FREE access to the digital edition and archives until September 2. Click here. →
Browse › 2010 › May
May 14, 2010
DISC logo [images/stories/logos/logos10/disclogo.jpg]TORONTO - In today’s era of evangelization, churches need to be armed with the technological know-how and new media savvy to help advance their ministry. An upcoming North American conference aims to help equip dioceses and parishes in Canada and the United States to navigate and succeed in the world of Facebook, Twitter and electronic giving.
Toronto mayor candidates [images/stories/toronto/toronto10/torontomayorcandidates.jpg]TORONTO - At least four of the would-be mayors of Toronto want something from the city’s churches, synagogues, mosques and temples. As mayor, Rocco Rossi would ask for an inventory of all social services offered by faith groups, George Smitherman would ask for a co-ordinated effort from faith groups on homelessness, Joe Pantalone would ask faith communities for help integrating immigrants into the fabric of the city, and Rob Ford wants churches to phone and alert him of any homeless people on the streets so he can personally drive out, pick them up and take them to a shelter.
Catholic Family Service of Dufferin-Peel new centre [images/stories/toronto/toronto10/durhampeelcentre.jpg]BRAMPTON, Ont. - A man who lost his job is anxious about how to pay the bills. He’s run out of savings, his credit cards are maxed out. This causes anxiety, depression, even domestic abuse as tensions mount at home, taking a toll on the family. A woman who suffers abuse at the hands of her husband is afraid to file a report with police. Her children who witness the abuse are traumatized.
Kelden Formosa [images/stories/education/education10/keldentalks.jpg]TORONTO - May 11 marked the first Toronto Catholic District School Board collaboration with students to promote leadership on pro-life issues. The TCDSB hosted it’s annual Respect for Life Week but turned its usual keynote address into a student leadership day which drew more than 70 students to learn about the issues and how to take action.
Fr. Antoine Thomas [images/stories/toronto/toronto10/frantoinekids.jpg]TORONTO - The man who travels the world bringing eucharistic adoration to children captivated young spirits and old at Blessed Trinity Catholic Church in Toronto May 11. Fr. Antoine Thomas, a native of France, has been leading children in adoration of Jesus for 15 years and his adoration program, “Children of Hope,” is widely used in parishes around the world. His rare Ontario visit began in Midland, Ont., followed by the May 11 session at the Toronto church, which was also to host two Toronto primary schools for a session May 12. More than 100 people joined his Tuesday Holy Hour at Blessed Trinity.
Michael Hryniuk [images/stories/education/education10/hryniukmichael.jpg]“I’m not religious. I’m spiritual.” Catholic spirituality expert Michael Hryniuk has heard this one too many times. But he says while many people leave the Church in pursuit of something “more spiritual,” many of those still practising their Catholic faith miss out on the Church’s valuable mystical tradition — often because the terminology scares them away.
Gustavo Gutierrez [images/stories/toronto/toronto10/guitierezgustavo.jpg]TORONTO - Before rejecting Gustavo Gutierrez’s claim for asylum, a board member of Canada’s Immigration and Refugee Board asked the decorated police detective why he didn’t just take his concerns about death threats to a higher level of Mexican law enforcement. Months later Gutierrez is still stunned by the question.
Tom Monaghan [images/stories/toronto/toronto10/monaghantom.jpg]TORONTO - The culture war between liberal and conservative Catholics in the United States is not a good thing, but it will only end when liberal Catholics embrace conservative principles or leave the Church entirely, says America’s richest and most controversial Catholic philanthropist. Tom Monaghan, who won a World Series as owner of the Detroit Tigers and who built up Domino’s Pizza to 6,200 franchises world-wide then sold the company to an investment firm for $1 billion in 1998, makes no apology for using his wealth to recreate the Church he remembers from the 1940s and ’50s.
2010 March for Life [images/stories/canada/canada10/2010marchforlife.jpg] OTTAWA - The largest ever March for Life May 13 marked growing momentum for the pro-life movement. The crowd estimated at 12,500 celebrated the recent defeat of the euthanasia and assisted suicide Bill C-384 and Parliament’s vote to not include abortion in a Canadian-led G8 maternal and child health initiative.
Paula Butturini [images/stories/books/paulabutturini.jpg]TORONTO - For Paula Butturini, 15 years of continuous tragedies were countered by moments of unexpected grace and solace found in the rituals of preparing and sharing food around the dinner table. In her book Keeping the Feast: One Couple’s Story of Love, Food and Healing in Italy, published this year by Riverhead Books, Butturini bounces the reader between a series of brutal, gut-wrenching events and peaceful, heartwarming stories that centre around food and fellowship — a gripping story of perseverance and hope.
May 18, 2010
Archbishop Thomas Collins ordained five new priest [images/stories/toronto/toronto10/ordination10.jpg]TORONTO - Upon the reading of their names, with one small step forward symbolizing years of training and discernment, each of the five men ordained to the priesthood for the archdiocese of Toronto vowed their commitment to the priesthood. “It's a glorious ceremony, but it all comes down to the giving of self,” Archbishop Thomas Collins, who welcomed the men into the priesthood on May 15 at the ordination ceremony at St. Michael's Cathedral.
