The Catholic Register - Readers Speak Out

Written by Catholic Register Readers,

Support funding

Michael Swan did his usual lucid job of helping us hear conflicted voices in his Sept. 9 report on the faith-based school funding debate (“Funding debate could hurt Catholic schools”). It seems that John Tory’s proposal to recognize the educational rights of religious parents who are not Roman Catholics makes the guardians of our school system extremely nervous.

Yes, there are many things to be nervous about. But it seems to me that Catholics should be jumping up and down with enthusiasm for public support for the educational conscience of other parents who are believers. Of course we should welcome them into the public space whose resources also sustain our schools.

After all, the Catholic argument for public funding for our schools is, precisely, the prior right of all parents to choose for their children an education that reflects the parents’ own deepest values and commitments. The present situation of funding only for one kind of religious parent is unfair also by Catholic standards, not only by secular ones.

And our “right” to our system will surely appear far more attractive to the wider community if we joyfully offer to welcome others into an analogous recognition. Funding of other faith-based schools will civilize our diversity, broaden our dialogue and deepen our society’s hospitality.

Yes, it will be hard to work out the details — it was hard to work out the ground rules for our schools, too — but it will be wonderfully worth the long slog.

Janet Somerville
Toronto, Ont.

Yes to religious funding

An old Armenian gentleman is about to pass away. His family gathered around, catching his whispers. They hear: “Protect the Jews!”

“Why, grandpa?” — wondered they.

“After they finish off with the Jews, they will start with you!”

I recalled the story while watching Liberals refusing equal funding for religious education, but in fact, wanting all religion out of schools.

This affects all religions. I was puzzled not to see more active coverage of the issues in The Catholic Register.

Funding for Catholic schools is endangered too.

It is based on the Constitution. However, the Constitution can be changed. Remember gay marriage?

Forty per cent of the provincial population is Catholic. Still, it is below the majority. Official Liberal folks talk about a referendum. Who will win it?

Premier Dalton McGuinty is a friend of Catholic education. Will the next Liberal premier have the same feelings?

Funding for faith-based schools is a great cause to divert people’s attention from failures of the current Liberal government: raised taxes, broken promises, etc. What other subject can they pick so easily to explain the next failures?

We send our kids to religious school to learn our morals and principles. To defend our principles, let us stand up together and fight the educational discrimination in Ontario.

If the Conservatives are the only party to respect our values, don’t they deserve our full support.

Alexander Werner
Toronto, Ont.

Masses for all

As one of many who faithfully attend the annual Mass at Mount Hope Cemetery, I would like to inform you that the caption under the photo on page 4 of the Sept. 2 issue is incorrect. The Masses in the Catholic cemeteries are not intended only for those “who have buried someone in the last year” but for all of us to remember all of our beloved dead.

My husband and I have seven loved ones buried at Mount Hope Cemetery, and it gives us great consolation to be able to attend this Mass every August, honouring Our Lady, and remembering and praying for those who have died.

Claudine Goller
Scarborough, Ont.

She saw red instead

Given the perilous moral state we are in, it is unconscionable for you to focus a whole issue on the politically correct “green” topics, with many of their projections based on pseudo-science (“Our green issue,” Sept. 2). There is a poison in our atmosphere — but it is not global warming and it has already claimed millions of lives. It is a complacent abortion mentality.

As a result of this, Canada is turning red with innocent blood shed by unborn babies in surgical and chemical abortions. This mentality strikes at the very heart of the Gospel of Jesus — the gift of life. The Lord upbraided the Pharisees who tithed on mint while ignoring the “weightier matters” of the law — justice and mercy (Mt.23:23).

In your green issue, you spare a half column for the “reproductive ‘choice’ campaign” in Calgary while choosing not to print the graphic images of the dead infants whom you coldly describe as “aborted fetuses.” These particular images might have pricked the conscience of a reader and saved the life of an unborn child. At the very least, they may have forced someone to confront the reality of abortion. Sarah Gallagher, one of the Crossroad walkers mentioned in your article “Walk for life,” was appalled at the apathy of Canadians concerning the plight of the unborn.

The secular press never allows its audience to see the true face of abortion and the lies go on unchecked. A Catholic newspaper should show this face and expose the lies. All the abortion clinic web sites, including Women’s College Hospital, the University of Toronto and the City of Toronto, repeat the false mantra — “abortion is legal and safe.” The dead child and the documented harm done to women and society by the fatal, irreversible procedure are never mentioned.

