Browse › 2010 › July

July 2010

July 14

Frank Runyeon delivers Scripture the way it was meant to be

July 14, 2010

Frank Runyeon [images/stories/arts/runyeonweb.jpg]BRAMPTON, Ont. - In the time of Jesus’ ministry, people of all ages and walks of life would gather in seemingly ordinary places simply to hear Jesus speak. In a “more modern and secular world that holds a media-driven mindset, ignoring or even rejecting the values Jesus taught,” Hollywood TV star Frank Runyeon shows no shame in his faith. Instead, he uses his talents and industry experience to spread the same message Jesus was preaching 2,000 years ago.

July 15

New Vatican norms strengthen efforts against abusive priests

July 15, 2010

Father Federico Lombardi [images/stories/international/international10/lombardi3.jpg]VATICAN CITY - The Vatican has revised its procedures for handling priestly sex abuse cases, streamlining disciplinary measures, extending the statute of limitations and defining child pornography as an act of sexual abuse of a minor. Vatican officials said the changes allow the Church to deal with such abuse more rapidly and effectively, often through dismissal of the offending cleric from the priesthood.

July 19

Lack of census data will hurt Catholic entities

July 19, 2010

Canada 2011 Census [images/stories/canada/canada10/census2011.jpg]TORONTO - Making the long form of the 2011 census voluntary has got Catholic schools, social service agencies and Toronto archdiocesan administrators worried. Religious affiliation, language spoken at home, immigration status, marital status and a great deal more is recorded on the long form of the Statistics Canada census, which in the past was sent out to 20 per cent of the population and had to be filled out or the recipient was penalized. Religious affiliation is one of a few categories recorded only every other census, once every 10 years.

July 20

Catholic AIDS expert says study lends credibility to faith leaders' work

July 20, 2010

AIDS Demonstration Vienna [images/stories/international/international10/aids_demo.jpg]VIENNA - A new UN AIDS study has lent credibility to faith leaders who have long argued that behavioural change was a key to combating the spread of the illness, says a Catholic expert on the disease. "Within the United Nations, there is more and more attention to focusing on abstinence and the reduction of the number of sexual partners as well as the strategy of promoting condoms," U.S. Msgr. Robert Vitillo, special adviser to Caritas Internationalis on HIV and AIDS, told Catholic News Service. "This is a validation of what we've done."

July 21

Character will make you wealthy

July 21, 2010

18th Sunday in Ordinary Time (Year C) Aug. 1 (Ecclesiastes 1:2; 2:21-23; Psalm 90; Colossians 3:1-5, 9-11; Luke 12:13-21) Who is Ecclesiastes? In some translations Qoheleth is rendered the “Teacher” or “Preacher” while others translate Qoheleth as the name of a person. But one thing is clear: he is probably not the sort of person you would invite to a party or an outing. He often strikes the reader as dour, cynical and world-weary. In fact, a fair number of rabbis were somewhat reluctant to admit this book into the canon of Scripture — it seems to lack joy, hope or a sense of life’s purpose.

Tensions increase after Pakistani Christian brothers shot dead in court

July 21, 2010

Pakistan Christians [images/stories/international/international10/pakistan.jpg]FAISALABAD, Pakistan - Two Christians have been killed, a church ransacked and shops burned as Muslim-Christian tensions erupted into five hours of violence in Faisalabad July 19. Police restored order and dispersed the crowds by using shellfire. One day later, the situation remained tense, reported the Asian church news agency UCA News. The murdered Christians were brothers who had been charged with publishing and distributing a blasphemous, anti-Islamic pamphlet. They were shot dead as they arrived at court to face the charges.

July 22

Homeless left in the cold when it comes to getting medical help

July 22, 2010

homeless [images/stories/misc/homeless2.jpg]TORONTO - Canada's universal health care system is pretty universal — except if you're homeless, according to a St. Michael's Hospital study. One in six homeless people in Toronto, 17 per cent, say they need care for a medical condition and haven't been able to get it. Homeless women with dependent children have almost twice as much trouble getting to see a doctor as mothers generally do in Toronto, said the study by Dr. Stephen Hwang of the Centre for Research on Inner City Health at Toronto's St. Michael's Hospital. The study will be published in the August edition of the American Journal of Public Health.

U.N. study supports Vatican approach to AIDS

July 22, 2010

Mid-week, news broke on the results of a new U.N study released at the World Aids Conference in Vienna. According to some reports, the study gives credence to the Church's long held belief that changes in behaviour are effective in dealing with the scourge of AIDS. The 'odd' thing is that as of Thursday morning only Catholic news outlets were reporting the story.

