FREE access to the digital edition and archives until September 2. Click here. →
Browse › 2010 › November
November 12, 2010
movember [images/stories/education/education10/movember.jpg]TORONTO - Jamie Dowell will be growing a moustache this month. But vanity has nothing to do with it. Dowell, a Grade 12 student at St. Michael’s College School in Toronto, is taking part in the school’s inaugural Movember campaign — a global initiative where men grow moustaches and raise money to increase awareness and funds for prostate cancer. “Prostate cancer will probably affect at least someone we know in our lives and, being men, it’s something that we should have a basic knowledge about and support it in every way we can,” said Dowell.
St. Lawrence Basilica in Asheville, N.C. [images/stories/features/st.-lawrence-basilica.jpg]ASHEVILLE, N.C. - The picturesque city of Asheville in North Carolina is nestled in the foothills of the Appalachian mountains. Among its many tourist attractions is a remarkable spiritual gem — the Basilica of St. Lawrence. Located in the city’s core, its striking copper-covered dome, which is the focus of attention when first viewing the basilica, and exquisite interior give it a place of honour among American houses of worship.
Don Trembley [images/stories/features/feature10/trembleydon.jpg]Don Trembley started committing armed robbery when he was 12. He grew up to be an honest-to-God Montreal bank robber. The last time he was incarcerated he split seven years between Joyceville Institution in Kingston, Ont., and Warkworth Institution near Campbellford, Ont., for armed robbery, weapons dangerous and assault causing bodily harm. He’s a big guy in a leather vest with a long grey ponytail and a silver cross hanging by a silver chain around his neck. In a Toronto halfway house now, he will remain under the supervision of the prison system for years to come.
prison cell [images/stories/features/feature10/prison-bars.jpg]Editor’s note: Restorative Justice Week has been marked for the past 20 years by the ecumenical organization that co-ordinates Christian chaplaincy in Canada’s federal prisons. This year, the Nov. 14-21 event comes on the heals of sweeping changes in how criminals are sentenced and how they are reintegrated into society. The Catholic Register looks at how the Church works with prisoners as they re-enter our world. As he sat in jail month after month trying to make sense of his life, Bruce Rowe one day knew he wasn’t quite so interested in freedom. “I realized when I was inside all of that didn’t matter if I didn’t become a better person,” said Rowe.
VATICAN CITY - Respect for each person's relationship with God is an essential part of building a just social order and real peace, Pope Benedict XVI said in a letter to Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. [images/stories/international/international10/benedict_ahmadinejad.jpg]VATICAN CITY - Respect for each person's relationship with God is an essential part of building a just social order and real peace, Pope Benedict XVI said in a letter to Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. "It is my profound conviction that respect for the transcendent dimension of the human person is an indispensable condition for the construction of a just social order and a stable peace," the Pope wrote to the Iranian leader.
habash collins [images/stories/toronto/toronto10/habash_collins.jpg]TORONTO - It was a brazen and brutal attack on Iraqi Christians practising their faith, but Syriac Catholic Bishop Yousif Habash, instead of seeking vengeance, preached a message of peace to more than 800 people attending a Remembrance Day service at St. Michael's Cathedral. The prayer vigil in remembrance of the 58 Christians murdered and 75 injured during an Oct. 31 attack on Our Lady of Salvation Church in Baghdad during Sunday Mass was organized by the archdiocese of Toronto and its Office of Ecumenism and Interfaith Affairs. “They can take our lives away but they cannot take away our faith,” said Habash, the New Jersey-based bishop of Syriac Catholics in Canada and the United States.
