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February 2011

February 10

Rome diocese launches site dedicated to John Paul II's beatification

February 10, 2011

[images/stories/historical_people/PopeJohnPaulII/JohnPaul2kids.jpg]ROME - The diocese of Rome launched a new web site dedicated to the beatification and canonization of Pope John Paul II. Published in seven languages, the site www.karol-wojtyla.org offers news updates and background information on the late pope and his sainthood cause, as well as a live webcam of his tomb in the grotto of St. Peter's Basilica. The web site also announced that the beatification ceremony in St. Peter's Square May 1, Divine Mercy Sunday, will be open to the public and no tickets will be required to attend. The evening before the ceremony, April 30, there will be a prayer vigil at Rome's ancient Circus Maximus racetrack, it said.

February 11

Supporters rally for Toronto men facing execution in Iran

February 11, 2011

[images/stories/toronto/toronto11/1scharper.jpg]TORONTO - As the world's attention is focused on the unrest in Egypt, Canadians must not forget the political prisoners in Iran, say the supporters of two Toronto residents facing execution. Saeed Malekpour and Hamid Ghassemi-Shall were convicted without a fair trial and deny the charges against them, according to their Canadian supporters. Malekpour faces execution at any moment, while Ghassemi-Shall's death sentence was commuted to a life sentence last year but is pending confirmation by Iran's Supreme Court. Some 50 people braved a chilly winter evening for a candlelight vigil outside the University of Toronto's Massey College Feb. 9 to raise awareness of the men's plight.

February 12

There’s Not an App for That?

February 12, 2011

Sometimes the media gets two or more kicks at the same can and that clearly is the case with the ‘Confession: A Roman Catholic App’ developed for the iPhone and the iPad. Earlier this week there was a flurry of stories detailing how the Catholic Church had approved a ‘confession app’. Developed by Patrick Leinen of LittleiApps, the BBC reported that Bishop Kevin Rhoades of the Diocese of Fort Wayne-South Bend had given his approval to the project. What everyone seemed to miss was that no one ever actually said that the App replaced confession. That didn’t stop people from proclaiming that ‘confession app brings the catholic church into the 21st century’ nor confusing non-Catholics in numerous ways as noted by Joe Carter at First Things. Cathleen Falsani of Huffington Post on the other hand surveyed the muddy waters of serious vs comic confession apps (Confession is just one of a dozen apps available that touch on the subject of confession, expiation, and forgiveness) in her essay “iConfess: Apps for Coming Theologically Clean” which raises some intriguing issues about the increasing popularity of shortcuts to wiping the slate clean. So after a flurry of cute, bizarre and just wrong stories the Vatican issued a clarification. Which of course simply led to a flood of stories with headlines such as “Vatican Says iPhone Apps Won’t Forgive Your Sins”. This of course led to a series of ‘gentle chidings’ of the Church suggesting that giving people an easy way to confess might be a service, as Sholto Byrnes of the New Statesman argued in his essay “The God App: Vatican Should Rethink its Ban” Note there are a number of misconceptions flooding the headline so don’t be surprised that there are a few in the piece itself. But a number of columnists actually decided to turn the whole story on its head and used the flurry of attention to raise an intriguing point about the age of twitter and the sense of the important. Nigel Farndale of the Daily Telegraph wonders if we have just lost our sense of the importance of certain rituals and ceremonies in his essay “The Confession App Tells Us Exactly Where We’re Going Wrong”. And Elizabeth Drescher, a religion writer and scholar at Santa Clara University takes the matter to a whole different and important level when she ponders what effects technology might be having on our sense of the sacred in her essay “Confession Fail: iPhone Controversy Muddies Sacramental Waters”. Both are truly worth checking out and mulling over.

February 14

Transgender bill passes in Commons, heads to Senate

February 14, 2011

OTTAWA - A bill that could reshape society’s understanding of human sexuality by granting protected status to transgendered and transsexual people passed a final vote in the House of Commons and has gone to the Senate. NDP MP Bill Siksay’s private members’ Bill C-389, which would add gender identity and gender expression to the Criminal Code and the Canadian Human Rights Act, passed 143-135. Most Conservatives voted against the bill Feb. 9, including Prime Minister Stephen Harper, while the leaders of the Opposition parties all supported it.

