FREE access to the digital edition and archives until September 2. Click here. →
Browse › 2009 › October
October 19, 2009
Jose Ruba, from the Canadian Centre for Bio-Ethical reform, says McGill University should be ashamed of students who interrupted a presentation he was invited to give on campus. Ruba, a defender of the pro-life view, was invited by a university sanctioned club, Choose Life, to present “Echoes of the Holocaust” Oct. 6, only to be interrupted for nearly a full two hours by hecklers who shouted and chanted songs like “Old MacDonald Had a Farm” and “Twinkle Twinkle Little Star.”
Three linear kilometres of books, documents and artifacts await scholars in the new home of the Canadian Jesuit archives in Montreal. With material dating back from five centuries, the recently opened joint archive of Canada’s two Jesuit provinces, English and French, includes more than 300 items from New France in the 1600s, 18,000 books, 1,500 rare books and the memoirs and official records of generations of Jesuits who have been more than priests. Doctors, scientists, theologians, academics, social workers, community leaders and activists have been Canadian Jesuits over the centuries.
TORONTO - As the Royal Ontario Museum unveiled the second half of its six-month exhibition of the Dead Sea Scrolls, Words That Changed The World, the exhibit had already welcomed more than 160,000 people — about 50,000 more than museum officials had anticipated for the July to October period. Kicking off the second three-month installment was a rare fragment of the largest and best preserved parchment of the Ten Commandments, on display for just 80 hours between Oct. 10 and 18.
OTTAWA - The Second Vatican Council represents a "paradigm shift" in the Catholic Church that remains irreversible despite conservative efforts to undermine it. That was the message of “hope” two living witnesses of the council brought to the Vatican II in Canada conference at Saint Paul University Oct. 15.
October 20, 2009
CORNWALL, Ont. - The child pornography charges laid against Bishop Raymond Lahey cast a pall over the weeks leading up to the annual gathering of Canada’s Catholic bishops. In his last report to the Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops as president, Winnipeg Archbishop James Weisgerber said it “might be tempting” to use the phrase Annus horribilis to describe them. But the phrase is not part of our Catholic tradition, he said.
October 21, 2009
Pope Benedict XVI has established a special structure for Anglicans who want to be in full communion with the Roman Catholic Church while preserving aspects of their Anglican spiritual and liturgical heritage, said Cardinal William Levada. The cardinal, prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, said a new apostolic constitution would establish “personal ordinariates” — similar to dioceses — to oversee the pastoral care of those who want to bring elements of their Anglican identity into the Catholic Church with them.
October 22, 2009
CORNWALL, Ont. - The primate of Canada’s Catholic Church has welcomed the groundbreaking news that the Vatican has established a special canonical structure to bring disgruntled Anglicans into the church, but the primate of Canada’s Anglican Church predicted tensions may emerge. The Vatican surprised Catholics and Anglicans alike on Oct. 20 with a bold announcement of a new apostolic constitution that will open the Catholic Church to Anglicans who are disenchanted by a liberal theology that permits women priests and a growing acceptance of gay marriage and openly gay bishops. Under the historic arrangement, Anglican priests who are married may be ordained Catholic priests, but married Anglican bishops will not be able to function as Catholic bishops. Anglicans will also be able to retain much of the Anglican liturgy that has been developed since Henry VIII split from Rome in 1534.
October 23, 2009
OTTAWA - The Catholic Organization for Life and Family (COLF) has written a strongly worded letter to Parliamentarians and Senators opposing euthanasia and assisted suicide. “Keeping in mind that Canada has rejected the death penalty, it would be a contradiction and an injustice to consider allowing some people to directly and intentionally kill others, especially at a time when they are most vulnerable,” wrote COLF director Michele Boulva in an Oct. 15 open letter.
Over the seven years he’s been Ottawa District Catholic School Board ’s education director, James McCracken says what’s been most rewarding has been being able to help students in need. This year, Pope Benedict XVI has awarded McCracken the Benemerenti Medal for distinguished service to Catholic education in the Ottawa archdiocese. Archbishop Terrence Prendergast, S.J., presented the award on Oct. 9 in front of the board’s more than 3,000 teachers, administrators and support staff.
TORONTO - Fixing up schools, having more special education teachers and fully restoring the controversial Arrowsmith program should be some of the projects funded by the projected budget surplus of the Toronto Catholic District School Board, say education groups. Murielle Boudreau, chair of the Greater Toronto Catholic Parent Network, says the board is falling behind in its maintenance of schools.
