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October 20, 2008
SAINT JOHN, N.B. - After five successful years, Divine Mercy Catholic School in Saint John is getting ready to move its small family of 80 students into a much-needed larger home in the renovated rectory of St. Peter’s Church. In 2000, a group of Catholic families decided to form a faith-based private school for their children. There was not a single private Catholic school in all of New Brunswick at the time, and even now Divine Mercy is only one of two in the province.
TORONTO - More than 600 people attended the 25th Cardinal Carter Altar Server Awards ceremony and Mass at St. Paul’s Basilica on Oct. 11. It was the first time that the ceremony, sponsored by the Serra Clubs of Toronto, was held outside St. Michael’s Cathedral.
Common Ground: A Priest and a Rabbi Read Scripture Together by Andrew M. Greeley and Jacob Neusner (McGill-Queen’s University Press, 335 pages, softcover, $24.95). A couple of nights ago I looked up at the sky and saw the wishing star and so I made a wish. I wished there was a university course, perhaps called Thinking and Judgment 101, and that it became a required course for everyone in a position of responsibility or aspiring to one.
A Story to Be Told: Personal Reflections on the Irish Immigrant Experience in Canada by M. Eleanor McGrath (Liffey Press, 215 pages, hardcover, $65.00). TORONTO - Between 1940 and 1990, the reasons behind Canada’s last great wave of Irish immigration were about more than Ireland’s poor economy — there were social, cultural and political factors too.
Thirtieth Sunday in Ordinary Time (Year A), Oct. 26 (Exodus 22:21-27; Psalm 18; 1 Thessalonians 1:5-10; Matthew 22:34-40) Don’t ever forget who you were and always remember your own experience. This is good advice in any setting, but in this week’s Scripture readings it is a divine command rather than a suggestion.
For all the damage it’s doing, the crisis shaking the foundations of the world’s financial system has spawned at least one booming industry: economic punditry. If you haven’t been camped out in Algonquin Park for the last two months, you are surely familiar with what I’m talking about: the endless parade of experts before the cameras of cable TV news networks, each with learned opinions about what’s gone wrong with the world and what’s to be done about it. Finger-pointing abounds. Some blame consumers, chronically addicted to the cheap, easy credit of the last several years. Others confidently blame “predatory” lenders, or absent-minded regulators, or the profligacy of public-sector spending by governments living far beyond their means.
The appearance of a new Ron Hansen novel is always the occasion for careful scrutiny and delicious pleasure. He is the finest contemporary Catholic fiction writer in the United States, in my view (sorry Anne Rice), and his latest — Exiles — is one of his finest. The author of several novels of inventive power and historical elasticity (Hitler’s Niece, Mariette in Ecstasy and The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford), Hansen delights in mixing historical fact with possibility, religious feeling with erotic need, saintly endeavour with the cold winds of reason.
VATICAN CITY - Pope John Paul II was lightly wounded by a knife-wielding priest in Portugal in 1982, one year after a gunman tried to kill him in St. Peter's Square, according to one of the late pope's closest aides. The disclosure came in a biographical film screened for the first time at the Vatican on Oct. 16, the 30th anniversary of Pope John Paul II's election. Pope Benedict XVI and many of the world's bishops were in attendance.
October 21, 2008
OTTAWA - Pope Benedict XVI has appointed Abbot Yvon Moreau of the Cistercian Abbey of Oka, Que., to the episcopate in Quebec. Bishop-elect Moreau will succeed retiring Sainte-Anne-de-la-Pocatière Bishop Clément Fecteau, who turned 75 in April. Canon law requires bishops reaching their 75th birthday to offer their resignation.
October 22, 2008
OTTAWA - The sudden resignation of Truth and Reconciliation Commission chair Justice Harry LaForme has surprised and disappointed both Catholic and aboriginal leaders. The commission was formed as a result of the Indian residential schools settlement agreement and has a five-year mandate to allow former students and others who participated in the schools to tell their stories.
October 23, 2008
TORONTO - The rich are getting richer, poor are getting poorer and even the middle class is losing touch with wealthy Canadians, according to a new report from the Paris-based Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development. After 20 years of declining inequality from the mid-1970s to mid-1990s, the gap between rich and poor has risen sharply in Canada since 1995, the OECD said in Growing Unequal, released Oct. 21. Canada is now one of the more unequal countries among the 30 rich nations who make up the OECD.
