When Jesus predicted His disciples would always have the poor with them, He didn’t mention they would be invisible — unseen, unheard and unthinkable in the political arena.
Ontario’s bishops have again identified poverty as an essential issue facing voters as they go to the polls Oct. 6.
“Jesus directly connects our salvation to how we have tended to the needs of the poor, the hungry, the naked, the sick, the least among us,” wrote the Assembly of Catholic Bishops in its pre-election message. “We face that judgment personally and also as a society.”
In “Your Right to Be Heard: A Guide to the Ontario Election — 2011” (download the full statement here), the bishops urge Catholics to ask candidates about poverty reduction strategies, homelessness, unemployment and “basic income that is sufficient for food and housing.” They also remind Catholics of their duty to vote. “It is inconceivable that people would consciously decide not to vote,” the guide said.
When Fr. James Mallon adopted Monsi from a local animal shelter years ago, he never expected his shepherd mix pup would inspire theology lessons.
“I’d take him out for a walk and he’d do something and a Scripture passage would pop into my head,” the Halifax-based Mallon said.
For example, he’d notice Monsi straining on his leash so hard he was choking himself and Mallon would remember how St. Paul wrote about how “we strain forward and we forget what lies behind.”
The priest would see Monsi (short for monsignor) running in the park and experience such joy watching him that he’d think to himself, “If I get such pleasure watching my dog being a dog, I wonder how much God gets pleasure in our being who we’re supposed to be.”
TORONTO - There are lots of numbers associated with Sept. 11, 2001. More than 3,000 people were killed including 19 hijackers. Another 6,000+ people were injured. There were nearly three million square metres of Manhattan office space damaged or destroyed. New York’s gross domestic product declined $27.3 billion in the 15 months following the attacks.
Nobody counts the number of prayers.
At the Newman Centre at the University of Toronto, Fr. Pat O’Dea watched in horror at the face of evil revealed on television — “That’s all it is, pure evil,” he said. But he also watched in wonder at the outpouring of prayer on the downtown campus.
All week long the St. Thomas Aquinas Church remained open for anyone who wanted to pray, and hundreds did, recalled O’Dea, who was pastor at the Newman Centre at the time.
On a recent lecture tour around the world, I experienced the universality of the Catholic Church in the local culture through the sacred mystery of the Eucharist. On four successive Sundays attending Mass in Beijing, New Delhi, Stockholm and London, I felt a unity with people I did not know, infused by liturgy that embraces us all. How different in each locale; how the same. Christ, I realized anew, binds us all wherever we are in the world.
The first Sunday, I attended the Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception, the oldest Catholic church in Beijing. It was first erected in the middle of the 16th century and has twice been rebuilt. Shut down during the Chinese Cultural Revolution of the 1970s, the church is now in good repair. Though the Mass in English attracted foreign visitors, there were many Chinese present. Most Masses are, in fact, in Chinese.
Standing guard outside the cathedral was a bronze statue of Matteo Ricci, the Italian Jesuit scientist who was one of the first Catholic missionaries to China. He arrived there in 1582 and became famous for his mastery of Chinese language, his erudition and adaptation of Chinese customs. He explained the Catholic faith not as something foreign but as the most perfect manifestation of the existing faith of the Chinese people, who believed in “the Lord of Heaven.”
Start of the school year brings back memories of one-room schoolhouse
By Lorraine O'Donnell Williams, Catholic Register Special
KEARNEY, ONT. - With the start of a new school year, the sight of school buses picking up students in the small (pop. 837) town of Kearney, Ont., brings back precious memories to retired Catholic teacher Dolores White.
White, now 82, is among a dwindling group of Ontario educators who taught in one-room schoolhouses. She recalls fondly the days of teaching Grades 1-8 in a classroom of up to 30 students.
One-room schoolhouses were once common in Northern Ontario. Some were housed in railway cars — a school on wheels — that would travel between communities. Part of the train was the classroom, the other the travelling teacher’s residence.
White’s teaching space was more stable. She taught in a large room, complete with desks, blackboards and heating, that had been the original St. Patrick’s Catholic pioneer church. In 1910 the church became the Kearney Separate School. Kearney is about 250 km north of Toronto.
“I had to be well organized to make sure I covered the curriculum for each grade,” said White. She also relied on student tutors. “If I was busy teaching someone, and someone else needed help, I’d tell them, ‘Take your work to one of the older classmates.’ And the older ones responded.”
To counter the partying that goes hand-in-hand with FROSH week at post-secondary institutions, campus chaplaincies offer students something a little different.
At King's University College at the University of Western Ontario, the campus chaplaincy will be holding a prayer service to welcome students back to school.
"It's a prayer service instead of Mass because we want it to be inclusive for all our students who may not be Catholic," said campus minister Sr. Susan Glaab.
