End discrimination
MPP Frank Klees is to be commended for indicating that there will be financial support for other faith-based schools in the next Ontario government if his Conservative party wins election.
Public money is now going to Catholic schools. In Ontario, no other faith group has such privileges.
In many school districts, Catholic teachers have a 50-per-cent better chance of being hired simply because they can apply to both secular and Catholic boards. Protestants are routinely dismissed from further consideration when their application arrives. This is not one of the positive influences of Ontario’s policy of discrimination/apartheid in public education.
School tax credits for Evangelicals, Jews and Muslims for their children will go a long way to alleviate this discrimination.
Cecil Patey
Victoria Harbour, Ont.
Not so moderate
Readers of The Register should beware the naive, ignorant review of Tariq Ramadan’s book In the Footsteps of the Prophet (“Making Mohammed real for 21st century ,” May 27). The reviewer has been taken in by the seemingly “moderate” tone of Ramadan’s work.
Ramadan is a clever fellow whose “moderate” views cannot wholly disguise his attachment to the less liberal side of Islam, e.g. Sharia law. Readers would do well to google Ramadan’s name and see what comes up. There is much evidence that the grandson of the founder of the Muslim Brotherhood has not strayed far from the family nest.
Brigid Elson
Toronto, Ont.
Won’t bite the hand
Reading the May 13 article, “Catholic schools under fire, ” I sensed that the greater injustice is the discrimination against equal funding of faith-based schools. Historically, the Catholic minority had to be protected and hence the separate schools. Today, other faith-based groups are minorities that need to be protected. Catholics do have an active role to play, not only because it has been found to be unfair, but because it is unjust.
So, the passive approach of Bernard Murray, president of the Ontario Catholic School Trustees’ Association, is weak. If, as he says, we contribute very much to the common good of our society, it is because Catholic education affirms every student’s dignity and cultivates people who work for justice. Murray’s approach also plays politics. He does not want to bite the hand, the Liberal government, that feeds the current system. If he were to get involved in the debate over equal funding, he would be supporting the Conservatives’ position.
Mark Guevarra,
Edmonton, Alta.
We should be shocked
I speak out now before a wet blanket is thrown on the whole Canadian pro-life movement by the repressive action of such people as Bishop Fred Henry of Calgary. The supreme hypocrisy among the Canadian clergy, of which I am one, would be to use the argument of parental rights to quash the pro-life movement.
I have four children. When they were very young, my wife and I explained to them the evil of abortion when they saw pictures of aborted babies. Children have the sensitivity that we should have as adults.
A prophetic action such as Stephanie Gray’s (showing graphic images of the Crucified Christ in the form of mangled bodies of aborted babies) is needed to reveal the evil that is hidden, even if it offends our sensitivity. We need to be shocked by this kind of evil. We should be if we are Christians. The mangled aborted baby is the modern crucified Christ of Canada, a country that allows the murder of the unborn up to the time of birth.
Deacon Daniel Dauvin
Killaloe, Ont.
Times have changed
Regarding Paul Kokoski’s June 3 letter, “Lured into false belief, ” in deriding Elizabeth May (leader of the Green Party of Canada), Kokoski writes, “while politicians, lawyers, judges and even some Anglicans like May are moving towards the acceptance of homosexuality and abortion, God is not.”
I feel it is highly presumptuous, if not exceedingly arrogant, of Kokoski to believe that he can speak for God.
Whether Kokoski likes it or not, Canadian society has changed. It has changed because it has decided to listen to the stories of the lives, loves, dreams, pains and sufferings of gays, lesbians and women with empathy and compassion, and without prejudice and contempt.
Boyd Tolton
Edmonton, Alta.
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