February 15

After protests, priests fear Egyptian youths will turn away from Church

February 15, 2011

NAIROBI, Kenya - Two priests with strong ties to Egypt fear young Egyptian Catholics will turn away from the Church because it did not back the protests that led to the resignation of President Hosni Mubarak. "If we lose the youth in the Church, then we are done," said Fr. Makarios Isaac, an Egyptian-born priest of the archdiocese of Toronto and an associate of Maryknoll Fathers and Brothers who is currently based in Kenya. Isaac, originally ordained for the Coptic Catholic diocese of Minya, Egypt, and the former diocesan development director there, said the main Muslim and Orthodox leaders forbade participation in the protests. He said the Coptic Catholic patriarch of Alexandria, Cardinal Antonios Naguib, told protesters to go home.

February 16

We will never be abandoned nor forsaken by God

February 16, 2011

Eighth Sunday in Ordinary Time (Year A) Feb. 27 (Isaiah 49:14-15; Psalm 62; 1 Corinthians 4:1-5; Matthew 6:24-34) All God-language is metaphorical and symbolic, for God cannot be described or contained within any word or concept. In the Gospels Jesus routinely employs similes, metaphors and symbols, using everyday images to give hints and suggestions of the nature of God’s Kingdom. Symbolic modes of speech are useful for sketching the divine in very broad terms.

The passing of Archbishop Zycinski is a great loss for the Church

February 16, 2011

One of the brightest lights in the Catholic episcopate died suddenly in Rome on Feb. 10, at only 62 years old. I just met Archbishop Jozef Zycinski once — almost 17 years ago now. It was July 1994, and he was then the bishop of Tarnow, a rural diocese just outside Krakow. I was a student on the celebrated seminar led by Fr. Maciej Zieba, the Polish Dominican, and his American friends, Michael Novak, George Weigel and the late Fr. Richard John Neuhaus. Bishop Zycinski came to speak to us about religion and public life in the newly liberated Poland.

You may know it more for its football team, but Catholicism runs rampant at Notre Dame

February 16, 2011

I have just arrived in Toronto from the University of Notre Dame where I gave a talk on the single life. My invitation came about in an amusing way: on my blog for single Catholics, I asked jokingly who wanted to invite me to Notre Dame; before nightfall I received an e-mail from the Edith Stein Project committee inviting me to Notre Dame. Ask and ye shall receive. The Edith Stein Project sprang up in the controversy surrounding the performance at Notre Dame of Eve Ensler’s undignified little raunch-fest known locally as “Those Monologues.” In 2004, a group of undergraduate women felt that it was time to discuss women’s inherent dignity in the light of Mulieris Dignitatem, and began to plan a conference. The women chose for their patron the great philosopher-saint Edith Stein, whose thought on “the Woman Question” influenced John Paul II and current Catholic discourse on femininity.

'Selective Catholics' are theologically irrelevant

February 16, 2011

Joy, joy, joy! A bunch of theologians in Europe have reminded us why they are about as relevant as a shampoo salesman at a bald and proud convention. Britain’s Catholic Herald newspaper explained it pretty well recently: “More than 140 Catholic theologians from universities in Austria, Germany and Switzerland have called for the Church to end priestly celibacy, ordain women and allow lay people to help select bishops, among other changes,” it reported. “The 143 professors said their appeal was made in response to the clergy sexual abuse scandals that surfaced in Europe last year and that they no longer could remain silent in the face of what they say is a lingering crisis within the Catholic Church.”

