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May 1, 2008
OTTAWA - The newly appointed chair of the Indian Residential Schools Truth and Reconciliation Commission plans wide-ranging public hearings that will hear from all sides.
TORONTO - Pope Benedict XVI’s recent comments on academic freedom during his speech on Catholic education has come under close scrutiny from Canada’s university presidents and teachers. After the April 17 speech at Catholic University of America, they wanted to know whether the Pope would try to crack down on dissent on college campuses. To most, though, it appeared that he was encouraging Catholic universities, not criticizing them.
TORONTO - Catholic doctors are scrambling to have an influence nationally in coming debates over pro-euthanasia legislation.
TORONTO - Toronto is 14,000 kilometres from Sri Lanka, but the war between Tamils and Sinhalese on the island nation is never far away for Toronto’s 100,000-strong Tamil community. Margaret Jegasothy found herself standing at the end of a memorial Mass April 26 to thank the community for their prayers for her brother, Fr. M.X. Karunaratnam. He was killed in a roadside bomb attack April 19.
TORONTO - Canada needs a new strategy if it wants to see peace and development in Afghanistan, the new secretary general of Brussels-based Pax Christi International told The Catholic Register.
TORONTO - Archbishop Thomas Collins has made several new appointments in Toronto’s curial offices. “Be assured of our ongoing commitment to be faithful and responsible stewards of all that has been entrusted to us by the people of the archdiocese,” Collins said in a letter to clergy, parish and diocesan staff.
TORONTO - Though there have been droughts and wars and corrupt governments, since the fall of the Berlin Wall millions have been lifted out of dire poverty, and millions more from moderate poverty into the middle class, by markets and globalization. Muhammad Yunis and the Grameen Bank bank have shown how a little capital and access to markets can transform lives and communities in the two-thirds of the world where poverty is normal. Indian economist Amartya Sen won the Nobel Prize for demonstrating that in democracies with open markets people do not starve.
TORONTO - One hundred years ago, Catholic missionaries in Canada travelled by horse and buggy and dog team, from east to west and up through the territories to the Arctic. Although their methods of travel have changed, their work continues in all directions, funded by Catholic Missions In Canada.
WASHINGTON - The Rev. Jim Wallis finds it unexpected and refreshing that the majority of “God talk” in the U.S. presidential election season has been among and about Democratic candidates and that the dialogue takes a broad view of what’s important to religiously motivated voters.
A century ago, on Sept. 23, Msgr. E. Alfred Burke, a priest of the diocese of Charlottetown, started a small organization that would go on to do very big things indeed. It was the Catholic Church Extension Society of Canada, now known as Catholic Missions In Canada (see article here).
May 2, 2008
Editor’s note: The following is an excerpt from an address by Archbishop J. Michael Miller, CSB, coadjutor archbishop of Vancouver, to the Ontario Catholic School Supervisory Officers annual general meeting April 17. According to the Holy Father, a major challenge to the church of the 21st century and one which presents “a particularly insidious obstacle in the task of educating” is the massive presence of relativism in society and in schools. Indeed, relativism has become a sort of dogma, and “it is considered dangerous and ‘authoritarian’ to speak of truth, and the end result is doubt about the goodness of life — is it good to be a person? is it good to be alive?” This “dictatorship of relativism,” as expressed by Benedict XVI, manifests society’s profound crisis of truth, a crisis which inevitably influences teachers, parents and students.
Last month Pope Benedict XVI made his first visit as Pope to the United States of America. Many were concerned about the impact the German Pope would have on a rather beleaguered church. They asked if Benedict would be able to “connect” with people as his predecessor John Paul II had done. After all, Benedict arrived in America at age 80 while John Paul II was a mere 59 when he visited for the first time in 1979. Benedict did more than connect. He bonded. He moved multitudes. He showed remarkable courage, wisdom and compassion. Until last week many people both within and outside the church in North America simply didn’t know Joseph Ratzinger, and some didn’t want to know him. They knew only half truths about a man who was called “the Vatican doctrinal watchdog” and who was often portrayed as a strict, distant, scholarly bookworm who lacked the charisma and flair of his predecessor on the throne of Peter. The papal visit included a royal White House welcome on the pontiff’s 81st birthday, an address to Catholic educators, a major and a minor address to the General Assembly of the United Nations and the staff (not many political leaders acknowledge the little people who make the big organizations work). Jews in a Manhattan synagogue were blessed by a visit from the German Pope on the eve of Passover. And clergy and religious were strengthened and moved to tears in Manhattan during a magnificent liturgy on Fifth Avenue. The media did not miss the deep significance of the Holy Father’s private and moving meeting with victims of clergy sex abuse at the Vatican embassy in Washington. The Pope was unafraid to enter into the pain, confusion, sadness and evil of the sex abuse crisis. He let people know that he listened and understood and the Pope will continue to act so that such a disaster would never repeat itself. Benedict reached out as a gentle, grandfatherly shepherd and blessed disabled and suffering young people while their parents and caregivers stood nearby and wept. It was a very rare occasion to hear Benedict speak about his youth in Nazi Germany when he addressed tens of thousands of young people at the outdoor rally: “My own years as a teenager were marred by a sinister regime that thought it had all the answers; its influence grew — infiltrating schools and civic bodies, as well as politics and even religion — before it was fully recognized for the monster it was,” said the Pope, who deserted the German army near the end of the Second World War.
To many, the electoral crisis in Zimbabwe is a case of a greedy dictator and his ruling party refusing to give up power to a democratically elected opposition. Zanu PF and president Robert Mugabe have led the nation since independence from Britain in 1980.
Pentecost (Year A) May 11 (Acts 2:1-11; Psalm 104; 1 Corinthians 12:3-7, 12-13; John 20:19-23) What was the “real” giving of the Spirit like? The Gospels present us with two distinct but rather inconsistent possibilities.
At last, the food crisis now afflicting millions of the Earth’s poorest people has caught the attention of the well-off nations of Europe and North America. One has to wonder whether we would have ever woken up had not riots and protests broken out earlier this year in a dozen countries across Africa, Asia, the Caribbean and Latin America.
TORONTO - When he first started working as an Oblate missionary priest in the diocese of Mackenzie-Fort Smith, retiring Bishop Denis Croteau went head-to-head with the elements.
TORONTO — If there’s more to do, then Susan Tomenson is one woman who can be counted on. On April 16 the Jesuits honoured the Catholic activist for her willingness to do much more than the minimum.
TORONTO - Caritas, an agency dedicated to the healing and recovery of patients with drug and alcohol addiction, had a significant increase in donors for its annual telethon April 27.
Some people describe the Duke of Edinburgh’s Award as a “do-it-yourself” growing up kit for all young people. To me, it has been a mind-expanding, people-meeting and life-changing experience.
TORONTO - Ecumenical relationships are an undisputed reality. Yet many couples, split by denomination, remain united in purpose. Peggy Li and Raymond Leung are two young adults who make their inter-church relationship work, built upon a foundational understanding of human dignity and the beauty of religious tradition.