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May 2008

May 2

Righteous B is hip-hoppin' to the faith

May 2, 2008

TORONTO - With a new face for its annual “Faith Day,” Dante Alighieri Academy in Toronto gave students a taste of the Gospel with a hip-hop beat.

Canada pledges $45M to World Food Program

May 2, 2008

An extra $45 million for the World Food Program plus $5 million more for the ecumenical Canada Foodgrains Bank in Winnipeg will help avert a disaster in much of the world where rising food prices are pushing the 850 million people who live on a dollar a day towards starvation. "It is a step in the right direction," said Canadian Catholic Organization for Development and Peace director of international programs Gilio Brunelli.

May 5

Evangelical Christian agency ordered to abandon behaviour code

May 5, 2008

OTTAWA - The Ontario Human Rights Tribunal has ordered an evangelical Christian charity to rescind its morality code and require employees to undergo anti-discrimination training.

May 7

Christian radio host tells media not to 'tame' God

May 7, 2008

CAMBRIDGE, Ont. - More than 30 Christian journalists who gathered for the annual Canadian Church Press (CCP) convention this month received an earful about “life beyond the church walls.”

May 9

New Catholics welcomed to Toronto archdiocese

May 9, 2008

TORONTO - The Catholic Church formed a part of his life for about 30 years, but despite loving his community and parish priest, Elmont Cumberbatch, 68, said it wasn’t until this past Easter that he really felt at home.

Toronto deacons celebrate 35 years of service

May 9, 2008

TORONTO - After 35 years the men ordained to the permanent diaconate for the archdiocese of Toronto are still discovering new ways to be deacons — new ways to serve God and the church. Deacon Rob Kinghorn does it by walking some of the most dangerous streets in Toronto on Thursday nights between 8 p.m. and 1 a.m. and praying with the people he meets – transvestite prostitutes, crack dealers, the lost and the lonely.

Financing missionary work isn't easy

May 9, 2008

We’re a generation of youth missionaries, taught not only in church but in high school youth groups or campus ministries that it’s important to share your faith with others. I remember clearly the call to “propose” the faith rather than to “impose” it. Yet often, to share that faith we need to deepen that faith, which can involve throwing ourselves headlong into an organized evangelization or mission project. World Youth Days, Catholic youth conferences and mission trips are all increasingly part of the natural culture in our universal church, which ultimately presents a different kind of faith test: fund-raising.

High school students reach out to special needs teens

May 9, 2008

TORONTO - Nicole Alvarez would have never imagined spending her final year of high school initiating a program for students with physical and mental difficulties. Yet despite the heavy grade 12 workload, Alvarez found herself starting the Best Buddies program at Francis Libermann Catholic Secondary School in Toronto.

Special education assistants honoured by Ontario government

May 9, 2008

TORONTO - It isn’t always teachers who are critical to education. Among the annual education awards handed out by Ontario’s Minister of Education Kathleen Wynne April 30, an award to the special needs education assistants at Ottawa’s Sacred Heart High School honoured a team that does far more than teach.

Catholic TV journalists cover papal visit

May 9, 2008

NEW YORK - Salt+Light TV producer Kris Dmytrenko thought covering the Pope’s visit to the United States April 15-20 would be like “being a pilgrim with access.” “It was very different than what I imagined,” Dmytrenko, 28, said. “I thought I’d have free access to roam around, a ‘backstage pass.’ ”

Fr. Bayda to be bishop of Saskatoon Ukrainian Catholics

May 9, 2008

OTTAWA - When Fr. Bryan Bayda got the phone call from the apostolic nuncio (papal ambassador to Canada) telling him that Pope Benedict XVI had appointed him bishop of the Saskatoon Ukrainian Catholic eparchy, he experienced shock and disbelief.

Paulists celebrate 150 years of evangelization

May 9, 2008

TORONTO - Jazz isn’t just the American art form. It’s also the art of the possible. Nobody knows whether the Paulist Fathers got rhythm, but for 150 years this quintessentially North American community of priests has been riffing on themes laid down by St. Paul the Apostle 1,900 years ago. “It’s not I who live but Christ who lives in me,” wrote St. Paul. That nugget has led Paulists to conclude Christ expresses himself in the individuality of every Christian — that the charisms bestowed by the Holy Spirit are the essence of who we are.

New media hold opportunities for reaching Internet generation

May 9, 2008

In 1966 John Lennon got into a world of trouble by saying during an interview that the Beatles were more popular than Jesus. He later clarified, correctly so, that his statement was taken out of context and that rather than implying that the Beatles were more important than Jesus, he was merely pointing out that rock and roll music at that time was probably more influential in the life of the typical teenager than was Jesus.

The party's over and the poor weren't even invited

May 9, 2008

Economists — practitioners of the “gloomy science” — are gleefully telling us the party’s over. The boom times have disappeared, pffft, into thin air, replaced by recession and unemployment. But statisticians are now saying that most Canadians were not even invited to the party to begin with.

So much for press freedom

May 9, 2008

There is an old joke that only those who own presses enjoy freedom of the press. Indeed, not a few have begun their own presses to enjoy that freedom. Some of these presses, like The Catholic Register, have thrived. Some, like the Western Standard, have folded.

St. Paul's passes the test of time

May 9, 2008

As a Lenten discipline, I re-read the earliest documents of Christianity, namely the letters (or Epistles) of St. Paul. It is easy to forget that when Paul wrote these letters there were no Gospels, nor anything else of what today we call, with easy familiarity, the New Testament. My purpose was to see if, across two millennia, St. Paul’s authentic voice could still be heard.

Mining company dropped from Jantzi index

May 9, 2008

TORONTO - The complaints of peasants and indigenous people in Central America have reached the Toronto Stock Exchange and pushed Goldcorp Inc. off a socially responsible stock index that helps determine at least $33 million in mutual fund investment.

New volume explores church's shameful past

May 9, 2008

Catholics and Slavery: A Compromising History by John Perry (Novalis, soft cover, 204 pages, $24.95). We live in a world in which the human rights of a large majority are trampled daily. This world did not emerge from nothing, and Christians are part of this history. Through much of its history the Catholic Church condoned, promoted, supported and engaged in the trans-Atlantic slave trade. Jesuit John Perry’s account of this in Catholics and Slavery is comprehensive and unflinching. He believes the church was part of the problem in its complicity in slavery, but has remade itself as part of the solution.

May 14

Chinese Catholics aid quake victims

May 14, 2008

CHENGDU, China - Chinese priests had to work around disrupted telephone systems and damaged roads as they tried to assess the damage from the May 12 earthquake centred under Sichuan province. Responding to appeals for aid and prayers on Catholic web sites, Catholics across China have begun donating money and clothes to help survivors, the priests told the Asian church news agency UCA News.

May 15

Bishop aches for Sudanese homeland

May 15, 2008

TORONTO-Sudan’s wounded healer is going home. Rather than trying to arrest him, the government in Khartoum is relying on Bishop Macram Max Gassis to build hospitals and schools, dig wells and inspire his people to look more to the future than to a past filled with mass rape, child soldiers, bombings and ethnic cleansing. “We are all traumatized. I am traumatized from the war,” said Gassis.