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June 2009

June 22

Glorifying one God doesn't make us the same

June 22, 2009

What God Really Wants You to Know , by C. David Lundberg (Heavenlight Press, softcover, 448 pages, $24.57). Pope Benedict XVI’s recent visit to the Holy Land emphasized the idea that the three religions of the book — Christianity, Judaism and Islam — share common ground. What God Really Wants You to Know, a self-published 427-page tome by C. David Lundberg, endeavours to teach the same lesson.

God is life

June 22, 2009

13th Sunday in Ordinary Time (Year B) June 28 (Wisdom 1:13-15; 2:23-24; Psalm 30; 2 Corinthians 8:7, 9, 13-15; Mark 5:21-43) Don’t blame God for death, it wasn’t His idea! Or so the author of Wisdom claims. It’s a very strange statement, for all that lives eventually dies. Living organisms experience entropy and finally return to the dust of the earth.

The Good Thief's tale of redemption

June 22, 2009

When Jesus welcomes the good thief into paradise, St. Dismas has clearly had no opportunity to make amends for his deeds, reform his way of life or even say he is sorry to his victims. When Australian actor Allan Girod presents the Canadian premier of Irish playwright Conor McPherson’s The Good Thief at Toronto’s Fringe Festival , audiences will have an opportunity to ask themselves whether they could follow Jesus’ example and welcome a dangerous, violent man into their society.

June 23

Surveys seek input on Week of Prayer for Christian Unity

June 23, 2009

The Canadian Council of Churches wants to know who you will be praying with and for between Jan. 18 and 25 next year. Using its web site and Twitter account, the CCC has launched a pair of surveys to find out how parishes and congregations are praying during the annual Week of Prayer for Christian Unity. If the answer is that your Catholic parish doesn’t do much to observe the world-wide, Vatican-supported week for Christian unity, they want to hear that too.

June 24

Anti-Semitism still surrounds Society of St. Pius X

June 24, 2009

TORONTO - While Society of St. Pius X superior general Bishop Bernard Fellay visited Canada in June on his way to illicitly ordain two seminarians in Winona, Minn., the anti-Semitic theology of the traditionalist society continued to haunt the breakaway sect. The Vatican II-rejectionist Society of St. Pius X has been in the news since Pope Benedict XVI on Jan. 21 remitted the 1988 ruling of excommunication on four bishops, including Fellay, ordained that year by Bishop Marcel Lefebvre. One of the four, Bishop Richard Williamson, was seen on Swedish television the same day his excommunication was lifted denying any Jews were killed in the Holocaust. The remarks came from an interview last November.

June 25

One-sixth of world population goes hungry

June 25, 2009

ROME - The global economic crisis has caused an 11-per-cent increase in world hunger in the past year and the total number of hungry people has surpassed one billion for the first time, according to a report from a United Nations agency. The UN report was released as Pope Benedict XVI, in a letter to German President Horst Kohler, was expressing his concern for the plight of African nations, where more than one-quarter billion people are undernourished (compared to 15 million in the entire developed world).

Democracy deficit at Toronto Catholic school board

June 25, 2009

TORONTO - A year of provincial supervision for the Toronto Catholic District School Board has been a year with little accountability and transparency, say some Catholic parent groups. Murielle Boudreau, chair of the Greater Toronto Catholic Parent Network, said it has often been a one-way conversation with the provincially appointed supervision team of Norbert Hartmann and Norm Forma on key issues like the budget and special education funding.

Dead Sea Scrolls validate Bible

June 25, 2009

TORONTO - Who ever thought the Bible could be improved? Well, as Hebrew Scriptures Professor Eugene Ulrich told a packed audience June 23, it has been. And it took the unearthing of the now famous Dead Sea Scrolls, on display at the Royal Ontario Museum until Jan. 3, to do so. “The Dead Sea Scrolls demonstrate that the text of the Bible was remarkably faithfully transmitted over the past 2,000 years. So we all can breathe a big sigh of relief,” Ulrich said during his lecture, The Impact of the Dead Sea Scrolls on the Bible, one of fourteen presentations in a special lecture series about the scrolls that will feature a variety of scholars until Dec. 15.

Canadian Bishops clear Development and Peace of any wrongdoing

June 25, 2009

The Canadian Catholic Organization for Development and Peace’s Mexican partners were “imprudent” when they signed a civil society submission to the United Nations on human rights, but Canada’s bishops have found no evidence of wrongdoing on the part of Development and Peace or its partners, Archbishop James Weisgerber has declared. The report into allegations made by LifeSiteNews.com that Development and Peace funded Mexican groups lobbying in favour of legal abortion will include recommendations for tighter protocols on future partnerships, but those recommendations won’t be revealed until all the bishops have had a chance to read the report, said the Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops’ president.

June 26

Toronto school board budget chops deficit, angers parent groups

June 26, 2009

TORONTO - Budget woes that have forced cuts to programs at the Toronto Catholic District School Board can be solved with a bailout from the province, says a local Catholic parent group. “If they can bail out (swimming) pools at the public board for $16 million, surely they can bail out the board,” Murielle Boudreau of the Greater Toronto Catholic Parent Network told The Catholic Register after the provincially supervised board revealed its budget, which will chop the remaining $10 million of its accumulated deficit, at a public meeting June 24.