The service will involve some quiet reflection, some Taizé prayer, singing and sharing in small groups, said Glaab.
Campus chaplaincy will also be there on Labour Day as an unofficial welcoming committee, as the students move into residence, to answer any last-minute questions and offer support to both students and parents, she said. Glaab said it's important for campus chaplaincies to hold FROSH events — particularly when they're affiliated with a larger university — so students know there's a place they can go on campus for support, space and some much-needed quiet.
"It's very important because during FROSH week they're just bombarded with everything and, for a lot of students, that can be an overwhelming experience," said Glaab. "Some adapt to it right away but others need more balance in their lives… so we're there to offer that and promote our Catholicity."
TORONTO - At a raucous meeting to amend its equity policy, the Toronto Catholic District School Board passed a resolution that affirms denominational rights will take precedence when there is a conflict with government policy.
The Aug. 31 meeting was intended to be the final leg in an emotional ride in the board's efforts to hammer out a policy to come onside with the provincially mandated equity policy. Each board in Ontario was to have its policy in place by Sept. 1.
The board voted on a series of amendments from trustees John Del Grande and Angela Kennedy during the stormy four-hour meeting. In the end, the board voted to accept one amendment and passed watered-down versions of the others. One other amendment was put off to be dealt with at a future meeting. Emotions ran high during the meeting attended by more than 120 people, many of whom favoured the unequivocal language of Del Grande's amendments that asserted Catholic denominational rights in education. There were loud outbursts when the majority of the Del Grande-Kennedy amendments were defeated and replaced by amendments with less-stringent language. The temporary commotion led to TCDSB chair Ann Andrachuk calling a five-minute recess.
This reaction was in contrast to the loud applause that greeted the passing of Del Grande's amendment, which read: "When there is an apparent conflict between denominational rights and other rights, the board will favour the protection of the denominational rights." However, the board also said it would leave it to courts to determine any conflict of rights.
TORONTO - A team from Blessed Mother Teresa Catholic Secondary School in Scarborough recently won the top prize at this year’s National Society of Black Engineers (NSBE) Design Competition in Rochester, N.Y. Beating out 10 other teams from New York State, the all-girls robotics team designed and built a robot which had to pick up as many white cans as possible from their field positions on an obstacle course and place them in the “finish box” within a three-minute period. “We were the only team competing from Canada,” said Mary Charles Hills, one of the team’s teacher advisors.
Mississauga. ont. - It’s become a daily morning routine for five-year-old Theresa Rebello. The third youngest of 10 children, Theresa helps her two-year-old brother Luke get ready to go to Mass with her mom and the younger kids while her older siblings head off to school with dad.In the Rebello family, learning the faith starts early.
“With parenting, (we asked ourselves) what is our goal 20 years from now?” said Theresa’s mother, 38-year-old Liz Rebello of Toronto. “We always have that end. This is what I want them to be. We want them to be free and responsible adults with a good moral upbringing.”
Teaching kids about faith and values is what’s missing in a much-talked-about memoir by Yale University law professor Amy Chua. In a new book, Battle Hymn of a Mother Tiger, Chua writes about her “Chinese style of parenting” that has produced two over-achieving daughters. Chua explains how her kids live by stringent rules: no sleepovers, school plays or getting a grade less than an A, a style she says encouraged her children to excel.
Everyone who reads has at some time or other been psychologically kidnapped by a book. A great book carries us away. They are populated with friends, allies, enemies, protectors and persecutors. Great books teach us how to fall in love, answer when challenged, hope when hopes are dashed, cry when we are hurt and laugh for the sake of laughter.Few of us would honestly name the Bible as a psychological surround sound experience. For most, it’s hard to immerse ourselves in the world of the Bible.
I recently began a new journey into the Bible’s gated and guarded world when I received a Kobo Reader for Christmas.
A Kobo Reader is a simple electronic device that connects to the Internet and lets you download books that can be read on a small screen. There are thousands of books to choose from and I started with the oldest of them all, the Bible.
For many good reasons, the Bible isn’t a book that sweeps us away. First, it isn’t a book. It’s a collection of books assembled 1,700 years ago from literature that dates as far back as 1,200 B.C. The books of the Bible were written in either Hebrew or Greek, and some were written about people who spoke other, equally distant languages, including Aramaic, the language of Jesus.
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TORONTO - Most basketball players have a conventional notion of what makes a great basketball photo. The great photos show a player rising above the rest — a hand blocking a shot, a rebound plucked out of mid-air, a shot launched with precision.But those heroic moments aren’t how 5’9” centre Cesarine Moundele of the St. Joseph’s College School Rough Riders thinks of her sport or her team. When I asked the team what sort of picture would best tell the story of basketball at their school, Moundele said, “A picture of the bench.”
