look very much like like my daughter.

Here is what he said:

“I ask for God’s forgiveness and I want to say to you with all my heart, I am very sorry, and I joined my brothers, the Canadian bishops, in asking your pardon clearly. The content of the faith cannot be transmitted in a way contrary to faith itself.”

“I also feel shame and I’m saying it now … for the role that the number of Catholics, particularly those with educational responsibilities, have had and all these things that wounded you (and) the abuse you suffered, and in the lack of respect shown for your identity and culture.”

Afterword, I talked to my daughter about it. I told her I would be writing this column and that I would be talking about her in it. She said that was OK.

We talked about whether we could go back to Mass. Whether we could feel like we belong to a church that actually practices love, and just doesn’t talk about it.

“Let’s see what the Pope says and does when he comes to Canada,” my daughter said. I agreed with her.

Being a Catholic means being on a journey, not reaching a destination.

Let’s see where the Catholic Church ends up.

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Look, Justin Trudeau is many things.

He’s disinterested in ethics, as evidenced by his appalling conduct in serial scandals — the Aga Khan, SNC-Lavalin, the WE “charity.”

He’s indifferent to real racism, as evidenced by his willingness, as an adult, to wear racist blackface and thereby mock Black people.

He’s dishonest — as seen just last week, when he did a backroom deal to create a NDP-Liberal coalition government, after having repeatedly promised to never do such a thing.

The Liberal prime minister is many, many things. But a dictator?

That’s what a Conservative MP thinks he is. She got up on her hind legs in the House of Commons this week and called him that. Lethbridge’s elected voice in Parliament, Rachael Thomas, said “many Canadians” agree Justin Trudeau meets the dictionary definition of “dictator.”

Now, Thomas didn’t cite any polling or research to back up her claim. We don’t even know if she consulted with the good people of Lethbridge (who this week lost a truly honest and decent representative, former Senator Joyce Fairbairn, who succumbed to Alzheimer’s after many years of suffering).

What Thomas said was neither honest nor decent. It was deeply stupid. Trudeau can be fairly accused of many, many misdeeds (see above). But is it really necessary to liken him to real dictators, like Russia’s monster, Vladimir Putin, or China’s, Xi Jinping? Really?

Now, we shouldn’t be surprised to see this kind of idiocy coming from Thomas. Just a few weeks ago, she was again in the news — for posting an InfoWars-style nutbar video.

In it, Thomas said that vaccinated people were more likely to get COVID-19 (false). She said that taking a daily rapid test was safer than getting vaccinated (false). And she said that vaccines did not protect against the Omicron variant (false).

We shouldn’t, however, get too upset about anything Rachael Thomas has to say. As her province’s premier, Jason Kenney, said about her “dictator” claim: “I disagree with Justin Trudeau on the vast majority of issues. I think he’s been too quick to use extraordinary powers like the Emergencies Act. But for all of that, I think it’s unhelpful and corrosive to suggest that that he operates like, let’s say, the president of China or the president of Russia.”

It is indeed unhelpful and corrosive. And other MPs have done the same sort of thing in the past. Liberal MPs Carolyn Bennett, Hedy Fry and Pablo Rodriguez, to cite three examples, all called a Conservative prime minister “a dictator.”

Along with being inaccurate and stupid, it’s unhelpful. Because, in politics, language is important. Labels, too. As Kenney notes, the strongest criticisms should be reserved for the clearest cases. The most deserving cases.

When everything is terrorism, then nothing is terrorism. When everyone is a racist, then no one is a racist. When your political adversary is a “dictator,” well, then what’s left to call Vladimir Putin or Xi Jinping? You’ve kind of exhausted your political thesaurus, at that point.

Justin Trudeau is, as noted, many things. He is deserving of many criticisms. But he’s not a dictator.

Rachael Thomas, however, has revealed herself to be plenty of things, too.

None of them are good.

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Pierre Poilievre hates Canada’s central bank.

And who doesn’t hate the banks, right? But hating this particular bank while running for prime minister? That’s a big problem.

Because a central bank isn’t just any bank. The importance of it is found on the currency in your wallet or purse: The signatures on those bank notes belong to the governor and senior deputy director of the Bank of Canada. Not politicians.

Some days, we wonder if Pierre Poilievre wants “Pierre Poilievre” inscribed there. Because he sure thinks he’s smarter than Canada’s central bankers.

That’s a big problem, as noted, because the Bank of Canada controls our currency and our money supply — essentially, how much dough is in circulation at any given time. Their main job is stabilizing prices of things.

Central banks also determine interest rates, which is basically setting the cost of money. So, as you can see, the central bankers — who aren’t elected, but are selected by elected representatives — have a very big impact on your life and mine.

Poilievre says the Bank of Canada is “an ATM machine” for the government, which is a lot of crap. He says it’s “more and more political,” which also isn’t true. He supports a private member’s bill that would “audit” the Bank of Canada, which isn’t needed — because it already has auditors on its board.

Now Poilievre isn’t the first politician who wanted to control a central bank. Demagogues do it all the time. Donald Trump attacked America’s central bank regularly, likening it to a dictatorship, a form of government he usually approved of. Globally, Russian allies like Turkey’s Recep Tayyip Erdogan to India’s Narendra Modi have gone after central banks, as well.