Hope in Egypt

February 16, 2011

During the extraordinary days that culminated in the ouster of Hosni Mubarak, Christians and Muslims set aside religious differences to march together as Egyptian citizens demanding reform. Thus the protests that caused Mubarak’s resignation were not so much an Islamic uprising as they were a broad popular revolt that crossed deep religious divides. There were stories from Cairo of Christians forming protective circles around Muslims during Friday prayers, and Muslims reciprocating when, remarkably, Christians prayed in public. Christians held crosses next to Muslims carrying Qurans. Some protesters waved signs that had the Christian cross mingling with the Muslim crescent in a unified symbol. When the radical Muslim Brotherhood shouted “Allah Akbar!” they were drowned out by chants of “Muslim, Christian. . . we’re all Egyptian.”

Visitator to report Irish Church near collapse

February 16, 2011

DUBLIN - Boston Cardinal Sean O’Malley reportedly will tell Pope Benedict XVI that the Catholic Church in Ireland is “on the edge” of collapse due to the fallout from clerical abuse scandals. O’Malley is one of several senior prelates — including Toronto Archbishop Thomas Collins and Ottawa’s Archbishop Terrence Prendergast, S.J. — charged by Pope Benedict with carrying out an apostolic visitation of the Irish Catholic Church following a series of highly critical judicial reports that revealed abuse by priests and a widespread culture of cover-up for decades among Church leaders.

MaterCare seeks G8-initiative funds for Kenya hospital

February 16, 2011

MaterCare International has applied for funding from the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA) as part of the Muskoka Initiative Partnership Program, a program born out of last summer’s G8 Summit. Under its Partners for Development Program, CIDA launched a $75-million call for projects over $500,000 “to take a comprehensive and integrated approach to address maternal, newborn and child health,” according to its web site. With its application at the end of January, MaterCare, a St. John’s, Nfld. based non-governmental organization of health care professionals aiming to reduce abortion and maternal mortality, is looking for funding for a hospital for high-risk mothers in Isiolo, Kenya.

Yarmouth must sacrifice to pay for past sins

February 16, 2011

As a new round of negotiations with sex abuse victims continues, following a $1.5-million settlement shared among six victims, Halifax Archbishop Anthony Mancini has sent Catholics of Yarmouth a letter which includes a blistering assessment of priestly crimes and a bleak warning about future payouts. “The behaviour of these priests and their failures are criminal, immoral and shameful. There is no excuse for it and there is not much that can be done to change what has happened,” Mancini wrote Jan. 24. As archbishop of Halifax, Mancini is temporarily responsible for the smaller neighbouring diocese of Yarmouth. Yarmouth has not had a bishop since Bishop James Wingle was appointed to St. Catharines, Ont., in 2001. Wingle has since resigned his position in St. Catharines.

Fr. Gravel sues LifeSite over abortion-stance allegations

February 16, 2011

OTTAWA - Fr. Raymond Gravel, a Quebec Catholic priest and Bloc Quebecois MP from 2006-08, has launched a defamation lawsuit against LifeSiteNews.com. Gravel, who is incardinated in the Joliette diocese, is seeking $300,000 for the attack on his reputation and consequent pain and suffering, and another $200,000 in punitive damages for what he calls a voluntary, intentional and malicious attack. He said LifeSiteNews.com has reported that he is pro-abortion, a charge he denies. The lawsuit, if successful, could put an end to LifeSiteNews.com, said its editor.

Straining for Sabbath amidst the demands of phones and computers

February 16, 2011

A comedian recently quipped that today's information technologies have effectively rendered a number of things obsolete, most notably phone-books and human courtesy. That's also true for human rest. Today's information technologies (the internet, email, software programs like Facebook, mobile phones, IPhones, pocket computers, and the like) have made us the most informed, efficient, and communicative people ever. We now have the capability, all day, every day, of accessing world events, world news, whole libraries of information, and detailed accounts of what our families and friends are doing at any moment. That's the positive side of the equation. Less wonderful is what this is doing to our lives, how it is changing our expectations, and robbing us of the simple capacity to stop, shut off the machines, and rest. As we get wrapped up more and more in mobile phones, texting, email, Facebook, and the internet in general, we are beginning to live with the expectation that we must be attentive all the time to everything that's happening in the world and within the lives of our families and friends. The spoken and unspoken expectation is that we be available always - and so too others. We used to send each other notes and letters and expect a reply within days, weeks, or months. Now the expectation for a reply is minutes or hours, and we feel impatient with others when this expectation is not met and guilty inside of ourselves when we can't meet it.