Pope is evangelizing in midst of storm

July 22, 2010

It may not seem like it but there are other issues demanding attention as the secular media focuses on the sexual abuse scandal. At the end of June, Benedict XVI announced the creation of the Pontifical Council for new evangelization. The Boston Globe, in a detailed examination of a new campaign by the Archdiocese to 'Call Catholics Home', and Foreign Policy magazine's examination of Benedict's hope to re-evanglize Europe give a real sense of the issues being confronted at the global and local levels. And it is not an issue the new Prefect of the Congregation For Bishops, Cardinal Marc Ouellet is unfamiliar with. In 2008, the then Primate of the Canadian Catholic Church penned a fascinating essay on evangelization and the Province of Quebec.

Linking abuse with ordination a cheap ploy

July 22, 2010

Without doubt the story that snagged everyone's attention this week, and not always positively, came out the Vatican. The Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith outlied new procedures dealing with major crimes. News organizations as different as The New York Times , The Muslim News and The Catholic Register rightly felt compelled to cover the story. Unfortunately, few in the mainstream media seemed able to resist the cheap urge to link the new rules on the ordination of women and new procedures for dealing with the sexual abuse of children. And even fewer could resist using the conjunction as an excuse for ridicule or indignation. The indignation rings a bit hollow given that The New York Times ran their editorial condemming the new procedures as inadequate almost a week before the new procedures were published. One of the clearest explanations of the announcement and the history behind it is found in a column by Fr. John Zuhlsdorf, whose explanation of the reasoning for the 'conjunction' of the two 'crimes' actually makes logical sense if not public relations brilliance. It's this lack of deft touch when it comes to public communication that most concerns R.R. Reno, senior editor at First Things. Reno steps back in a provocative editorial and asks if the entire scandal has still worrisome surprises and twists to come. MORE

July 26

On the Papal Front

July 26, 2010

Benedict XVI tends to attract attention, even if it is for something as relatively meaningless as the factoid that he is now the 7th oldest Pope in history. But the more interesting news the past few days is the extent to which the former professor and active intellectual continues to turn out new books. His latest one is aimed at the children among us or in us all. And if telling the story of Jesus and the Apostles in a child-friendly way isn't sufficient, don't worry, he is not done yet. He is at work on the third and final volume of his 'Jesus of Nazareth' scheduled to be published in the spring of next year. Most of the attention he is garnering these days, at least in Britain, concerns his forthcoming Papal visit. While some, Dawkins and company, mainly are speculating about ways of arresting the Pope when he arrives on British soil, others are clamouring for tickets to his scheduled masses. And if trying to score a ticket to the masses is insufficient entertainment, much of the intellectual buzz surrounds the Beatification of Cardinal Newman, something that Michael Coren has written about recently. By the way, in case you were worried, the British Government now has a plan to insure that his Holiness is not arrested when he arrives.

Making Sense of the Economic Crisis and Church Social Doctrine

July 26, 2010

Most countries in the world are still wrestling with the fallout of the collapse of the financial markets in the fall of 2008. In the U.S. there is an intriguing argument brewing over what if anything the USCCB should be advocating in terms of Government intervention in the economy. The Acton Institute, a conservative/libertarian economic think tank has recently decided to dwell on the meaning of the Church's doctrine of subsidiarity and how it should or shouldn't be applied to current economic thinking. Catholic Culture in the U.S., a news aggregator and commentator on all matters Catholic has also weighed in, but with a slighty more intense assertion about the real meaning of 'social doctrine'. It's worth reading both and as a thought experiment, substitute the word Canada everytime the words America, The United States or U.S.A are used.

The Truth about Residential Schools

July 26, 2010

The story that needs to be read, absorbed and reflected on appeared in the Toronto Star this weekend. It is a gripping though somewhat tragic recap of the progress, or actually lack of progress, being made by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission in wrestling with the history and impact of the Indian Residential School System. Everyone has a stake in getting this story right and Linda Diebel's article is an important starting point. Ironically also dealing with education is this story out of last week's Assembly of First Nation's general assembly. The relationship between the Church and Canada's Aboriginal People's is not without controversy but if you haven't checked out how it all started, you should take a look at this piece by Carolyn Girard in the Catholic Register last month.