We have limited resources available to promote the Culture of Life and we know the moral gravity of procured abortion. In the words of Pope John Paul II, “We are dealing with murder.” This is no time to ponder at length over “green” issues while the slaughter of unborn children goes on in our own backyard.

Clare Kavanagh
North York, Ont.

Are we committed?

Very rarely do we have the pleasure of reading such a compelling letter as the one written by Teri Evangelista (“Schools are church,” Aug. 5-12). It deals with an issue that is vital to the future of the Catholic Church in Canada.

It is unfortunate that the church and many of our clergy have been seduced by this inane policy of political correctness imposed on us by self-seeking politicians because of its ephemeral effect on voting patterns. Its subtle but malign effect leads people to relativism and the questioning of our Catholic beliefs and traditions — in this case, the need for our separate Catholic school system.

As Evangelista has so correctly pointed out, the Catholic school system is not tangential to the Catholic Church — it is the Catholic Church and any diminution of this now strong connection will have a drastic effect on the Catholic community not only in Ontario but on the whole of Canada.

A Catholic school is the place where the faith is nurtured and in many cases the only “church” some students will ever attend. The core question is this: Are we, as a community, prepared to sacrifice our schools to satisfy some whimsical notion of fairness proposed by our politicians posing as palladins of justice, or will we stand firm in our support of our Catholic school system and our teachers and by extension our Catholic Church and to God.

J.E. Sequeira
Oakville, Ont.

Don’t forget history

The Aug. 5-12 article “Tory promises to fund religious schools” by Michael Swan was very timely with a provincial election coming up. There has been a movement afoot to eliminate the Catholic school system in Ontario for some time now, though no politician or political party leader would publicly say so, especially just before an election.

It almost seems to me the politicians are playing a big game of chicken with the future of the Catholic school boards of Ontario hanging in the balance. The media and other voices are now calling for the elimination of the Catholic school board and to have just one publicly funded system. I would encourage all these voices and politicians and former Ontario Premier Bill Davis, who will head a commission to study funding all faith schools, to study Ontario history before it even became a province. Without the inclusion of Catholic education in Section 93 of the British North America Act of 1867 that secured the educational rights of the Catholic minority constitutionally, there would have been no Canada in 1867. In 1841, 26 years prior to Confederation, the First School Act for the Province of Upper Canada extended rights of Upper Canada’s Catholic minority to create and manage their own schools. This very same issue was the subject of great debate at the 1864 Quebec Conference and was finally resolved at the London Conference of 1866 with a guarantee to protect the separate school systems in Quebec and Ontario.

Some voices coming out of Queen’s Park, the secular media and elsewhere have even gone so far as to suggest that we should not really take into account this historical reality. If we compromise this, why should any part of the founding Constitution or repatriation of the Constitution in 1982 with the inclusion of the Charter of Rights, feel safe and secure in the near future. Our founding fathers in 1867 had the courage, wisdom and vision to build a great new nation. And of course divine providence played a major role in Canada’s founding in 1867.

Frank Ruffolo
Toronto, Ont.

More history

I notice in a recent issue of The Globe and Mail that Professor Clifford Orwin of the political science faculty of the University of Toronto refers to the funding of Catholic education in Ontario as “an albatross.”

Orwin seems to forget or does not know that Catholics in the former British Empire, including Canada, had no civil, political or religious rights since the infamous penal laws prevailed. It was only in 1829 that the prime minister, the Duke of Wellington, enacted the Catholic Emancipation Act. The earlier Quebec Act applied to only French-speaking Catholics and was, some say, a cynical ploy to enlist support against American expansion.

In Ireland, for instance, Catholics still had to support the Anglican Church until the year 1859. In Halifax the Catholic cathedral was only permitted to be built at night. Earlier, the attorney general of that province, Richard Uniacke, sought an injunction to even prevent its construction.

The former premier of Ontario, Bill Davis, recognized that as Catholic students began to make up about 50 per cent of the total student body of Ontario schools, limited funding of Catholic schools shortchanged most of the future population of Ontario. Orwin, using a non sequitur, seems to imply that some Catholics do not follow all the tenets of their faith. That, of course, is true of any religious group.

In a society driven by divorce, abortion, same-sex marriages and crime, it is only the Catholic Church and its members, with their insistence on the family and its values, which are the mainstay of the Canadian state. Flag wavers are not needed.

W.J. Curran
Ottawa, Ont.