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March 22, 2012
For the first time, several pro-life groups on university campuses in British Columbia held Life Week simultaneously to bring the abortion debate to their peers. “They debated the morality of abortion and whether abortion should remain legal,” said Anastasia Pearse, western campus co-ordinator for the National Campus Life Network. Jojo Ruba from the Canadian Centre for Bio-Ethical Reform debated the pro-life side while various philosophy professors took the pro-choice side.
I was recently speaking with a Jesuit priest about his work. The charism of a Jesuit priest is to go where there is the greatest need. “What do you think is the greatest need in our city?” I asked him. He told me that he thought that people didn’t seem to need anything. They have filled their lives with so many things. I thought this was ironic. How is it that the greatest need in our society is that we have no need at all? I began to think of myself: How true is this of my own life? I rarely let myself go hungry. I fill my schedule with commitments, I quickly run into new relationships and I consume more food than I need. I chase desires in many different directions all in efforts to satisfy my hunger. Everything is so readily available and easily accessible that I have never truly had to go hungry. My every whim is met instantly. During Lent, I realize it is a time to do just the opposite of the ordinary. It is a time to leave our desires unchecked as it is a period to abstain from comfort. In Matthew, Jesus was “led by the spirit into the desert,” leaving all comfort behind. For me, the chance to live out this belief came in the form of a unique initiative. For five days this Lent, I left the comforts of my home behind. With a sleeping bag, pillow and the clothes on my back, I joined nine other students at the University of British Columbia as part of a national campaign called 5 Days for the Homeless. Together, we camped outside our campus bookstore in efforts to raise awareness and money for homeless youth in our city. The past days have definitely pushed me outside of my comfort zone. It’s been cold and rainy and I’m beginning to dream of hot showers. We’re completely reliant on donations for food and basic necessities like toothpaste and deodorant. Catherine Doherty, foundress of the Madonna House apostalate, is famous for, amongst other things, having brought the term “poustinia” to the Catholic Church. It is a term that refers to the cabins people go to for retreats of silence and solitude. Poustinia stems from the Russian word for desert. People spend time in these poustinia to encounter God more fully through prayer and fasting. Though far from luxurious, people often feel more fulfilled in the poustinia. I have come to understand that fulfilment during my time without a home. Without the comforts of home, I have had to come to Jesus for that true fulfilment. A Catholic Christian Outreach missionary once said to me, “We are afraid to wait long enough to feel that longing.” What if this Lent, instead of reacting to every desire, you allowed yourself to go hungry? What would happen? I urge you to be led by the spirit into the poustinia or desert of your heart just as Jesus was 2,000 years ago. See what happens. Allow your true appetite for something greater be restored. I know He won’t leave you thirsty. (Hii, 21, is a human resources and international relations student at the University of British Columbia.)
MISSISSAUGA - Despite representing just 2.3 per cent of the nation’s billion-plus population, India’s Christians are making an impact in the rapidly developing nation. That was the message delivered by Cardinal Oswald Gracias as the Archbishop of Bombay concluded a Canadian tour at a March 19 banquet. “We are breaking out from the Christian community to human communities,” said Gracias.
The St. Vincent de Paul Society and the Ursuline Sisters in Chatham, Ont., are not likely to make a dent in Canada’s $2 billion per year payday loan industry, but in their own small way will be taking them on. On May 1, 2010 the Ursuline Sisters used $20,000 to launch a microfinance venture they call Angela’s Pocket. With close ties to The Women’s Centre and the local United Way, Angela’s Pocket has lent out about $8,000 in small loans to women who otherwise couldn’t raise money. The loans are for everything from a return to school to basic household appliances.
If all Ontarians were as healthy as those with higher incomes there would be 231,000 fewer disabled people and about 3,300 fewer deaths per year, found a recent study from researchers at St. Michael’s Hospital. The final chapter of the six-year long POWER Study examining health equity was released last month from researchers at St. Michael’s Hospital and the Institute for Clinical Evaluative Sciences (ICES). The POWER study (Project for an Ontario Women’s Health Evidence-Based Report) examined access, quality and outcomes of care across the province for the leading causes of disease and disability and how they varied by sex, income, ethnicity and where one lives. The 12-volume study cost $4.3 million and involved 60 researchers.
OTTAWA - The same week a student group came under fire for distributing condoms on the Saint Paul University (SPU) campus, a pro-life group hosted a panel on the benefits of natural family planning (NFP), revealing the contrasts between artificial and natural means of preventing pregnancy. SPU administrators ordered the student group to stop leaving a bowl of condoms for free pickup by students. That prompted a student to write an open letter, backed by 100 others, that led to stories by the news media.
OTTAWA - Pope Benedict XVI has accepted the resignation of Cardinal Jean-Claude Turcotte, who reached retirement age last June, and appointed Christian Lépine to succeed him as Archbishop of Montreal. Named last July as auxiliary Bishop of Montreal, Lépine, 60, was ordained to the episcopacy last September with auxiliary Bishop Thomas Dowd. His installation will take place on April 27. The archbishop-elect served as director of the Grand Seminary of Montreal from 2000 until 2006, and since 2006 as pastor for two parishes in the diocese before becoming an auxiliary bishop. With degrees in theology from the University of Montreal, and philosophy from the Pontifical Gregorian University in Rome, Lépine also served for a year in the Vatican's Secretariat of State and for a year in the Congregation for Divine Worship.