May 19, 2010
First I blame the hall phone. The buttons stick, the battery is weak, and when the famous interviewer called from Italy, it wouldn’t let me answer. Great was the hue and cry in the McLean household as I rushed to the kitchen to pick up the other phone before it was too late. But it was too late. I had to wait, embarrassed, until the man called back. Second I blame a kind friend. Some months ago, she wrote to me of a priest in England who considers me an unsafe person to talk to his conference of English Catholic teenagers about the single life. Apparently I might be too liberal, a concern that would make my friends, enemies and family members fall about with loud guffaws. However, it is also the sort of libel that makes Catholic theology professors have nervous breakdowns and Catholic authors second-guess every word they write or say.
In the middle of May euthanasia became the lead story on Ontario radio and television and even made the front pages of the national press. About time too. Nor was it merely a media sensation. People actually took time off work to demonstrate outside the building where the “mercy killing” was taking place. They chanted, sang, nailed crosses into the ground to represent the victims and gave interviews in which they cried with anger and emotion. No, no, don’t be silly. It wasn’t because handicapped children, old people or the terminally ill were being killed. That would hardly cause a ripple within the numbed populace and Canadian journalism. No, not humans but 350 cats and dogs were being put down because of a major outbreak of ringworm in an animal shelter just north of Toronto. Such was the outcry that local politicians became involved, the Premier spoke out and a campaign was launched to “save the innocent.” Quite so. The innocent. Yet just a few minutes away from where all this happened were groups of mentally ill people who sleep rough in freezing conditions, beg for food and are regularly insulted and spat upon. So please spare me the argument that care for animals and care for humans are part of some inevitable continuum. They aren’t. We have managed to escalate our empathy for animals to a hysterical, pagan level at the direct expense of people.
Trinity Sunday (Year C) May 30 (Proverbs 8:22-31; Psalm 8; Romans 5:1-5; John 16:12-15) Nearly every Christian home has a Bible — sometimes it is read with regularity, but often it is little more than an adornment. Unfortunately even many of those who read it do so in a superficial or literal manner.
The Good Man Jesus and The Scoundrel Christ [images/stories/books/080212996x.jpg]The Good Man Jesus and The Scoundrel Christ, by Philip Pullman (Knopf, 256 pages, hardcover, $27.) Well-known authors have tried to retell the Jesus story in fictional form over the last few decades. Some, like C.S. Lewis in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, used a highly imaginative and metaphorical setting. Nikos Kazantzakis with his very earthy Jesus in The Last Temptation of Christ and Anne Rice with her recent and much more prosaic rendering in the Christ The Lord series both chose a literal retelling of the Gospel.
Lorraine Williams [images/stories/arts/arts10/williams_lorraine.jpg]MARKHAM, Ont. - If Marshall McLuhan says you ought to be on the left bank of the Seine writing, perhaps you should book a trip to Paris and buy a leather-bound notebook. But that’s not what Lorraine Williams did after her famous English professor told her he thought she might have a career as a writer. Not that she didn’t appreciate McLuhan’s encouragement of her very young self as she sipped wine at a reception following graduation from Toronto’s University of St. Michael’s College in 1953.
Marci McDonald is a conspiracy theorist who thinks she has zeroed in on a conspiracy that threatens everything Canadians love about Canada but one that the rest of us are wilfully blind to notice, except of course for those intimately involved in the conspiracy. I know this because she tells me so for 432 pages in her new book The Armageddon Factor: The Rise of Christian Nationalism in Canada. Tells me so repeatedly with varying degrees of emphasis and alarm. She knows this conspiracy exists because she discovered it while everyone else in the media was too lazy, too smug or too indifferent to notice what was going on all around them. The problem with being a conspiracy theorist is that you tend to see the conspiracy everywhere and the fact that others don’t see it is just further proof of how insidious and effective the conspiracy is.
Cardinal Marc Ouellet and baby [images/stories/canada/canada10/ouellet_baby.jpg]OTTAWA - A popular Quebec columnist said he hopes Cardinal Marc Ouellet will die after a long, painful illness because he called abortion a moral crime even in cases of rape. “Why should we push a woman who has been the victim of a crime to commit one of her own,” Ouellet told a pro-life conference in Quebec City May 15, prompting a province-wide backlash.
May 21, 2010
Pope crowd [images/stories/international/international10/popecrowd.jpg]VATICAN CITY - Two days after a crowd of 150,000 wildly cheered Pope Benedict XVI in Portugal, an estimated 120,000 people converged on St. Peter’s Square to express support for the Pope in dealing with the clerical sexual abuse scandal. The Italian National Consultation of Lay Groups, a Catholic organization, spearheaded the effort to bring Catholics to St. Peter’s Square on May 16 to join the Pope and show their support. A variety of Catholic organizations and movements, labour unions and political groups joined them, filling St. Peter’s Square and spilling onto the adjacent streets.
Jesuit Father Luis Arriaga [images/stories/canada/canada10/arriaga.jpg] TORONTO - Allegations that a Mexican human rights organization either endorsed or helped efforts pushing for expanded access to legal abortion were never true, its director has told The Catholic Register. Last March LifeSiteNews.com alleged that the Jesuit-founded Centro Pro Derechos Humanos Miguel Agustin Pro Juarez and four other human rights organizations that receive funding from the Canadian Catholic Organization for Development and Peace were signatories to a report calling for legal abortions in the first trimester of pregnancy throughout Mexico. Currently, first trimester abortions are only legal in Mexico City.