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OpenClaw, Clawdbots, Moltbots, Moltbooks, Claude Code, GPT 5.3, Grok Imagine, Opus 4.6, agentic AI, AGI, ASI … so much for tech terms in the news as I write this column.

Do you ever get the feeling that you can’t keep up with the breakneck speed of technological evolution? “Evolution” doesn’t even seem an appropriate word for the circumstances.

In recent days, one of my niche areas of interest, amateur radio, lost an innovator, Elwood Downey, who created and operated a widely used application called HamClock. Although it had started life as just that, a clock display with various time formats radio people use, it had morphed over time into a very sophisticated interface giving tremendous detail about radio signal propagation and space weather metrics.

Those in the amateur radio field learned of his passing through a note he left on his website and through an auto-response email. Not only did it announce his passing, but it noted his HamClock service would cease to run in June of this year.

Now you might think programs don’t just cease to work spontaneously. Well, in this case, HamClock was heavily dependent on what we call a server backend, with associated internet domain names. It will indeed cease to function.

Cease to function because domain names expire, servers require electricity to operate, and telecommunications utilities have fees for their operation. You get the idea. Someone was paying bills behind the scenes to keep the HamClock service operational, with most end users completely unaware of the magnanimity involved.

In the days following his passing, two teams, and later others, set to work almost immediately to see if they could duplicate the legacy of Mr. Downey’s HamClock. As I write this column, not yet a week later, both have managed to achieve working versions, one team almost duplicating the original, the other taking a from-the-ground-up approach and making use of modern web-interface coding constructs not available when HamClock originally took to screens across the world.

This new work to ensure HamClock lives on, either directly as it is today or in some modified form, raises interesting questions about content we access over the internet from a privately owned resource site. What should happen to such a site when its owner passes away? Are there legal issues that arise? Is the look and feel of an internet resource subject to a form of copyright, for instance?

In the case of HamClock, we have a partial answer. The actual part of HamClock, which users interact with directly, installed locally on either a Raspberry Pi computer or on a Windows laptop through the Linux subsystem, carries an MIT license. Essentially, this means the look and feel can be copied without legal issue.

If you’ve got a question for Fr. Josh, comment below with #AskFrJosh or share a Glory Story of how God has worked in your life with #GloryStory. 

Your question or story may be featured in the next video! Today, Fr. Josh answers a question from Stacy Jens: “What about making a resolution to strive harder to combat a vice or a sin?” Ask Fr. Josh is the question and answer show to help you navigate life when our Catholic Faith doesn’t give an easy “fill-in-the-blank” answer. 

In each video, Father addresses one question from three different perspectives: your relationship with God, your relationship with the Church, and your relationship with others.

This Lent, you don’t have to wait until you feel ready, strong, or spiritual enough. God is ready to meet you right where you are. 

In this conversation, Fr. Columba Jordan and Fr. Mike Schmitz talk about what God is really asking us for–an offering of whatever we have to give right now. 

From prayer and fasting to exercise, they explore why the spiritual life can never be separated from the physical. Reflecting on ordinary actions, like a short walk or a simple fast, they reveal that anything can become an act of worship when offered with love.

“But because he wished to justify himself, he said to Jesus, ‘And who is my neighbor?’” Mike and Dave break down the Parable of the Good Samaritan, explain why this story is so important and expand on the radical love Jesus calls us to.

In Western Canada — including British Columbia and the Vancouver region — the Missionary Oblates of Mary Immaculate played a foundational role in establishing parishes, missions, and pastoral life. As the congregation prepares to mark the 200th anniversary of the papal approval of its Constitutions and Rules on Feb. 17, its Superior General is inviting Oblates and the wider Church to reflect on what lies at the heart of their missionary charism today. The homily below was delivered Jan. 24, 2026 by Father Luis Ignacio Rois Alonso, OMI.

Today we celebrate the 210th anniversary of the beginning of our community and missionary life. We do so in 2026, the year in which we also mark the bicentennial of our pontifical approval. As we hold these two moments together, I am drawn back to the first ten years of our history, a time that shaped who we are.

In 1826, our Institute was a small group of eighteen members. Several had already left, including some of the pioneers, and the community faced opposition from certain bishops and members of the clergy. The Society that Pope Leo XII would approve was, in the Founder’s own words, weak, small, poor, and modest. And yet, there was something within it that moved the Pope to approve it.

Certainly, the Oblates had put everything on the line to preach the Gospel to the most abandoned, and the method introduced by De Mazenod and his companions was bearing fruit. The Founder’s personal charism may also have played a role: a French prelate who spoke Italian and who had assisted the cardinals during their exile in Paris while still a seminarian. The ecclesial context of the time may have contributed as well. But was all of this enough to justify the approval of the Institute?

Saint Eugène de Mazenod read this approval as an act of God’s Providence. We, too, can read it in this way. And if this approval was willed by God, then it is right for us to ask ourselves: what was it about our Society that received this grace? What was planted in Aix that could grow into the tree we know today, 210 years later?

This Jubilee year gives us a privileged opportunity to return to what is essential in our charism. Each of us is called to take this question personally, listening for what God is saying and what He is asking of us. To believe that our charism comes from God draws us more deeply into this discernment, because we must discover how to respond to His grace. That response calls us to give the best of ourselves.

