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August 24, 2009
TORONTO - Catholic schools are receiving top marks in Ontario, according to a new study. In the C.D. Howe report “Ontario’s Best Public Schools, 2005/06-2007/08,” 10 of the top 11 schools, out of about 3,000 publicly funded schools, are from Catholic boards. The study’s author, Wilfrid Laurier University economics professor David Johnson, compared the provincially standardized EQAO test scores of students from schools in similar socio-economic backgrounds.
Dr. Michael Higgins has set himself free from the daily struggles of running a university. One of Canada’s best known Catholic writers and intellectuals, Higgins has tendered his resignation after three years as president of St. Thomas University in Fredericton, N.B .
The title of Pope Benedict XVI’s recent encyclical, Charity in Truth, was intended for a broad audience, but Carl Anderson believes it speaks directly to the Knights of Columbus. Addressing the Knight’s annual convention in Phoenix earlier this month, the Supreme Knight called the title of the encyclical confirmation of the Knights’ first principle — charity — and affirmation that “his priorities are our priorities.”
Was the recent Anaheim decision of the 76th General Convention of the U.S. Episcopal Church just one more aftershock in the life of the Anglican Communion, or was it a new and quite serious quake whose thunderous presence and effects were felt all the way to Canterbury, England? We are speaking about the decisions of the U.S. Episcopal Church’s General Convention to bless same-sex unions and to permit the appointment, to all orders of ministry, persons in active same-sex relationships. The latter decision is of earthquake proportions and sends deep and permanent fissures throughout the worldwide Anglican Communion. This decision, overwhelmingly approved (99-44 with two abstentions), opens wide the doors for the consecration of bishops in active gay relationships and gives final confirmation to the first such bishop, Gene V. Robinson, ordained bishop of New Hampshire in 2003.
When the young German monk Martin Luther visited Rome in the winter of 1510-1511, his experience of the city made the impending Protestant Reformation thinkable for the first time, and perhaps inevitable. Luther was appalled by the avid worldliness of Christian Rome and of its corrupt, ambitious, brilliant ruler, Pope Julius II. And not only Luther. Many other thoughtful Catholic clergy, thinkers and layfolk of the early 16th century were similarly scandalized by the avarice and show off of Rome’s elite, who had so conspicuously embraced pomp and splendour to the detriment of the work of Christian living and witness. From a spiritual perspective, then, the Rome that Luther discovered was going through the worst of times. But they were also the best of times for artists, architects and interior designers. In 1505, Julius had decided to tear down the much-venerated fourth-century basilica of St. Peter and start work on a huge, magnificent new church more suitable (in his opinion) for the capital of the Christian West. Great palaces were to be constructed to complement this new St. Peter’s, grand boulevards laid out, glorious piazzas and fountains built. In 1508, Michelangelo had begun the ceiling murals in the Sistine Chapel. In the same year, the artist-architect Raphael had arrived in Rome at Julius’ invitation, and founded a large business to supply the church and secular elite with the pictures and murals they desired.
It is hard to imagine how many heads have rolled over a wafer. Or more precisely, a host. And I am not talking about U.S. vice-president Joe Biden, past Democratic presidential nominee John Kerry, the pre-Roman Tony Blair of England or the scandal-hounded Silvio Berlusconi of Italy. This is closer to home; a New Brunswick-made furor. The departure of the publisher of the Telegraph-Journal of Saint John, New Brunswick — Jaime Irving of the storied Irving dynasty — along with editor Shawna Richer, ostensibly because of the coverage of Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s communion debacle, appears to be the final act in a uniquely Canadian melodrama.
TORONTO - An on-again-off-again public meeting of the embattled Toronto Catholic District School Board trustees is off again. The Aug. 24 meeting at the Catholic Education Centre was abruptly cancelled by the provincially appointed board supervisor last week. But it had been rescheduled by Catholic school trustees John Del Grande and Rob Davis for Aug. 24 at the Toronto District School Board.
August 25, 2009
TORONTO - The head of the Greater Toronto Catholic Parent Network says it’s “appalling” that parents of some children with learning disabilities must file a lawsuit against their own school board in order to save a program their children need. “It’s ridiculous for parents to be put in this situation,” said chair Murielle Boudreau. Boudreau was responding to news that five parents with children enrolled in a unique special education program called “Arrowsmith ” launched a lawsuit in Ontario’s Superior Court of Justice Divisional Court against the Toronto Catholic District School Board.
TAGUIG CITY, Philippines - Two years ago I discovered a cultural revolution was happening in the Philippines. What I didn’t realize at the time was that it would inspire the world and transform my life forever. This month, I landed in the Philippines to begin six months of work with the Gawad Kalinga movement. I will be working with the people of the GK Villages to help develop tourism as a means of livelihood in their communities. I will also be meeting and living with many of the families and documenting their stories to share with others.