Catholic Church part of Canada's 'founding myth'

June 26, 2009

Canada Day celebrations will almost certainly praise this country as a tolerant, peaceable nation with a highly developed, secular and multicultural, democratic culture. That wasn’t what St. Jean de Brebeuf had in mind when he established the first European settlement in Upper Canada in 1639. The mystic Jesuit priest and missionary had a vision of a Christian kingdom in the heart of North America — a theocracy, really — where European and Huron cultures would be mutually transformed by faith in Jesus Christ. Brebeuf’s vision lasted just 10 years, and the Jesuits ended up burning down their tiny experiment at Sainte-Marie Among the Hurons near present-day Midland, Ont., in 1649 to prevent the village falling into the hands of the Iroquois (proxies for the Dutch, whose commercial interests in the fur trade opposed those of France).

Union calls for Ontario teachers to run full-day kindergarten

June 26, 2009

TORONTO - Certified teachers should run full-day kindergarten programs soon to be implemented in Ontario schools instead of hiring part-time early childhood educators, says the president of the Ontario English Catholic Teachers’ Association. Following the Ontario government’s pledge to implement recommendations in a new report on early learning, association president James Ryan said students will benefit more from having a full-day program delivered by certified teachers.

St. Anne de Beaupre set to greet more than 1.5-million visitors

June 26, 2009

ST. ANNE DE BEAUPRE, Que. - Last year marked a resurgence of religious consciousness in Quebec City. Not only did the International Eucharistic Congress take place during that UNESCO World Heritage City’s celebration of its 400th anniversary. It was also the occasion of the 350th anniversary of Canada’s celebrated pilgrimage site, St. Anne de Beaupre Shrine. This year the Shrine, which is only 35 kms. northeast of Quebec City, anticipates more than its usual 1.5 million pilgrims as a result of the 2008 celebrations. In particular during the annual novena July 17-26 (celebrating the feast day of St. Anne) the faithful will flock to ask the intercession of the grandmother of Jesus and mother of the Blessed Virgin.

It won't go away

June 26, 2009

The report is in but the final chapter may not yet be written regarding allegations that have swirled around Development and Peace since March. Amid charges that D&P was aligned with five Mexican groups that support abortion, the Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops has concluded an investigation and exonerated D&P, according to CCCB president Archbishop James Weisgerber.

In praise of our priests

June 26, 2009

This is my fourth attempt to write a column to celebrate the Year for Priests. This should not be difficult. I’ve gone to Mass my entire life. I went to theology school. I lived as a guest in a seminary for two months. I’ve met priests from all over the world. So why the writer’s block? It could be prudence. One must be careful when writing about groups to which one does not belong. Yes, I understand there is a “priesthood of the laity” and that I participate in this priesthood through prayer, personal sacrifices and Mass attendance. But beyond that there is a “priesthood of the priests,” which is different in important, ancient ways.

Breaking the lock

June 26, 2009

Lee felt the familiar exasperation, defeat and desolation. He didn’t stop to list these feelings; they remained in the background of the all-too-foreground argument with his wife. “Nothing ever changes,” he said to himself, and eventually he said it out loud, in just that contemptuous tone Julia had been expecting, with dread. “You don’t change, and this so-called relationship doesn’t change,” she flashed back, as if from the script of one of those plays that run 35 years, the same dialogue repeated night after night. Theirs had run only 12 years, but both were feeling ready to shut it down forever.

God's power makes us strong in our weakness

June 26, 2009

14th Sunday in Ordinary Time (Year B) July 5 (Ezekiel 2:2-5; Psalm 123; 2 Corinthians 12:7-10; Mark 6:1-6) Who is this nation of impudent and stubborn rebels? In its original context it referred to Israel, for Ezekiel is being empowered and sent to bring his nation back to the ways of God. But in a much broader sense it describes any nation, including our own, for the Israelites were no more rebellious and wayward than people of our own day.

He who is without sin...

June 26, 2009

Just last year, a Pakistani couple was stoned for adultery, a Somali woman met a similar fate on the same charge and two Iranian men were executed in this excruciating manner. Five of the world’s predominantly Muslim countries, as well as about one-third of Nigeria’s 36 states, still include stoning among the penalties in their criminal codes. This barbaric practice is depicted unflinchingly in The Stoning of Soraya M. (Roadside/Mpower), a compelling, often moving film version of Freidoune Sahebjam’s 1994 best-seller, based on an actual incident in 1986. Set in a remote Iranian village, the narrative charts a harrowing chronicle of oppression and community corruption.

June 29

Toronto Furniture Bank steps up to aid people in transition

June 29, 2009

TORONTO – When Julia Corridon arrived in Toronto five years ago, she found herself being referred, through a shelter, to an unexpected beacon of hope in the form of the Furniture Bank.

Etobicoke parish 'revolutionized' Bishop Lacey's priesthood

June 29, 2009

TORONTO - Toronto Auxiliary Bishop emeritus Pearse Lacey remembers the first time parishioners at Etobicoke’s Transfiguration of Our Lord got a taste of Vatican II. Responding to the Council’s 1963 Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy, Lacey introduced what was then considered a novel idea: highlighting the laity’s role in the Eucharist. So Lacey tried something new. He placed a ciborium at the church’s entrance and asked people to put a host in it as they walked in.