TORONTO - Close to $2 million has been donated to Salt + Light Television , Canada’s only national Catholic television network. “To have raised $1.9 million at one event, especially in such difficult economic times, is a vivid sign of God’s providential care for Salt + Light Television,” Fr. Tom Rosica, CEO of Salt + Light, said in an e-mail to The Register.
TORONTO - Christopher West introduced a thousand adults, young and old, to Pope John Paul II’s Theology of the Body at a weekend conference in Toronto Oct. 16-17. West, a spokesman for the Theology of the Body Research Institute, a non-profit educational organization based in Philadelphia, delivered a dynamic introduction over the two days on a series of 129 short talks the late pope gave between September of 1979 and November of 1984 on human embodiment and erotic love.
I first learned about the rosary in my Grade 9 religion class. My religion teacher said the rosary was one of the most important parts of the Catholic faith and was strongly critical of anyone who tried to downplay its importance. He said the rosary was an excellent sign of one’s prayerfulness and devotion to God. While I agree that it was certainly a sign of devotion, I felt he failed to share with us an important point: the rosary is a tool that Christians can use to live a virtuous life — by meditating on the mysteries of the rosary.
LANGLEY, B.C. - Ten years ago, Tom Hamel responded to the need for Catholic higher education in British Columbia by founding Redeemer Pacific College , where he is now president. As the university celebrates its milestone anniversary this month, Hamel reflects on both the challenges and joys of founding and running a “ground-breaking” college.
TORONTO - Twenty-five years ago, the Presentation Brothers became involved at Brebeuf College, introducing the all-boys high school to the most “Christ-like man it’s every seen.” Brother Henry Spencer is a great influence on the school’s students and staff, said gifted and enrichment teacher Michael Da Costa of his former teacher and now co-worker.
TORONTO - Dissipating fear, a beacon of hope, the wanderer, the desert breeze, showing the Messiah to the world — these are just some of the descriptions Albanian artist Ilir Fico gives to Mother Teresa, the subject of 50 of his paintings, 23 of which will be on display at St. Paul’s Basilica Oct. 30-Nov. 1. It has been a decade since Fico has shared so many of his works on Mother Teresa in Canada. The last big exhibit was a collection of about 40 paintings at a library in Belleville, Ont. But after being invited to display them at the Vatican embassy in Washington in November last year for the anniversary of Mother Teresa’s death, and again at Notre-Dame Cathedral Basilica in Ottawa, he felt a renewed call to share Mother Teresa through his abstract creations with a wider audience. And so he began approaching churches in Toronto.
All Saints (Year B) Nov. 1 (Revelation 7:2-4, 9-14; Psalm 24; 1 John 3:1-3; Matthew 5:1-12) The Book of Revelation can be a confusing and dangerous book — especially in the wrong hands and with a distorted understanding of its contents. But when it is used with its original intent it can speak directly to the heart and imagination.
Pope Benedict XVI’s encyclical Caritas in Veritate is a remarkable attempt to grapple with, along with much else, the threats and opportunities that have come to us all as results of international capital integration. The long letter is also a highly imaginative application of Christian thought to a matter that is very timely. We feel the touch of the globalization Benedict speaks of when we buy some product — anything with a computer chip in it, a children’s toy, even food — that was once made in Canada or the United States, but that now comes to us from some remote spot in Asia. We see it in newspaper headlines announcing some new domestic plant closing and the transfer of the means of production to cheap labour zones elsewhere in the world.
This past month has been a very dark period for the Canadian Catholic Church. And it isn’t over. As Ron Rolheiser has said, “in times like these it is most instructive and healing to sit quietly in humility, in sackcloth and ashes.” In spite of the media coverage — obsessive, unrelenting, merciless and yet fully understandable — it is important to still keep perspective, to remember we are a redeemed people, a people of hope. And so, I don’t intend to add to the commentary on the Bishop Raymond Lahey Affair — as it has been dubbed — in part because I have already done that in other media, but also because we could all do with a respite, an antidote, no matter how passing its effect.
Talk about timing. As the stunning news of Pope Benedict XVI’s bold initiative to bring traditionalist Anglicans into the Catholic Church was starting to spread on Oct. 20, the Primate of the Anglican Church of Canada was rising to address the Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops. Anglican Archbishop Fred Hiltz had been invited to the annual Bishops’ Plenary in Cornwall, Ont., to reflect on ecumenism. He applauded the progress over the years in inter-faith relations, affirmed his personal commitment to the cause of ecumenism and spoke optimistically of a future in which Anglicans and Catholics would work more closely together because the theology and history of the two churches share much in common.