TORONTO - It’s been 25 years since Pope John Paul II lit the eternal flame in Toronto’s Peace Garden, and every year the city’s Hiroshima Day Coalition magnifies that flame of hope and memory with an Aug. 6 commemoration of the first atom bomb used in war. This year’s ceremony featured a Japanese lantern ceremony, which floated dozens of paper lanterns — each containing a single tea light lit from the eternal flame — across the water of the reflecting pool at Nathan Phillips Square.
TORONTO - As a 23-year-old, it wasn’t easy having to leave war-torn Lebanon to settle in Toronto. As he struggled to get a job and get over the culture shock, Fr. Mounir El-Rassi, who was ordained Aug. 15 at St. Michael’s Cathedral, said the challenges of a new life in Canada initially gave his faith a hard slap. “I felt a spiritual darkness or desolation, and I thought I made the wrong decision coming to Canada,” said the now 42-year-old El-Rassi. “I was assessing everything and I was praying, but I was kind of in a dry mode.”
TORONTO - Despite falling $500,000 shy of its goal during this year’s fund-raising campaign, ShareLife has pledged that charitable agencies will still receive the funding they need this year. “The reality is we’re down (from last year), but given the economy and the way things are, we have still raised a significant amount of money,” said Arthur Peters, director of ShareLife, the charitable fund-raising arm of the archdiocese of Toronto.
TORONTO - A barbecue, held at St. Norbert’s Catholic Church Aug. 9 to mark the one-year anniversary of a massive propane explosion that rocked the surrounding Toronto neighbourhood was bittersweet. “Even though people are (still) going through hard times, we have to consider ourselves lucky — in a way it could have been a lot worse,” said Tony Desanto, one of the barbecue organizers.
Sr. Nuala Kenny, who has spent most of her life facing down what she calls the “de-moralization of modern medicine” in the context of advancing technology and commercialization, will receive the Canadian Medical Association ’s Dr. William Marsden Award for leadership in medical ethics. Kenny is a pediatrician, a former professor of medicine and ethics at the University of Toronto, Queen’s University and Dalhousie University , and a one-time deputy minister of health of Nova Scotia. She founded Dalhousie’s department of bioethics and served on the ethics committees of the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Canada , the Canadian Pediatric Society, the National Council for Bioethics in Human Research , the National Science Advisory Board and the National Forum on Health. She has been president of both the Canadian Pediatric Society and the Canadian Bioethics Society. She is an officer of the Order of Canada , was a founding member of the Governing Council of the Canadian Institutes of Health Research , one of the founders of the Governing Council of the Health Council of Canada and one of the founders of Canadian Doctors for Medicare .
Married priests. Although it isn’t unheard of, it is still an anomaly in Canada. Less than a dozen exist across the country, with one new addition in Prince Edward Island this month. On Aug. 9, Fr. Martin Carter was ordained at St. Dunstan’s Basilica in Charlottetown. Carter, 63, has been a resident of P.E.I. for 20 years. He converted to Catholicism in December 2005 before he began the road to Roman Catholic priesthood.
If you haven’t heard a tweet out of Canada’s Catholic hierarchy, keep listening — and surfing. Catholic twittering is coming. As the world witnessed a revolution on the streets of Tehran that was fueled and organized on Twitter and Facebook , the church in Canada was appraising the new technology. This fall, the National Standing Committee for Communications of the Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops will seriously examine how the Canadian church can be present on these types of social media Internet-based services that rely on users to generate content, promised committee secretary Gerald Baril.
MARKHAM, Ont. - Probably every Catholic knows what bad preaching feels like — all the perplexing, irrelevant, boringness that comprises the whole tortuous experience. Deacon Peter Lovrick encountered what might be the deep mystery of bad preaching when he met a priest finishing his third year of priesthood in Taiwan years ago. “He told me, ‘Oh thank goodness! Now I don’t have to write any more homilies,’ ” recalls Lovrick, who serves at St. Patrick's parish in Markham. “He had simply stored all of them on a computer and he planned to reuse them. The one-size-fits-all homily which is completely independent of space and time and groups of people and what is happening in the world — if I were to go out on a limb and talk about good preaching and bad preaching — I would say that’s not good preaching.”
Discovering that phone calls to Canada are only five pence a minute, I finally called a dear friend back in Toronto. “How are you?” she demanded. “What have you been doing?” “Great,” I said. “I’ve been doing married lady stuff. Shopping for food and cooking and washing the dishes and doing the laundry. I write a lot. And, of course, I am totally obsessed with the Corcoran scandal.”
The priest as a hardworking assassin just doing his job, eliminating child abusers and perverts from the priestly ranks, is not a very likely starting point for a serious novel about a man in middle age struggling with meaning in his life. Award-winning CBC journalist Linden MacIntyre makes it work in The Bishop’s Man . It’s been 21 years since the Mount Cashel Orphanage scandal erupted — the first of a long series of awful stories about sexual and physical abuse of minors by Catholic priests and vowed religious. While David Harris’s Unholy Orders: Tragedy at Mount Cashel did the journalistic job back in 1991, it has taken this long to get a thoughtful treatment of the post-scandal church in a novel.
The top three graduating students from Catholic school boards in the GTA.