Teammates all around her agreed. What makes their team is all of them, together, cheering each other, supporting each other.
“We’re like family,” said 5’0” guard Christi-Ann Miole.
The Rough Rider’s improbable coach Francesco Maltifitano — who made his mark playing soccer, not basketball — turned away from the kids to hide his smile. He was as proud of this answer as he was of any of their wins.
Challenged to say why basketball should matter at all in a Catholic school, 5’4” guard Raize Dela Pena said, “You learn teamwork. You know you’re not alone in the world.”
D&P-funded program provides pro-life solution to Haiti's sexual violence
By Michael Swan, The Catholic Register
In the tent camps around Port-au-Prince, in the collapsed and desperate slums of Cite Soleil, amid the violence of a chaotic city policed by United Nations troops from around the world there’s a pro-life story.
Kay Famn (Creole for the House of Women) doesn’t call itself a pro-life organization. The Development and Peace partner proudly claims the title feminist. What Kay Famn does, however, lifts up women and the value of life in the face of violence and the most corrosive poverty in the Western Hemisphere.
Before the earthquake Kay Famn ran one of the only women’s shelters in Haiti — a country where until 2005 rape was considered a crime against honour rather than a crime against a person. Now with more than one million people crammed into tent camps where there are no locked doors and the shadows at night hide all kinds of crime, Kay Famn is seeing a steady stream of girls, many between 13 and 15, come to them pregnant.
“They arrive pregnant and give birth here,” Kay Famn co-ordinator Yolette Jeanty told The Catholic Register.
Somebody has to prepare the girls for motherhood.
“They’re kids we are preparing to give birth,” said Jeanty. “They don’t have families. They stay with other kids.”
The program is called Revive. In addition to dealing with the trauma of the girls’ situation — whether they’ve been raped, seduced by an older man or surprised to discover they are pregnant — Kay Famn tries to keep the girls in school or at least provide basic literacy and job training.
If not for Kay Famn, no end of illegal and dangerous abortions are performed in Haiti. Given the state of health care, the girls chances of surviving child birth without Kay Famn are low. Even before the earthquake, the maternal mortality ratio for Haiti was 670 for every 100,000 live births, according to Unicef.
The problem is bigger than Kay Famn can deal with. They’ve got room for about a dozen girls at a time. They can offer financial support for 40 girls. Out there in the camps there’s an epidemic of sexual violence and a kind of brutal economy in which sex is traded for protection, food and shelter.
All of that means there’s good reason to help Kay Famn with financing and strategy, said Development and Peace executive director Michael Casey.
“You look at that tragedy, that kind of thing happening to very young girls, the violence being perpetrated against women in the camps — the stuff that Kay Famn is working with,” he said.
“Those are very, very important stories.”
“There’s a lot of sexual violence against little girls and adolescents,” said Jeanty. “Men are using violence to bring girls to bed. Or trading rice for sex.”
Kay Famn does not advocate for abortion access because that won’t solve Haiti’s problem with sexual violence and predation. They do what they can for the girls who come to them.
“The situation in the camps has exacerbated the problem,” said Jeanty.
- RAISING UP HAITI -
a Catholic Register special report
Haiti's churches need healing [slideshow]
What now in Haiti?
Post-traumatic stress proves difficult
Catholic aid organizations fly under the radar
Canadian engineer to oversee Haiti’s Church rebuild
Haiti must take this opportunity to change
Crisis makes D&P rethink how it operates
Bold education plan held up by a lack of funds
Church holds community together
D&P-funded program provides pro-life solution to Haiti's sexual violence
Haitians must look to themselves to rebuild their nation
Madame Odessi Petit Foin knows exactly what she’s missing since the church in Duvale collapsed, along with her house and most of the other houses in the farming community.
Duvale always did need lots of things. It was never rich. It needed a new road before the earthquake and now it needs it more. It has needed a new school for a long time and thanks to the earthquake it got one — built with aid money on the foundations of the collapsed church. And it needs houses for the families still living in tents by their tiny plots of tomatoes, cucumbers and peas.
In Petit Foin’s opinion, Duvale also needs its church.
“It preaches morality and conversion,” she said.
She also makes the point that it’s through the church that Duvale gets access to the international aid money which will finance a new Caritas Port-au-Prince agricultural improvement project. But that’s not the most important reason that Duvale needs its church.
“The church in Duvale plays a very big role that holds together friends and family,” she said.
Petit Foin is not an economist, a politician, a theologian or philosopher. But as she stands in the old church hall, which has become the church in Duvale, she’s hit upon something quite important.
There’s more to infrastructure than the efficient delivery of goods to market on safe, smooth and broad roads. A community requires infrastructure so it can hold together, so it can know itself and meet the world. Duvale needs its church so that it can be a community which people recognize when they see the church.