TORONTO - As a leader in Catholic youth ministry for nine years, Melissa Delaney knows the challenges of the trade firsthand. Now a part-time youth minister at Holy Redeemer parish in Kanata, Ont., Delaney says one of the nagging issues for people working with youth has always been getting across the importance of the ministry.
It’s probable that a majority of Canadians felt deflated by the Oct. 14 election. Nobody really won, even though the Conservatives emerged with a slightly larger minority. Instead, we lacked real leadership — the kind that people truly want to follow instead of just tolerate. The resignation of Liberal Leader Stephane Dion reminds us of what real leadership requires, mainly because his own deficiencies revealed the missing ingredients. It’s true that Dion showed intelligence, integrity, boldness and creativity (in his poorly understood GreenShift). And by stepping down, he displayed a rare selflessness. But he failed at an essential task of leadership: getting others to follow.
If there is such a thing as election envy, and the degree of fascination Canadians have with Sen. Barack Obama suggests there may be an element of wistfulness if not outright envy, the difference between this fall’s Canadian election and the U.S. presidential race would surely provoke it. It’s not just that the stakes are higher; being prime minister is a somewhat less exalted and demanding role than U.S. president. It is as if the response to higher stakes seems to be an elevated discourse, an appreciation that politicians shouldn’t just be about tactical considerations but should also be concerned with fundamental values. It also encompasses a notion that political decisions might actually touch on issues of who we are as well as what we might do this fiscal quarter.
Frankfurt-am-Main was decidedly warmer than Edinburgh when my bus, snorting and snarling, arrived outside the main railway station. I carried my coat in my arms and divested myself of a few scarves. I met my friend Johannes, a theology student who spent a year at Regis College in Toronto, and travelled with him and his father to their tiny 800-year-old village. One of the great blessings of the age of technology is that we can make friends across the world and, as long as the oil holds out, visit them in their natural surroundings. This is also one of the blessings of belonging to the universal church, particularly to that part of it that thinks about the universal church all the time: the Catholic world, though actually very big, often seems very small, and the world of Catholic theology students seems even smaller. It is easy to make many friends there. And although for many people the phrase “World Church” summons up images of grass skirts and bongo drums, for me it also means ancient European altarpieces too valuable to have been ripped out in the iconoclasm of the late 1960s.
Life is a storybook. God is the author and man is His character. I realized this as I read my Writer’s Workshop book for creative writing class. A few weeks ago, I had to read a chapter on time which spoke about how the author of a story controls the pace of time. The author transcends time. I kept pondering this element until it made me think about God, the author of life.
BURNABY, B.C. - Students, faculty, staff and visitors to Simon Fraser University (SFU) braved the light rain on a chilly Oct. 16 morning to make history for the university and the archdiocese of Vancouver. Marking the centennial of the archdiocese, Archbishop Raymond Roussin made his first visit to the Burnaby campus to lead the very first eucharistic procession from the interfaith centre to the hub of the campus in the Academic Quadrangle. Singing hymns throughout the procession, the elaborate entourage included a Knights of Columbus colour guard, several altar servers with incense and candles and more than 80 Catholics eager to give witness to the faith.
TORONTO - It was the mother of all pep rallies. Eight thousand tweens and teens crammed into Ricoh Stadium on Toronto’s waterfront Oct. 17, not to stoke school spirit but to embolden young people to go out and try to make the world a better place. A tall order, no matter how old or young you are. But if the energy level of these young people is any indication, they appear, thankfully, to be up to the task.
“Give thanks in all circumstances, for this is God’s will for you in Christ Jesus.” I Thessalonians 5:18 Thanksgiving has come and gone once again, but I’m still in a thankful frame of mind, for a couple of reasons. First, my American friends and relatives are gearing up for their Thanksgiving celebration this month. Second, I like the warm, fuzzy feelings of gratitude and its by-product, generosity, that Thanksgiving inspires, and I’ve been contemplating how to perpetuate them.
All Souls (Year A) Nov. 2 (Lamentations 3:17-26; Psalm 103; 1 Corinthians 15:51-57; Matthew 11:25-30) How do we react when we experience loss and tragedy? Many act with shock and outrage, especially if they consider themselves religious. Why me? Am I not faithful to God? Haven’t I practised my faith diligently?