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March 2010

March 1

Pope prays for Chile quake victims, Catholics pitch in to help

March 1, 2010

VATICAN CITY - Pope Benedict XVI prayed for the victims of the massive earthquake in Chile and pledged the assistance of Catholic relief organizations. The Pope made the remarks at his noon blessing Feb. 28, the day after a magnitude 8.8 quake struck the South American country, triggering giant waves and leaving at least 700 dead. "My thoughts are with Chile and with the populations stricken by the earthquake, which caused great loss of life and terrible damage," the Pope said from his apartment window above St. Peter's Square.

March 5

An innovative idea for old church buildings

March 5, 2010

Faith can move mountains but can it move a church? An American pastor believes so. Fr. David Dye is overseeing an ambitious and novel project to save an historic church in downtown Buffalo by dismantling it stone by stone and reassembling it in an Atlanta suburb 1,500 kilometres away. The process is being called “preservation through relocation” and, if successful, presents intriguing possibilities for Canadian dioceses facing tough choices about the future of old, underused, sometimes historic, city churches.

In Christ we can overcome the world

March 5, 2010

In the developed industrial societies of the West, superficiality is among the great scourges of the age. Our prosperity and freedom, and the best values we have inherited from the past, are blighted by a mass culture that trivializes everything, from politics and entertainment to sexuality and social morality. Movies, TV and advertising constantly reinforce the notions, for example, that sexual licence is just a normal part of growing up, that living together outside the exclusive terms of marriage is even desirable in the circumstances of our era. The bombardment of highly eroticized entertainment hollows out the personal depth and resonance that can come with sexual commitment.

Why carry rocks around?

March 5, 2010

Long ago, I let a friend down. It’s still vivid in my memory. I’d promised, but at the last minute I phoned up and cancelled, leaving her in the lurch. She was cold and angry on the phone; we hung up quickly. I couldn’t blame her; I’d hurt her. Though I’d apologized, the effects remained. I don’t know what happened with her, because she stopped speaking to me. But for me, a burden was created which I long carried: guilt. A paralysing burden. Perhaps part of me was reluctant to put it down, as though staggering under it would gain me points, and enough collected points would earn me forgiveness. This type of guilt, someone observed to me, is like a knapsack full of rocks strapped to one’s back: a dead weight that gradually, increasingly wearies the bearer.

God's grace is at work in so many ways

March 5, 2010

Fourth Sunday of Lent (Year C) March 14 (Joshua 5:9, 10-12; Psalm 34; 2 Corinthians 5:17-21; Luke 15:1-3, 11-32) It was a new day for the people of Israel. After 40 long and hard years of wandering in the arid wilderness, they had finally crossed the Jordan into the Promised Land — the land “flowing with milk and honey.” They were provided with manna to eat during their journey through the desert but that now ceases. They eat from the produce of the land and they will have to walk on their own feet now.

Busy mothers facing spiritual exhaustion

March 5, 2010

TORONTO - To Dorothy Pilarski, helping catechize mothers is almost an emergency today. This is one reason why the Toronto-based mother and pioneer of a mothers’ group organized a conference titled “Dynamic Women of Faith” this month. “Mothers are getting busier and busier, more spiritually exhausted and spiritually depleted,” Pilarski said. The March 6 event took aim at topics Pilarski said Catholic mothers need to give peace and meaning to their lives.

The challenge of parenting in a consumer culture

March 5, 2010

TORONTO - When Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare 2 entered her teenage son’s vocabulary this year, Mary hit the panic button. First, she didn’t like that “all his friends” were playing this game with a mature rating, and second, she worried about the impact a controversial terrorist mission within the game might have on his developing mind. The arguments began. “I didn’t know what to do,” said Mary, who’s name has been changed for this story. “My son is a great kid, he does really well in school and he just wants to play the game to unwind.”

Caritas struggles to reach rural Chileans after earthquake

March 5, 2010

LIMA, Peru - While media attention focuses on looting and relief efforts in Concepcion, the largest city near the epicenter of a magnitude 8.8 earthquake that struck Chile Feb. 27, Catholic Church workers are struggling to reach quake victims in rural areas. “We are receiving funds to help the poorest people, who are in the countryside,” Fr. Waldo Alfaro, head of the Caritas Chile office in Linares, said March 1 in a telephone interview. Linares is in the Maule region, where most of the quake deaths occurred.

More funding sought for palliative care

March 5, 2010

TORONTO - The executive director of the Canadian Hospice Palliative Care Association is calling for increased funding for community care, including at-home palliative care, in the wake of a study that found Canadian families are paying a high price to care for loved ones at home. “If there’s no proper support, we crush the backs of Canadian caregivers and families,” Sharon Baxter told The Catholic Register from Ottawa. The general trend has been for people wanting to receive care in their own homes, Baxter said. In the long run, it’s the least costly option.

Papal encyclical fuses love and justice

March 5, 2010

OTTAWA - The Pope’s latest social justice encyclical Caritas in Veritate could launch a revolution of divine love says a Harvard-trained economist and Jesuit priest. Speaking at Saint Paul University on Mar. 1, Fr. Bill Ryan urged parishes and dioceses to launch small group-study sessions of the document to bring about Church renewal.