It’s like Church and State: Central bankers shouldn’t involve themselves with politics, and politicians shouldn’t boss around central bankers. Because, among other things, politicians shouldn’t be deciding prices. Can you imagine?

But Pierre Poilievre is deeply arrogant, as seen in his repeated claim to be “running for prime minister” – meaning, he sees the Conservative leadership race as a mere trifling. He’s leader already, in effect, and is going straight for 24 Sussex Drive.

But Poilievre’s arrogant belief that he knows better than the Bank of Canada is dangerous. Evidence of that is found in the company he keeps.

This week, Mitchell Thompson at Press Progress published a lengthy investigation into Poilievre’s cozy association with a Bitcoin trader who also trades in COVID-19 conspiracy theories — and who has actually compared central banks to Nazism and slavery.

Last month, Poilievre was the star of Robert Breedlove’s podcast, What Is Money? Poilievre gushed that he often listens to Breedlove “late into the night.”

Poilievre: “I find (Breedlove) extremely informative and my wife and I have been known to watch YouTube and your channel late into the night once we’ve got the kids to bed. And I’ve always enjoyed it and I’ve learned a lot about Bitcoin and other monetary issues from listening to you.”

The rest of us usually go get a stiff drink after wrestling the kids to bed. At Poilievre’s house, they listen to a nutbar conspiracy theorist. Here’s a sampling of what they hear.

• COVID-19 isn’t really real. Instead, “COVID is a government diversion strategy.”
• COVID is “mass formation psychosis.”
• “Hitler would not be a household name if (government-issued) currency never existed … he used fiat currency to fund the blitzkrieg.”
• The World Economic Forum is comparable to “the former Nazi death camp Auschwitz.”
• “Central banking is an institution of slavery. Burn. It The. F***. Down.”

Were the Poilievres concerned with what they heard, post-bedtime? Nope. The Conservative leadership frontrunner told Breedlove he thinks his show — replete with Nazi and slavery analogies — is “extremely informative.”

It is “extremely informative,” although not in the way that Pierre Poilievre wants.

It is extremely nuts.

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Vladimir Putin is going to be 70 years old this year.

He may be the richest man in the world. He may have super-yachts, and Swiss bank accounts containing ill-gotten billions. He may have been victorious in armed conflicts in Crimea, Syria, Belarus, Africa and Kazakhstan.

But he can’t stop the march of time, can he? He can’t outrun death.

Any of us who have hit the milestone birthdays — for punk-rocking me it was 20, seriously — know what all those birthday parties signify. They start to add up. They mean you’re getting a lot closer to the end than the start.

And, predictably, the Russian dictator has frantically attempted to forestall the end. There’s been those vaguely homoerotic airbrushed photos of him shirtless, on horseback. There’s been the staged judo competitions. There’s been the nipping and tucking, evidenced by the fact that his head closely resembles a balloon — a balloon found at one of those aforementioned birthday parties.

Oh, and steroidal Putin’s puffiness and reddish hue, as observed by French President Emmanuel Macron’s staffers, following Macron’s meeting with Putin last month — facing off at opposing ends of a 20-foot-long table in Moscow. Putin didn’t look or sound right, they said. Paranoid, they said.

Because Putin grows old, grows old, per T.S. Eliot. And that, more than anything, is what will ultimately defeat him. Just as you can’t take it with you, you also can’t invade any more countries when you’re dead. Can you?

Because he knows the end may be nigh, Putin is in search of a legacy. All leaders do that. Justin Trudeau, for example, actually formed a coalition government with the NDP last week to give himself enough time to craft a legacy. (Because his only legacy, so far, is serial scandal and serial blackface.)

The New York Times’ Roger Cohen published a magnum opus about Putin’s own legacy hunt on the weekend. Cohen’s piece is as long as a book, but it’s meticulously-researched and well worth reading. It’ll tell you more about Vladimir Putin, and Vladimir Putin’s plans, than anything else out there to date.

Here’s a sampling of what Cohen reported:

• He’s changed. Former U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice: “I’ve never seen Putin go from a little shy, to pretty shy, to arrogant, and now megalomaniacal.”
• He’s angry. Sylvie Bermann, a diplomat who knew Putin before and after the Soviet Union broke up: “Something happened. He spoke with a new rage and fury.”
• He sees us as weak and decadent. Michel Duclos, head of a French think-tank: “He became convinced that the West was in decline after the 2008 financial crisis. (His) way forward was confrontation.”
• He thinks he’s winning. Former French president Francois Hollande: “Putin tells himself: ‘I am advancing everywhere. Where am I in retreat? Nowhere!’”

And that last observation may be so, for now. While returning Ukraine to Mother Russia has taken more time than anyone thought, Putin has not yet abandoned his obscene, genocidal war. He hasn’t won, but he hasn’t lost, either.

But he has dramatically miscalculated. All the things he most wanted to avoid — a unification of NATO, a stronger European Union, a militarized Germany, a teetering Russian economy, and a defiant Ukrainian people — have now happened.

Over the weekend, U.S. President Joe Biden declared that Vladimir Putin “cannot remain in power.” His aides later denied that Biden is seeking regime change in Russia, but the president’s meaning could not have been more clear: He wants Putin gone. Dead or alive. But gone.

He will be. If not via an assassin’s bullet, or a Kremlin coup, or a popular uprising, Putin will be gone.

The Grim Reaper is heading his way, and the Grim Reaper can be delayed.

But never denied.

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