The Interfaith Social Assistance Reform Coalition is telling Ontario’s Liberal government what it didn’t want to hear from economist Don Drummond — raise taxes. The McGuinty government mandated the Drummond Commission to come up with ways to balance the province’s books but forbade the former bank economist from considering more taxes. ISARC makes no bones about urging action on the revenue side of the equation.
OTTAWA - The Canadian government has recognized two outstanding defenders of religious freedom and human rights when awards were granted to the assassinated Pakistani Minister Shahbaz Bhatti and Argentinian anti-trafficking activist Susana Trimarco. Foreign Affairs Minister John Baird presented the awards at the 2012 John Diefenbaker Defender of Human Rights Award ceremony Mar. 14 at the former Ottawa City Hall.
VATICAN CITY - Pope Benedict XVI has appointed a German bishop who had been accused of financial irregularities and hitting children to the Vatican's health care council. Retired Bishop Walter Mixa of Augsburg was named a member of the Pontifical Council for Health Care Ministry March 21.
Amanda Foster, 21, wants to go to World Youth Day Rio in 2013. But after hearing the cost estimates for the trip, she’s reconsidering. “I can’t believe the prices are so high,” said Foster, who was a part of the Archdiocese of Toronto’s Office of Catholic Youth (OCY) trip to Madrid last August, organized through Tour Design.
March 23, 2012
VATICAN CITY - The Catholic Church's position on the U.S. economic embargo of Cuba is "no mystery," the Vatican spokesman said, and there's a good chance Pope Benedict XVI will publicly criticize the embargo when he visits Cuba. At the same time, Pope Benedict also will call for greater freedoms -- particularly religious freedom -- and respect for other human rights during his stay in Cuba March 26-28.
WASHINGTON - Actress Shari Rigby sat right across from her interviewer, her legs crossed. On the instep of her right foot was a tattoo of a flower. She was asked what it was. "Her name would have been Lily," Rigby answered, "and so that's there to remind me." She was talking about the baby she had aborted 20 years ago.
VATICAN CITY - Pope Benedict's trip to Mexico and Cuba March 23-28 will be a relatively brief one, consisting of a little more than two days in each country. Yet his visit is bound to highlight a wide range of prominent issues affecting an entire continent of crucial importance to the Catholic Church. The Pope arrives in Leon, in central Mexico, late afternoon local time March 23. His first full day's schedule will be light, no doubt reflecting concerns for the health of the pope, who turns 85 April 16. Pope Benedict's flight will have taken him across eight time zones, to a city 6,000 feet above sea level (compared to only 70 in Rome).
LEON, Mexico - Pope Benedict XVI will address the pressing issues of poverty and insecurity during his visit to Mexico, along with orienting Catholics toward a missionary mentality, the president of the Mexican bishops' conference said on the eve of the pontiff's arrival. "Without doubt, he will express preoccupation with the situations the country is experiencing," Archbishop Carlos Aguiar Retes of Tlalnepantla told Catholic News Service March 22.
Development and Peace is facing significant program reductions and staff cuts after the 45-year-old Catholic lay movement was hit by a 65 per cent cut in government funding. “It’s going to be a very difficult period for the organization,” said D&P executive director Michael Casey. “It’s not just staff here or the institution here in Canada. You look at the impact it’s going to have on the partners.”
ABOARD THE PAPAL FLIGHT TO MEXICO (CNS) -- En route to Latin America for his second papal visit to the region, Pope Benedict XVI called for patience with the Catholic Church's effort to promote freedom in communist Cuba, and criticized Catholics who participate in illegal drug trade or who ignore their moral responsibilities to seek social justice. The pope, flying to Mexico March 23, followed his usual practice of taking a few preselected questions from reporters on the papal plane. Responding to a question about human rights in Cuba, where he will arrive March 26, and where opposition leaders have been arrested after publicly appealing for a meeting with him, Pope Benedict said that the "church is always on the side of freedom, freedom of conscience, freedom of religion."
OXFORD, England - The Dutch church has pledged to fully cooperate with investigations into reported claims that Catholic institutions castrated boys and young men in their care to rid them of homosexuality. Bert Elbertse, spokesman for the Dutch Catholic bishops' conference, said the bishops found the reports "shocking and appalling" and that they "condemn and regret such practices in the strongest possible terms." "Our church has been badly damaged by accusations of sexual abuse. The fact that people were unsurprised by these latest claims suggests our image couldn't get any worse," he said.
WARSAW, Poland - A prominent victim of clerical sex abuse has rejected the Polish church's stance that it is following a zero-tolerance policy toward priests and offers moral support for victims. Ewa Orlowska, whose book about her ordeal, "I Accused a Priest," was published in 2008, charged that the church is holding "victims up to ridicule" while "behaving as if nothing has happened."
SAN FRANCISCO DEL RINCON, Mexico - The milliners of Sombreros Salazar in this deeply Catholic town 140 miles northeast of Guadalajara have the habit of making oversized, charro hats for the pope. The family matriarch, Maria de la Luz Yepez Torres, already has made the oversized hats for Pope Paul VI and Blessed John Paul II.