{mosimage}Faculty at Waterloo’s St. Jerome’s University have voted no confidence in the school’s president and have begun talks with the Canadian Association of University Teachers about forming a union.

The crisis at the Catholic liberal arts college affiliated with the University of Waterloo began with the mass resignation of the St. Jerome’s chaplaincy team just before Christmas.

{mosimage}There’s plenty of blame to go around in the furor at St. Jerome’s University , and it’s going to take the Christian value of forgiveness to get the small, Catholic liberal arts college back on track, according to a consultant who spent two months investigating the university’s troubles.

“The Gospel values that are included in the mission statement are a very good reference point for everybody in this particular exercise. Some part of that involves good Christian value of forgiveness,” Ken Snowdon told The Catholic Register.


{mosimage}Dr. Michael Higgins has set himself free from the daily struggles of running a university.

One of Canada’s best known Catholic writers and intellectuals, Higgins has tendered his resignation after three years as president of St. Thomas University in Fredericton, N.B .

{mosimage}TORONTO - The new Regis College won’t be finished when theology students arrive for academic orientation Sept. 10, and even when construction wraps up before the end of September the academic home of the Jesuits won’t really be finished. However, Regis Dean Fr. Gordon Rixon couldn’t be happier.

Weaving among the trucks in the driveway as he emerges from the dust and occasional thump of construction crews, Rixon is as calm and contented as a monk in a garden.

{mosimage}WATERLOO, Ont. - To St. Jerome’s University President Fr. David Perrin, it was no surprise that an award dinner in honour of Fr. Bernie Hayes drew a sell-out crowd.

“Fr. Bernie has touched countless lives and hearts in this community,” said Perrin in presenting Hayes with the 2009 Chancellor John Sweeney Award for Leadership in Catholic University Education.

{mosimage}Jose Ruba, from the Canadian Centre for Bio-Ethical reform, says McGill University should be ashamed of students who interrupted a presentation he was invited to give on campus.

Ruba, a defender of the pro-life view, was invited by a university sanctioned club, Choose Life, to present “Echoes of the Holocaust” Oct. 6, only to be interrupted for nearly a full two hours by hecklers who shouted and chanted songs like “Old MacDonald Had a Farm” and “Twinkle Twinkle Little Star.”

{mosimage}TORONTO - The inconspicuous yet flourishing school is nearly invisible to passersby — housed in a complex of old townhouses, now joined, that take up the length of an entire block in Toronto’s Parkdale neighbourhood.

But the successful philosophy seminary started in 1989 by the priests of St. Philip Neri Oratory in Toronto is anything but secret. The Oratorians  have seen 100 of their students go on to become priests since 1989 and the momentum only seems to be building.

{mosimage}TORONTO - A new survey ranks the University of Toronto tops among Canada’s 86 universities for the services it offers to pregnant and parenting students.

The survey, conducted by summer interns at the Toronto-based deVeber Institute for Bioethics and Social Research , looked at whether Canada’s universities provide services deemed important by parenting students, based on research done in the United States by Feminists for Life.

{mosimage}Canadian Physicians for Life hosted its sixth annual medical students forum in Calgary Nov. 20-22 to discuss abortion, euthanasia, conscience rights and medical pro-life clubs.

The lineup of speakers and workshop leaders — chosen to help equip pro-life medical students with knowledge and confidence on emerging issues of concern — was to include Margaret Somerville, professor of law and medicine at McGill University and founding director of McGill’s Centre for Medicine, Ethics and Law. She planned to speak to students about euthanasia and the topic of human dignity.

{mosimage}After denying club status to a student pro-life club, the Lakehead University Student Union has posted an attack on its web site from one of its members likening the pro-life members to murderers.

“This group represents the same mentality of those who threatened the life of Dr. Henry Morgentaler, the same mentality of those who gunned down Dr. George Tiller this past May and the same mentality that would follow a radical statist agenda in order to grant the state power over individuals,” alleged student union vice president Josh Kolic in an online letter addressed to the student body, posted Nov. 6.