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January 2008

January 28

Paying more to save the environment

January 28, 2008

TORONTO - There’s more to the modern practice of capitalism than squeezing costs to watch the bottom line grow, according to the company that sells some of the most expensive electricity in Canada. Toronto-based Bullfrog Power has hundreds of business customers in Ontario and Alberta willing to spend three cents per kilowatt hour more for electricity than average rates. That’s a 25- to 30-per-cent increase in their electricity bill.

Christian Child Care International undergoes change

January 28, 2008

Christian Child Care International, a community development program based in Springhill, N.S., has changed its name to Chalice. “By changing our name to Chalice, we are reducing the confusion and making ourselves easy to remember,” said Mark Warren, director of marketing.

Faith and reason equals truth

January 28, 2008

It is muzzled, ignored and ridiculed by some professors and students of the most esteemed academic institutions of the world. Pitted against secular society and struggling to manifest itself against a backdrop of persecution, truth has become an enemy, and its pursuit, an erupting war on university campuses.

Opening the door to religious diversity

January 28, 2008

TORONTO - A school visit to three places of worship is not an average field trip, but this is exactly what 50 Canadian Catholic schools have experienced since 2001. The field trip is offered by the Canadian Centre for Diversity, a privately funded organization that began from a small experimental initiative six years ago.

January 29

Winnipeg Archbishop Weisgerber sees dire problems of Holy Land

January 29, 2008

OTTAWA - Winnipeg Archbishop James Weisgerber has returned from his first trip to the Holy Land with a deep understanding of the pressure and suffering the historic Christian community experiences there.

A common purpose in Jesus

January 29, 2008

Editor's Note: this is the second place winner of the Friars’ Student Writing Award sponsored by the Franciscan Friars of the Atonement and The Catholic Register. Nicole Fernandes is a Grade 11 student at St. Joseph’s Morrow Park Catholic Secondary School in Toronto. Christian unity is far more than just the unity of Christians in the same belief, doctrine or principle. It is the unity of all Christians under the fellowship of Christ in whom we are all one. I believe that Catholic and Orthodox churches should come together and pray without ceasing because the power of prayer is massive and Jesus asked God to keep us united. I believe that by doing that we can achieve Christian unity and help change the world.

January 30

Let aboriginal reconciliation, healing begin

January 30, 2008

TORONTO - The Catholic Church’s historic mission to the native people of Canada is a big issue, and getting bigger. For the first time Statistics Canada reports there are more than one million Canadians who claim native ancestry. The aboriginal population grew 45 per cent between 1996 and 2006 — six times the growth in the Canadian population as a whole.

A Jewish take on sanctity of life

January 30, 2008

The Sanctity of Human Life by David Novak (Georgetown University Press, 186 pages, hardcover, $35). Rabbi David Novak is a professor of religion and philosophy at the University of Toronto. His doctoral degree (and his publisher) are from Georgetown University, a Jesuit university in Washington, D.C. Readers who appreciate erudite arguments and rigourous scholarship will be interested in this book, which explores from a Jewish point of view some of the same topics as Pope John Paul II’s 1995 encyclical Evangelium Vitae (The Gospel of Life).

Steubenville Atlantic kicks off

January 30, 2008

HALIFAX - On Jan. 19 more than 300 people came out to the Saint Mary’s University theatre in Halifax for the Steubenville Atlantic High School Conference pre-launch party for a night of praise and worship music, speakers and testimonies.

Catholic principals honoured

January 30, 2008

TORONTO - Among the 33 principals chosen for this year’s Canada’s Outstanding Principals Award were four Catholics from across Ontario.

Lessons can be learned from illness

January 30, 2008

Next week (Feb. 11) the Catholic Church will observe World Day of the Sick, instituted in 1992 by Pope John Paul II. As a medical social worker, I’ve been privileged to journey with sick people and learn from them the lessons serious illness can teach those who are receptive. I would like to share some of these insights.

Catholic challenges at top of the world

January 30, 2008

TROMSO, Norway - Norway’s Catholic parish of Var Frue Kirke (The Church of Our Lady) in Tromso may well be the most northerly Catholic church and most northerly Catholic cathedral in the world. It’s located 400 kilometres inside the Arctic Circle, at a latitude of almost 70 degrees, similar to Siberia. (There’s a Catholic mission house in the Canadian hamlet of Arctic Bay, Nunavut, at a latitude of over 73 degrees, but technically it’s not a church).

St. Jerome's program takes students beyond borders

January 30, 2008

WATERLOO, Ont. - An educational program at St. Jerome’s University transports students beyond educational, personal and emotional borders, combining the classroom with service to others. Beyond Borders began during the 2005/06 school year as a way of helping students put their education into practice by travelling to and working abroad. The program, which runs for three terms, comprises three academic courses, fund-raising and a home stay and work placement co-ordinated through one of Beyond Borders’ international network of partners.