Br. André canonization a wake-up call for Quebec

March 5, 2010

The canonization of Br. André next October should serve as a wake-up call for the Catholic Church in Quebec, said Fr. Alain Faubert, assistant to the vicar general of the Montreal archdiocese. “I hope we would seize the moment and re-propose the faith to our society — not just to those who attend our Sunday liturgies and our other activities, but also to the larger public of all origins and spiritual traditions,” Faubert said.

Record crowd attends 2010 Ordinandi Dinner in Toronto

March 5, 2010

In 1990, 50 people gathered to celebrate the upcoming ordinations of a small group of soon-to-be priests. Twenty years later, a record 1,760 attended this still-growing tradition known as the Ordinandi Dinner. Held in Toronto’s Pearson Convention Centre on Mar. 1, and hosted by Serra International, an organization promoting religious vocations, the Ordinandi Dinner celebrated its 20th anniversary by welcoming into religious life 10 men from St. Augustine’s and Redemptoris Mater Seminaries.

World Youth Alliance active and growing in Canada

March 5, 2010

TORONTO - The Canadian committee of the World Youth Alliance marked its recent inception by hosting speakers Feb. 27 on the topic of refugees, immigrants and multiculturalism in Canada. The World Youth Alliance, based in New York City, is an international body of youth promoting human dignity at the United Nations and in communities around the globe. The conference was the third of its kind — similar conferences were held in 2008 and 2009 in Ottawa and New York City — but the first planned and executed by an organized Canadian committee.

St. Anthony relic comes to Toronto

March 5, 2010

TORONTO - A relic of St. Anthony of Padua will be returning to Canada accompanied by three Italian Franciscan friars this month. St. Anthony, commonly referred to as the patron saint of lost articles, joined the Franciscan order in 1221 at the age of 26. He is a Doctor of the church and is typically portrayed in art with a book and the Infant Child Jesus.

Finding joy in everything is heroic, counter-cultural

March 5, 2010

Everyone has had one of those horrible days. You wake up late, burn your toast, forget to call that person, get screamed at by a grumpy pedestrian, pull into the gas station the wrong way, spill tomato sauce on your white shirt—the works. And then you’re standing on the sidewalk by a puddle and a truck speeds through it and you’re drenched. I had a day like that, with a different sequence of events, some of them worse than burnt toast, but which had the same puddle-drenching finale.

Artist Galina Oussatchevafaith enlightened through iconography

March 5, 2010

TORONTO - There’s an art to looking at eternity, but figuring that out wasn’t easy for 29-year-old Russian-Canadian iconographer Galina Oussatcheva. Oussatcheva grew up in communist and post-communist Moscow at a time when Russian society was still phobic about religion and as secularized and post-Christian as any capital in Western Europe. She first saw Russian icon painting when she was 10 years old, on a class trip to the Cathedral of the Dormition of Mary in the Kremlin.

You are witnesses to these things

March 5, 2010

Editor’s note: This is the third place entry for the Friars Student Writing Award contest sponsored by the Franciscan Friars of the Atonement and The Catholic Register. Thien-An Nguyen, 17, is a Grade 12 student at Loretto Abbey Catholic Secondary School in Toronto. “You are witnesses to these things” (Luke 24: 48). While some manuscripts unfortunately omit “witness” from their texts, this seven-letter word contains an insight on what it means to be a Christian that St. Luke may not have even perceived. In fact, the term “witness” may be more appropriate now than ever in describing Christianity.

March 9

Nigerian archbishop says conflict is economic, cultural, not religious

March 9, 2010

VATICAN CITY - Cultural, economic and tribal differences are feeding the bloody conflict between Nigerian farmers and herders that has left hundreds of people dead, an archbishop from the African country said. The violence is not inspired by religious differences, even though the ethnic Berom farmers are Christian and the ethnic Fulani herders are Muslim, Archbishop John Olorunfemi Onaiyekan of Abuja told Vatican Radio in a telephone interview March 8.

March 10

Church responding decisively to new sex abuse reports, official says

March 10, 2010

VATICAN CITY - The religious orders and bishops' conferences dealing with cases of clerical sexual abuse of children in Germany, Austria and the Netherlands are acting quickly, decisively and with transparency to uncover the truth and assist the victims, said the Vatican spokesman. Jesuit Father Federico Lombardi, director of the Vatican press office, said March 9 that the religious orders and bishops' conferences not only "have proven their commitment to transparency, in a certain sense they have accelerated the uncovering of the problem by asking victims to come forward even when it involved cases from many years ago." The correct way to proceed, he said, is to recognize what happened and concretely demonstrate concern for the victims and the consequences the abuse has had on them.

March 11

Anglicans to seek union with Catholic Church

March 11, 2010

OTTAWA - Anglican groups around the world are responding to Pope Benedict XVI’s offer to come into communion with the Catholic Church, with Canadian groups expected to make similar requests soon. Anglican Church in America (ACA) bishops and Anglican Use Roman Catholic parish representatives announced March 3 they have jointly requested the establishment of a Personal Ordinariate in the United States. Requests have been sent from the United Kingdom, Australia and elsewhere.