November 14, 2010
This week’s prayer service/vigil for Iraqi Christians, as reported by the Catholic Register, is a not so gentle reminder that dying for one’s faith is not some simply a story from history. People do it everyday. When the Catholic Cardinals arrive in Rome this week, on the agenda for their conclave is a discussion of the threats to religious freedom. It’s been at the top of the Church’s agenda for some time now. And not just the Church’s, it is a near constant refrain for the United States State Department as well, the most recent example is this comment by Secretary of State Hilary Clinton on a visit to Vietnam. During October’s Synod on the Middle East, Benedict XVI endorsed the Bishops’ call for ““urgent and useful” dialogue between Christians and Muslims on the issue. In an area of the world where changing one’s faith can result in death, the Synod’s insistence that all be entitled to “the right to renounce a religion to adhere to a religion or to change religion; the right to be atheist and the equal treatment of religions in accordance with the UN Human Rights Charter” was more than a simple statement of principle. While Religious Freedom was far from the only topic of discussion, as America Magazine nicely sums up, other issues seemed to hinge on or flow from the question. The deep implications were also to be found in the Papal letter to Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in which the Pope insisted “When the promotion of the dignity of the human person is the primary inspiration of political and social activity that is committed to search for the common good, solid and enduring foundations are created for building peace and harmony between peoples.” And the concerns are not just abstract as evidenced by the Papal denunciation of ‘violence in the name of God’. As Austen Ivereigh nicely summarizes in the Guardian, Christians are fleeing the Middle East, a trend exacerbated by the war in Iraq and the violence directed at the Christians who remain escalating. But as this story from 2008 reminds us this is not a new problem. The bombings this month just add to the pain. Jane Arraf, in this piece in the Sydney Morning Herald, points out that identifying the underlying reasons for the bombings is one thing; dealing with the reasons is something else entirely, especially in this news story in the Guardian is correct and Christians generally are just one more piece in the so-called war on terror. As this analysis from Foreign Policy Magazines notes, some observers are wondering if we might be witnessing “The End of Christianity in the Middle East?” But Chris Phillips in the Guardian takes another tack entirely and asks if this talk about Al Queda targeting Christians or wondering about the end of Mid-East Christianity is simply one more phase in the “Clash of Civilisation” narrative. On the other hand, Michael Grubb writing in the Jerusalem Post suggests that the situation is even more intensely complicated, arguing that in fact Christians, at least in Iraq, were safer under Saddam Hussein than they are now.
November 17, 2010
Development and Peace [images/stories/logos/logos09/DevPeace.jpg]OTTAWA - The Catholic Organization for Development and Peace (CCODP) has announced changes to its funding protocols to ensure that no money goes to organizations that support abortion. The changes come in the wake of year-old allegations that funds from CCODP had in many cases been funnelled to partners who were not adhering to Catholic teaching on life issues.
no swearing [images/stories/misc/misc10/swearing.jpg]American comedian George Carlin earned celebrity in the 1970s with a standup routine that saluted seven words you can never say on television. But, regrettably, time proved Carlin wrong. Many of those profane words are now routinely heard in Canadian family rooms during TV prime-time hours. That is hardly news to anyone who spends even a few minutes each evening watching TV. But a study out of Los Angeles by an advocacy group called the Parents Television Council (PTC) shows how startling far society’s decency metre has swung.
About a dozen years ago I was at a dinner party in the home of people I had not previously met. When our hostess discovered that I was a seminarian, she shrieked with perverse delight, announcing to all, “Wait until my husband hears about that!”
The recent massacre of more than 50 Iraqi Catholics inside their church by Islamic terrorists is best described as the work of some crazed, gruesome optician. Because while Christians in Islamic states have suffered for decades, now much of the world, including and sometimes particularly the Christian world, seemed blind to what was going on. It took this latest atrocity to clear the vision of many who prefer political myopia.
My husband reserved seats for Martin Stannard’s lecture on Dame Muriel Spark, and so one dark November evening I toddled around to Edinburgh’s National Library of Scotland to hear it. Muriel Spark is my favourite Scottish author. She is also one of my favourite Catholic novelists, the third of a trio including Evelyn Waugh and Graham Greene.
First Sunday of Advent (Year A) Nov. 28 (Isaiah 2:1-5; Psalm 122; Romans 13:11-14; Matthew 24:37-44) Where do human beings meet God and receive divine revelation? According to the ancient worldview it was often on a mountaintop and here Isaiah describes one that is the highest. This can only mean a more powerful encounter with God and a more profound and transforming revelation. This calls for leaving the comfort of human culture and thought systems and making oneself vulnerable. Not only that, the ascent requires elevating thoughts, ideals and desires away from self and towards God.
charity under investigation [images/stories/canada/canada10/charity2.jpg]TORONTO - A bill that would see Canadian charities forced to disclose the salaries of their highest-earning employees has run up against opposition from the charitable sector. If passed, Bill C-470 will create some “serious issues” within the sector, say officials with various charities. Charities have been fighting to kill the bill since it passed second reading in the House of Commons on April 21 by a 280 to 3 margin. It is set to head to the Standing Committee on Finance by the end of November, where committee members can amend it before it goes to third reading.
