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June 8, 2012
OTTAWA - The Supreme Court of Canada has overwhelming dismissed an appeal by pro-life crusader Linda Gibbons. In an 8-1 vote, Canada's highest court upheld lower court rulings that permitted Gibbons to be charged criminally for disobeying temporary injunctions that were imposed in civil courts several years ago.
OTTAWA - Conservative MP Stephen Woodworth's private member's Motion-312 has been postponed until the fall session because the MP's mother has been gravely ill. "I know for the last month or so I have not been as effective as I should be on anything because my mother has been in such difficult straits and it's been weighing me down," said Woodworth. Motion-312, which calls for the creation of a Parliamentary committee to examine the Criminal Code's definition of a human being in light of the latest science and medical evidence, was supposed to come to a vote on June 6.
June 9, 2012
I wasn’t sure what to expect from a program called Notorious Women of the Bible. Actually I was a little put off by the obviously provocative title. It seemed like a ploy to attract some of that large and lucrative audience normally drawn to programs like Desperate Housewives. Not to disparage Desperate Housewives, but Hollywood depicts notorious women a dozen times a night on television. I was hoping for something a little different.
The following is excerpted from Heresy: Ten Lies They Spread About Christianity © 2012 by Michael Coren, an award-winning columnist of The Catholic Register. Published by Signal, a division of Random House of Canada Limited. Reproduced by arrangement with the Publisher. All rights reserved. The idea that Christianity is somehow opposed to science, and that individual Christians cannot reconcile their faith to scientific discoveries, is a relatively modern canard, but successfully and damagingly promulgated, usually by people who know very little about science and its history, or about Christianity and Christians. It’s a part of the larger, “Christians are stupid” approach, usually offered by people who are inspired by talk shows rather than texts, and assume that because a television mini-series or popular novel has depicted Christians as being superstitious, foolish, reactionary and frightened of change, such must be the case. The science aspect of all this is particularly nauseating, not only because it is fundamentally untrue, but that it is thrown at Christianity at a time when society is arguably experiencing one of its most credulous and naïve stages and is only too willing to embrace any and every kind of non-scientific or anti-scientific nonsense, from alien invasion stories to ghost myths, and from conspiracy theories to supernatural animals. To paraphrase the great Christian writer G.K. Chesterton, when people stop believing in God, they don’t believe in something else, they believe in anything else.
June 10, 2012
The regions of Lanaudiere and Mauricie, known together as “Authentic Quebec,” offer a contrast to the sophisticated metropolis of Montreal. Both regions are rich in Catholic heritage. Beginning a half hour east of Montreal, they are bordered in the south by Le Chemin Du Roy (the King’s Highway), which connects Quebec City to Montreal along the St. Lawrence River, and in the north by lakes and dense forests. In Lanaudiere, visiting the town of Terrebonne I learned of the work of Fr. Louis Lepage, the “seignior” of this land in 1720 who built the first church. Today the site, Ile des Moulins, is one of only two important reconstructed Quebec heritage sites.
NEW ORLEANS - An attorney for the Benedictine monks of St. Joseph Abbey in Covington argued before a three-judge panel of the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals June 7 that a 1932 Louisiana law requiring anyone selling a casket to be a licensed funeral director is unconstitutional and has no rationale other than "pure economic protectionism." The monks, who make about 30 cypress caskets a month at their St. Joseph Abbey Woodworks, received a favorable ruling last year from U.S. District Court Judge Stanwood Duval, who struck down the Louisiana law, saying it created an unfair industry monopoly.
June 11, 2012
DUBLIN - The church in Ireland is on the path to renewal, Church leaders told pilgrims at the opening Mass of the 50th International Eucharistic Congress June 10. Welcoming pilgrims from more than 120 countries at an open-air Mass, Dublin Archbishop Diarmuid Martin said: "The church in Ireland rejoices today in the presence of pilgrims from many parts of the world who witness to the universality of our Catholic faith and who show their faith-filled fellowship and solidarity with the Church in Ireland."
June 12, 2012
DUBLIN - The Catholic Church is under attack "partly because of the sins of some of its leaders, but mainly because of its uncompromising teachings" on marriage, said an Australian archbishop. "Faced with this, the Church can either compromise and face irrelevance, or continue to teach Christ's truth about marriage, life and love, and pray that the world will listen," Archbishop Barry Hickey, retired archbishop of Perth, told pilgrims at the International Eucharistic Congress June 12. His comments followed those of Canadian Cardinal Marc Oullet who earlier urged Catholics to use the resource of the family to confront the challenges of secularized societies.
June 13, 2012
A friend of mine jokingly says that when she dies she wants this epitaph on her gravestone: There was always something! And there always is. All of us appreciate her frustration. Invariably, there’s always something, big or small, that casts a shadow and somehow keeps us from fully entering the present moment and appreciating its richness. There is always some anxiety, some worry about something that we should have done or should be doing, some unpaid bill, some concern about what we need to face tomorrow, some lingering heartache, some concern about our health or the health of another, some hurt that is still burning or some longing for someone who is absent that mitigates our joy. There’s always something, some loss, some hurt, some jealousy, some obsession or some headache, that is forever draining the present moment of its joy.