This is the third part in a series about Church-provided health care in Canada to mark National Catholic Health Care Week, Feb. 1–7.

Catholic health care has long been part of Canada’s publicly funded health-care system, caring for patients of every faith and background in a moral tradition that places human dignity at the centre of care.

That dual role has always required careful navigation. Catholic institutions and professionals work within the public system while trying to honour conscience, professional responsibility, and the common good at the same time.

In Catholic facilities, decisions are shaped by principles that stress respect for life, care for the vulnerable, and moral responsibility in professional practice. For clinicians, nurses, and support staff, conscience is not an abstract idea. It is part of daily work, influencing how they walk with patients and families through illness, suffering, and death.

In B.C., those ethical tensions have sometimes been felt sharply. A case now before the B.C. Supreme Court is examining whether faith-based hospitals can be required to provide euthanasia on-site.

In recent years, The B.C. Catholic obtained documents from the Fraser Health Authority showing that assisted-dying policies created “ethical dilemmas” for some clinical staff, with at least one senior palliative-care physician choosing to resign rather than take part in practices that conflicted with his convictions. 

The pressure doesn’t arise only when responding to patient requests. Sean Murphy, administrator of the Protection of Conscience Project, has warned that newer federal standards increasingly expect clinicians to raise euthanasia themselves. The standards say practitioners must suggest euthanasia and assisted suicide “to patients who have expressed no interest in it simply because the patient might be ‘eligible’ for it,” Murphy said.

Ethical change in health care does not happen only through legislation. It also takes shape through processes that influence public expectations. Marian Neels, president of the B.C. Life Network, said federal consultations on assisted dying reflect a gradual effort to build acceptance of advance requests. “Their strategy is basically about getting people used to the idea, slowly but steadily getting the word out,” said Neels. “After a while you just kind of become desensitized.”

Faith-based health care responds to these pressures differently in different countries. In the United States, Catholic bishops and health-care leaders have often challenged government policy through formal legal and regulatory processes to protect institutional conscience.

In Canada, accommodation has more often been worked out within the publicly funded system itself. Canada’s legal framework has recognized freedom of conscience and religion as protected rights, even within public systems. 

In comments to Canadian Press earlier this year, Rev. Dr.

“The Apostolic Age is not Utopian” by Msgr. James Shea, President of The University of Mary Msgr. 

Shea walks us through the history of the Church’s struggles and proposes both a soteriology and ecclesiology that answers the needs of today’s apostolic realities.

How prepared are you to take part in “the sermon on the plane”?The captain has turned on the Fasten Seatbelt sign. You have stowed your carry-on luggage underneath the seat in front of you.

After you have taken a moment to locate the emergency exit nearest you, turn to the person next to you. You have a rare and valuable opportunity: an almost unique opportunity to have a deep, meaningful conversation with a stranger.

Deacon Jim Hallman calls the phenomenon of airplane faith discussions “the sermon on the plane.”

Think about it. You and the person sitting next to you already have something in common – one or both of the cities you’re flying between. You also both have time to kill with someone you will probably never see again.

That leaves people wide open.

When I asked Facebook friends if they had ever discussed the faith on an airplane, the response was overwhelming: “Yes!” “Just yesterday!” and “Every. Single. Time.”

Catherine Suprenant, who does women’s ministry in Pennsylvania, says she loves airplanes for this reason. “People seem to have no opposition to talking religion if they’re willing to talk to someone on a plane,” she said.

It all starts when you make the conscious choice to be available.

“I used to wall myself off with headphones and short answers,” Patrick O’Meara, who heads a financial company, told me. “I was convicted that this is not how the Lord wanted me to behave. How could I be his instrument that way?”

So he started taking the earbuds out and saying hello — and an outpouring of grace followed.

Everyone has their way of making this happen. Kansan Jenny Carter said praying her rosary at the start of the flight sparks conversations. O’Meara said the Liturgy of the Hours does it for him.

Nikki Walz said her connection to Benedictine College does it. “Once you tell them where you went to school, it just naturally leads to discussions of the faith,” she said.

However they start, airplane encounters test your apologetics know-how.

One of Walz’ seatmates was a “spiritual naturalist with leanings toward Buddhism.” Another with a Baptist minister who wanted to talk about the Bible. Another was with a woman who was raised Catholic “but left because of the abuse scandal and the lack of ordination of women.”

She told every one of them about the beauty of the Catholic faith.

Another Benedictine graduate, Brad Geist, had a great conversation with an evangelical Christian who was uncomfortable with Catholic devotion to the saints. “I asked her if she would ask her friends to pray for her before she would go oversees for her ministry,” Geist told me.

Why does life feel empty—even when everything seems “fine”? 

Fr. Mike Schmitz and Dr. Arthur Brooks explore why modern life leaves so many people restless, anxious, and disconnected. From neuroscience to faith, they reveal why pleasure isn’t happiness, why technology can’t give us meaning, and how returning to God may be the only way out of the Matrix. 

If you’ve been searching for purpose, this conversation will change the way you see happiness—and your life.