The people of Duvale themselves need to recognize that they are a community of families when they meet for Sunday morning Mass.
There is such a thing as spiritual infrastructure. In fact, if Duvale had a great road connecting it with Port-au-Prince but its people had lost their way and no longer knew themselves, no longer cared for each other, no longer lived in and for their families — well, that would be a road to nowhere.
- RAISING UP HAITI -
a Catholic Register special report
Haiti's churches need healing [slideshow]
What now in Haiti?
Post-traumatic stress proves difficult
Catholic aid organizations fly under the radar
Canadian engineer to oversee Haiti’s Church rebuild
Haiti must take this opportunity to change
Crisis makes D&P rethink how it operates
Bold education plan held up by a lack of funds
Church holds community together
D&P-funded program provides pro-life solution to Haiti's sexual violence
Haitians must look to themselves to rebuild their nation
For the first time in St. Antoine’s history the teachers are worried about their girls in Grade 6. Before the Jan. 12, 2010 earthquake 100 per cent of Pupils de St. Antoine students would pass state exams that qualify them to move on to Grade 7 and secondary school.
This year most of the girls are living in tents on the Champ de Mars. Before the earthquake there were 700 students, now there are 570. Many of the parents are having trouble coming up with $180 for school fees, to say nothing of books and uniforms. Development and Peace is helping by paying for hearty lunches of rice and beans with vegetables and meat. The girls are eating better than their parents.
The girls’ biggest handicap is the loss of their school building, according to school principal Sr. Sainte-Anne Jean-Baptiste. The old St. Antoine’s is a heap of rubble and the Sisters of St. Anne have no money to clear it and rebuild or to buy another site.
“The education we want to give children we can’t give right now. They need to progress — to go from one success to another,” said Jean-Baptiste. “It’s almost impossible to study in the tents.”
St. Antoine’s is borrowing the classrooms of Cole Marie Reine Immaculate. When that school lets out in the afternoon, St. Antoine’s moves in. But St. Antoine’s has no offices, no meeting rooms, no equipment, nothing but the classrooms — many of which are squares on the concrete courtyard walled off by sheets of plywood beneath a tin roof.
There are about 40 girls in every classroom. Their teachers also live in tents, though many are able to remain at the site of their old homes and thus are spared the crowded, fetid, cholera-breeding tent camps.
Veteran teacher Michelle Auguste believes in her students. “With education these girls will do anything,” she said.
Auguste isn’t talking out of pollyanna optimism. Her daughter went to St. Antoine’s and then high school at College Marie-Anne — both inner city Catholic schools whose students are mainly lower middle class and poor. She is now in second year at National Taiwan University studying physiotherapy.
Cecile Romiette Auguste speaks French, Creole, Spanish, English and Mandarin. She may pursue a Master’s degree after her undergraduate studies in Taiwan.
“Those who educated me in elementary school and high school, even if I might spend my life talking about them I don’t think I could ever describe to you half their worth,” the young Auguste wrote in an e-mail.
She visited home last summer and wept at the ruins of her old school.
“I believe strongly that a generation of women who graduated from St. Antoine can transform the fate of my country,” said Auguste.
Little of Haiti’s education system still stands. Eighty-nine per cent of the schools — including two universities in Port-au-Prince — were destroyed. The Haitian government has developed a $4.2 billion, five-year plan to cover education, but doesn’t have the money to implement it. Current government spending is around $80 million per year. The Inter-American Development Bank kicked in $50 million in November, and will contribute $250 million over five years.
The United Nations Development Program lists Haiti’s literacy rate at 62.1 per cent, but most observers think the real rate is just over 50 per cent. For Haiti to ever become a real, functioning democracy the literacy rate will have to rise significantly among the earthquake generation.
At Ecole Immaculee Conception Haiti’s future looks bright. The school yard is filled with happy, energetic girls rehearsing a dance for a school show. Annual fees are $500 and while these kids are not necessarily rich, they are less likely to be caught up in the tent camps than St. Antoine’s students.
Development and Peace has provided $350,000 to the Missionary Sisters of the Immaculate Conception to build the second storey of a two-storey school. As construction on the earthquake-proof school proceeds, classes are held under tents.
The Sisters have put their students and the school ahead of their own comfort. While the hill-top site is host to a busy construction crew laying bricks and mixing cement, the nine Sisters are living in four old classrooms in the old school. All the community’s possessions, from clothes to books, are piled in an old box car nearby. Every Sunday between 300 and 500 people gather in the open space where the rubble has been cleared to celebrate Mass with the Sisters.
Sr. Josette Drouinard would love the new building to have an auditorium and chapel but there are no funds. Meanwhile she is proud of the new school under construction.
“It will be a functional building, but with all the comforts,” she said.