Birth of John the Baptist (Year B) June 24 (Isaiah 49:1-6; Psalm 139; Acts 13:22-26; Luke 1:57-66, 80) What will this child become? Many people — especially new parents — ask this question when they gaze upon a newborn baby. In any large group of infants there are a few who will become great, a much larger group destined for relative anonymity and a few headed for frightening notoriety. All, however, enter this world with free will and a wide range of possibilities. No one begins life with a signed and sealed fate from which there is no escape.
They say you can’t teach old dogs new tricks, and that may be so. But there is something special about an old dog, and he (or she) can often teach an owner a thing or two. Puppies are adorable, but old dogs are like comfortable shoes that when slipped on can sometimes walk us to unexpected places. (If you’re not a pet lover, I implore you to stop reading immediately and move onto something else in The Register. These meanderings from a sappy dog lover will only frustrate you.)
The Ontario government’s so-called anti-bullying legislation, Bill-13, is a failure of lawmaking. It mocks religious freedom and disrespects parental rights. It undermines the authority of elected trustees and school principals by giving veto power to children and teens with respect to some after-school clubs. It awards special status to certain types of bullying rather than uniformly attacking bullying in all its forms.
WHITEHORSE, YT - Last week I wrote about my impressions of the Yukon on my first trip to Canada’s north. In many ways it is altogether different from anything I have previously encountered in Canada’s cities, or even in my parish on Wolfe Island. At the same time the Yukon raises questions that the Church in all of Canada must face. It is frankly astonishing that anyone lives in some of these remote communities, where a summer visitor is impressed by the natural beauty but year-round residents have to cope with isolation and lack of services, to say nothing of the severe cold and oppressive darkness of the punishing winter. To imagine living up here in the early 20th century, before roads and four-wheel drive trucks and propane gas heating and food preservatives is mindboggling, especially given that an overland trek of several weeks would deliver one into the Okanagan, one of the loveliest climates anywhere in the world.
I hosted my old television program, The Michael Coren Show, for almost 13 years. During 3,000 episodes I had Dalton McGuinty as a guest dozens of times, both as leader of the opposition in the Ontario parliament and as the province’s Premier. I also had Lauren Broten, now Ontario’s Education Minister, on the show several times, and also former education minister Kathleen Wynne. The latter, an openly homosexual woman, always made her reservations about Catholic education and her support for the gay community entirely clear, and Broten never had very much to say about anything. But McGuinty has changed his mind on major issues more often than most people change their underwear.
OTTAWA - The federal government’s National Action Plan (NAP) to Combat Human Trafficking announced June 6 will be a “huge help” in battling modern-day slavery, said Conservative MP Joy Smith. “I’m absolutely delighted,” said Smith, who participated in the NAP’s roll-out in one of several news conferences across the country. “This adds a new step toward combatting human trafficking in Canada.
QUEBEC CITY - While university students, anti-capitalists and environmentalists have routinely mustered tens of thousands into the streets of Montreal and Quebec City over the last two months, a small coalition of conservative Christians managed 650 for the second annual Christian March from the Plains of Abraham to Quebec’s National Assembly. The number of marchers for the June 2 event was down from about 1,000 the year before.
TORONTO - As part of the new direction of the archdiocese of Toronto’s Office of Catholic Youth, the office won’t be organizing a trip to Rio de Janeiro for World Youth Day 2013, said director Fr. Frank Portelli. “It was discussed at the Council of Priests and it was decided that it would be better if the parishes work on their own groups to go down so it would be more parish-based initiatives,” Portelli told The Catholic Register.
VATICAN CITY - Pope Benedict XVI called for prayers for the 50th International Eucharistic Congress under way in Dublin, expressing hopes it would lead to a greater appreciation of Jesus' self-sacrifice and deeper love and unity in the church. The weeklong gathering, which opened June 10, is "a precious occasion for reaffirming the centrality of the Eucharist in the life of the church," the Pope said at the end of his weekly general audience June 13.
DUBLIN - Canadian Cardinal Marc Ouellet, representing Pope Benedict XVI, met with Irish victims of church-related child abuse. The cardinal, papal legate to the International Eucharistic Congress, met with the victims of institutional and clerical abuse during a pilgrimage to Lough Derg in Country Donegal June 12 and 13.
VATICAN CITY - Vatican Radio will end its short- and medium-wave broadcasts to Europe and North and South America July 1, and a month later the Vatican press office will close the Vatican Information Service, a multilingual daily summary of papal speeches and appointments. Jesuit Father Federico Lombardi, director of the Vatican press office and of Vatican Radio, announced the changes June 12, saying they were responses to developments in technology and would save the Vatican money.