I have been the youth ministry co-ordinator at my parish for the past year and it has been an exciting journey. Running a youth ministry program can be daunting — I want everything to go according to plan. But too often I find myself being the one to make sure the youth leaders are listening to a talk or reminding them what activity is coming up next. And before any leader realizes they failed to do something, I have taken care of it.
The election of a new president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops is normally a fairly staid and predictable affair. The Current president steps down and his vice-president steps up and the cycle continues. Not this week. In what the Washington Post called a shocker, and the Los Angeles Times called surprising, Archbishop Timothy Dolan of New York defeated the Tucson Bishop Gerald Kicanas 128-111. Now while a surprise development, Bishop Kicanas’ election was clearly not a done deal in the days leading up to the annual meeting of the Bishops. Questions had been raised about the manner in which he dealt with the priest abuser Daniel McCormack. Bishop Kicanas quickly denied the assertions but in some senses the damage was done. Sexual Abuse victims in the United States saw the rejection of Kicanas as a victory for victims and evidence that the U.S.C.C.B. was finally starting to take the issue of clerical abuse seriously. A statement by SNAP on the election said “We can hope that his shocking defeat will help deter future clergy sex crimes and coverups by the Catholic hierarchy.” But it wasn’t just victims who saw Dolan’s election in these terms. Just as any secular election provokes contemplation, analysis and conjecture, so it is this year with the USCCB election. The obvious right left divide is being raised with Archbishop Dolan being characterized as a move to the right and the rejection of Kicanas as evidence of a rejection of the so-called Liberal wing of the Bishops’ Conference. Or there’s the view that electing Archbishop Dolan the Bishops were looking for a strong leader as Rocco Palmo told the Catholic News Agency. And there’s the view, from Maureen Fiedler, that sees Dolan beating Kicanas as a signal that the Tea Party virus is alive with the hierarchy of the Church in the U.S. John Allen in the National Catholic Reporter offers a much more nuanced take on why the Bishop’s might have chosen Dolan over Kicanas and it’s worth reading simply because it suggests that neither the folks cheering the election nor those decrying the election are exactly right.
November 18, 2010
The Man Who Hid Anne Frank [images/stories/toronto/toronto10/victor-kugler-book.jpg]TORONTO - While the harrowing story of Anne Frank and her family’s struggle for survival against the Nazis during the Second World War is a well-known one, it’s safe to assume that few people know the story of Victor Kugler. But it’s because of Kugler that we know the story of Anne Frank, the German-born, Netherlands-raised young Jewish girl who died at the hands of the Nazis, author Rick Kardonne told an audience of about 50 people Nov. 9 at a talk about his book, Victor Kugler: The Man Who Hid Anne Frank.
iraq funeral [images/stories/international/international10/iraqfuneral.jpg]WASHINGTON - The president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops urged the U.S. government to “redouble its efforts to assist Iraqis” in providing safety for its citizens, especially religious minorities. “To meet its moral obligations to the Iraqi people, it is critically important that the United States take additional steps now to help Iraq protect its citizens, especially Christians and others who are victims of organized attacks,” said Cardinal Francis George in a Nov. 9 letter to U.S. President Barack Obama.
Haiti girls school [images/stories/international/international10/schoolwash.jpg]PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti - Cholera in Haiti has killed close to 1,000 people and hospitalized more than 14,000 as parish volunteers and international aid organizations scramble to minimize the impact in Port-au-Prince, where one million people are still living in tents after last January’s devastating earthquake. As of Nov. 15 the official death toll was 917 and it is not expected to peak for a number of weeks yet. Symptoms of cholera, a water-borne infectious disease, include diarrhea, vomiting and fever. Untreated, the resulting dehydration is fatal.
cmic [images/stories/logos/cmiclogo.jpg]TORONTO - Four missionary bishops are in the archdiocese of Toronto in November to spread the word about the needs of Canada’s mission territories. Bishop Vincent Cadieux, O.M.I., of Moosonee and Hearst in Northern Ontario, Bishop Fred Colli of Thunder Bay, Archbishop Martin Currie of St. John’s and of Grand Falls, Nfld., and Bishop Gary Gordon of Whitehorse have been visiting parishes around the archdiocese and will continue to do so until the end of the month.