World Social Forum works with — and for — the poor

February 16, 2011

In Davos at the World Economic Forum you might get to see Bono, Bill Gates and Nicholas Sarkozy having a quiet little chat. But you won't get to see what the Mary Durran saw in Dakar, Senegal, during this year's World Social Forum. "I witnessed an exchange yesterday (Feb. 7) between a Cambodian organization and a Senegalese organization," Durran, of the Canadian Catholic Organization for Development and Peace, told The Catholic Register in an e-mail. The Cambodians were worried by how government officials and corporations were working together to drive small farmers off their land so the companies can produce crops for export.

February 17

Quebec bishops seek help to maintain historic churches

February 17, 2011

Quebec church [images/stories/canada/canada11/quebecchurch.jpg]OTTAWA - Quebec’s Catholic bishops have asked the province to consider better ways to help maintain the churches and religious buildings associated with the provinces’ cultural heritage. The request by the Assembly of Catholic Bishops of Quebec’s religious patrimony committee was made in a Nov. 11 submission to the province’s Parliamentary commission of culture and education, but not made public until early February. In it, the bishops suggested revisions to Quebec’s Cultural Property Act. The bishops pointed out large sums of money are needed to maintain and restore churches and historic buildings belonging to religious communities. Otherwise, church properties will continue to be sold to developers who may turn them into condominiums or concert halls, they said.

Oda admits to doctoring KAIROS memo

February 17, 2011

Bev Oda [images/stories/canada/canada11/odag8.jpg]OTTAWA - The interfaith group KAIROS was denied $7 million in funding after an approval document signed by senior civil servants was doctored by International Co-operation Minister Bev Oda, the minister has admitted. The Conservative Minister now stands accused of lying to a committee of MPs when she testified on Dec. 9 that she did not know who altered the memo that was drafted by executives at the Canadian International Development Agency. The original CIDA memo indicated that its president and a vice-president approved a KAIROS request for a four-year funding grant. But after the memo had been signed by CIDA executives the word “not” was inserted by hand to change a key sentence to read “not approve,” creating the impression that CIDA had rejected the request. On Feb. 14 Oda admitted in the House of Commons that she ordered that the “not” be inserted, contradicting statements she had made two months earlier.

Strokes of genius: National Gallery to exhibit Caravaggio masterpieces

February 17, 2011

Caravaggio [images/stories/arts/arts11/caravaggio.jpg]TORONTO - There is no cause for sainthood for Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio. The painter who gave birth to baroque art was a scoundrel. A brilliant virtuoso with a paintbrush, Caravaggio was dangerous with a sword. He paraded about Rome with his weapon at his side and brawled frequently. In 1606 he killed a man. He was himself dead in 1610 at the age of 38. But no one can claim to understand Caravaggio without understanding his religious world, the spirituality of his times and theological currents coursing through the Church during the Counter Reformation. More saintly men have painted much less compelling theology than Caravaggio.

No conspiracy against Catholic TV, says Rosica

February 17, 2011

Fr. Rosica [images/stories/toronto_people/rosica.jpg]TORONTO - Salt + Light Television CEO Fr. Tom Rosica is trying to convince a vocal segment of Canada’s Catholic TV audience there is no dark conspiracy against Catholic television. Since news broke of Bell TV’s decision to drop the Eternal Word Television Network (EWTN) from its satellite offerings, Salt + Light has been bombarded with e-mails, phone calls and letters from “people who automatically jumped to conclusions that this was an all-out attack against the Church,” Rosica told The Catholic Register. Responding to angry blog posts, many of the callers and writers seem to believe in a conspiracy against Catholics rather than a straight business decision on the part of Bell, Rosica said.