July 27

Pope grants papal delegate broad powers over Legionaries

July 27, 2010

Archbishop Velasio De Paolis [images/stories/international/international10/depaolis.jpg]ROME - Pope Benedict XVI has given his new papal delegate broad powers of authority over the Legionaries of Christ as part of a major Vatican-led reform of the order. Italian Archbishop Velasio De Paolis has authority over the order's current superiors and can even override the order's constitutions. He will have a say in all areas of the order including its governance, decisions involving personnel, education and ordination, as well as how assets are spent.

July 28

The right call

July 28, 2010

Canada Census 2011 [images/stories/canada/canada10/census2011.jpg]The world has come a long way since Mary and Joseph went to Bethlehem to be counted in King Herod’s census. In our technological age, information and statistics shape our everyday living. Our personal information is digitally stored and used by everybody from the taxman, health providers and bankers to government licensing agencies that keep track of everyone from drivers to fishermen to hot-dog vendors. There seems to be almost universal agreement that gathering detailed data is essential to a smooth-running society. But how far should governments go to collect a citizen’s personal information? That is the crux of a debate sparked by a federal announcement that Canadians will no longer face fines and possible jail time for refusing to complete the long-form version of the Statistics Canada census.

Proof is overwhelming Pius XII saved Jewish lives

July 28, 2010

Last year I wrote about Pope Pius XII and the atrocious smear campaign that has been at work against the great man’s reputation since the early 1960s. I wrote then what I had written in books and columns over the years that the man who was pontiff during the Second World War was a saintly and heroic opponent of Nazism who hid and saved Jewish people, did all that he could to resist the Holocaust and was thanked by the Jewish community and revered by its leader in Israel and the Diaspora. Then came the scurrilous and seldom seen play The Deputy and allegations by enemies of the papacy — inside and outside of the Church — that Pius was a collaborator and an enemy of tolerance and decency. Mine is a relatively unimportant voice compared to the roars of Jewish historians such as Sir Martin Gilbert and Rabbi David Dalin, who for years have been trying to explain to the Jewish, Catholic and greater world that we’ve got it horribly wrong about Pope Pius and — important this — that it’s all part of a wider attempt to discredit Catholicism. Bad Pope, bad Church, bad Catholics. Now it seems that the message may, just may, have got through.

The 12th rekindles memories of a violent past

July 28, 2010

On the 12th of July, my mother travelled to Glasgow. I was not happy. There are nicer days to go to Glasgow. Last year I went to Glasgow on the 12th of July to meet my father at the airport, and the bus was full of tipsy men going to their Orange Day festivities. Orange marches snaked down the streets. There were Glasgow Rangers emblems everywhere, reminders of the sectarian soccer violence that until recently plagued the city. “Now you boys behave,” said a woman on the bus to a middle-aged skinhead. “Hello, hello!” the skinhead chortled, quoting the sectarian ditty, “The Billy Boys.”

God will lead us out of the darkness

July 28, 2010

19th Sunday in Ordinary Time (Year C) Aug. 8 (Wisdom 18:6-9; Psalm 33; Hebrews 11:1-2; 8-19; Luke 12:32-48) What did they know and when did they know it? This old legal question from the Watergate era can also be applied to Wisdom’s retelling of the Exodus story. We are given to believe that the Israelites knew beforehand exactly what was going to transpire. They knew God’s plan, the impending destruction of the Egyptians, as well as their imminent deliverance. But this does not square with the Exodus account itself, and indeed Wisdom is a theological reinterpretation of Exodus written over a thousand years after the event. It also does not explain Israel’s infidelity and lack of faith in the wilderness immediately after their escape.

Three generations of faith in the media

July 28, 2010

In the early 1950s, Stephen Dunn spent his senior year of high school contemplating whether to become a priest or go into broadcasting. Sixty years after deciding his vocation was to the media, his legacy spans three generations of Catholic television broadcasting in the Dunn family of Ancaster, Ont., near Hamilton.

SummerDaze of fun, faith

July 28, 2010

Summer Daze [images/stories/ysn/ysn10/summerdaze.jpg]TORONTO - The spirit of Don Bosco is alive at the Catholic day camp SummerDaze, where, through song and games, kids find just the right combination of faith and fun. SummerDaze, which runs out of St. Benedict’s parish in northwest Toronto, was founded in 1989 by Salesian Brother Bernie Dube to serve youth in the summer. In its first year, it had fewer than 25 campers and five staff. It now hosts around 200 campers weekly with a staff of more than 50, most of them volunteers. It ran through the four weeks of July and was open to children aged seven-14. “There’s always a spiritual lesson to be learned within the fun,” said Foster Kwon, camp director.