TORONTO — The new year will bring a new Chancellor of Temporal Affairs for the archdiocese of Toronto.

James Milway is to join the archdiocese in the spring, replacing outgoing chancellor John McGrath.

Milway is certainly no stranger in archdiocesan corridors. Over the past decade, he has had extensive consulting assignments with the archdiocese, including projects related to World Youth Day 2002, ShareLife, Catholic Charities and Catholic Cemeteries. He is currently working on the archdiocese's strategic planning process, and "his knowledge and experience working with us both past and present will be a tremendous asset as he begins his new assignment," said Toronto Archbishop Thomas Collins in a statement.

Though Milway currently lives in the Hamilton diocese, his connection to Toronto runs deep. His formative years were spent here and he was educated at the University of St. Michael's College. His five children were born at St. Michael's Hospital and all were baptized in the archdiocese.

"I've been fortunate to work with many parts of the Chancery Office in my consulting career and look forward to reconnecting with the many friends I have there," said Milway.

"It will be tough to follow John McGrath — he's been such an effective Chancellor and I know he will be missed. But he and his predecessors have developed a strong foundation for someone like me to build on. I hope to follow well in their footsteps."

Milway has been executive director of the Institute for Competitiveness and Prosperity, a think-tank sponsored by the province of Ontario and the Rotman School at the University of Toronto, and spent 15 years with the Canada Consulting Group & Boston Consulting Group, including three years as vice-president.

McGrath will continue working with the archdiocese "for a reasonable period" to ensure an orderly transition, said Collins.

OTTAWA - The Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops (CCCB) will proceed with a pastoral plan for life and family that will launch nationally in 2013 after a preparatory year in the dioceses.

In a mid-December letter to his brother bishops, CCCB President Archbishop Richard Smith confirmed the CCCB’s Permanent Council has given the proposed plan a green light after reviewing the practical aspects of the decisions made at the bishops’ annual plenary meeting in October.

“I am happy to confirm that we will proceed, as we had all agreed, with the elements of the pastoral plan for 2013 and for a preparatory year during 2012,” Smith wrote.

TORONTO - Pro-life activist Linda Gibbons will be spending her Christmas season in jail, having been arrested Dec. 16 for violating an injunction that barred her protests in front of Toronto abortion clinics.

The arrest comes just two days removed from Gibbons’ appearance before the Supreme Court of Canada as she tried to have the injunction barring her pro-life protests quashed. This injunction has led to some 20 arrests over the years and nine years of incarceration.

Gibbons began her latest protest around 9 a.m. at the Morgentaler Clinic near Bayview and Eglinton Avenues. Toronto Police arrested her about two hours later.

When Canada’s first aboriginal saint is canonized, it will be an answered prayer for native people across Canada and beyond.

“There’s a natural sense of pride and joy,” among native people said Whitehorse Bishop Gary Gordon.

On hearing the news that Pope Benedict XVI had cleared the way for Blessed Kateri Tekakwitha to be canonized, perhaps as early as spring 2012, Gordon planned to phone his old friend Steve Point, the Lieutenant Governor of British Columbia. Point is a former elected chief of the Skowkale First Nation.

TORONTO - As hopeful Anglo-Catholic parishes across Canada completed two months of catechetical study Dec. 18, dreams of a Canadian Catholic ordinariate for ex-Anglicans are fading.
"We had hoped, of course, we would have our own Canadian ordinariate, but we realize our numbers may not warrant it," Bishop Carl Reid, Anglican Catholic Church of Canada auxiliary bishop, told The Catholic Register.

An American Anglican ordinariate will be inaugurated Jan. 1. About 2,000 former Episcopalians (as Anglicans are known in the United States) have asked to be received into the Catholic Church through provisions of the Anglicanorum Coetibus apostolic constitution.

The number of Canadian break-away Anglicans seeking a place in the Catholic Church has declined in the two years since Pope Benedict XVI issued Anglicanorum Coetibus, an apostolic constitution intended to provide for groups of Anglicans entering the Catholic Church but retaining significant elements of Anglican liturgy.

The main body that had been seeking union with the Catholic Church, the 28 parishes of the Anglican Catholic Church of Canada, split into two non-geographical dioceses Nov. 26. The pro-diocese of Our Lady of Walsingham contains parishes still engaged in the process for entering the Catholic Church. The remaining parishes in the diocese of Canada are taking a wait-and-see approach to the process, said Reid.
Substantial numbers of ACCC members have also left the Church as the prospect of joining a Catholic entity has taken shape.

"A number of our people who weren't clear when they joined us of our intention to seek unity — even though it is in our foundational documents, our constitution — when unity became not only a possibility but a reality they just sort of left," said Reid. "That reduced our numbers from what they were two years ago."

ACCC members in the pro-diocese of Our Lady of Walsingham understand that a handful of parishes, averaging between 20 and 30 members and spread across the country, can't justify a bishop and diocesan structure involved in an ordinariate, said Reid. They are waiting for word on just how they will be accommodated, he said.

Toronto Archbishop Thomas Collins, in charge of guiding the process in Canada, declined to comment.

"There are still some key details being worked out right now and, as you can imagine, this is a sensitive file," said archdiocese of Toronto spokesman Neil MacCarthy in an e-mail.

Among the issues being worked out are the final resting place of ACCC clergy. Where 67 Anglican priests in the United States have submitted dossiers seeking Catholic ordination and 35 have received a nulla osta, or initial approval, from the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, none of the Canadian Anglican clergy who have applied have heard back from Rome.

"We're clearly further behind in the process than the Americans and the Australians," said Reid.

Without clergy, Anglican parishes accepted into the Catholic Church can't function, said the bishop.

Despite difficulties and uncertainty, the Our Lady of Walsingham Anglican Catholics remain hopeful, Reid said.

"Our people fully understand the divine mandate expressed by our Lord in John 17 'That they may be one.' And that's what's driving this whole process," he said. "Our remaining people here at the Cathedral (of the Annunciation of the Blessed Virgin Mary in Ottawa) are committed to the process and understand the importance from the perspective of what God's wish is, not what ours is."

North Bay’s Knights of Columbus are distributing 1,200 pins to parishioners this Advent to make sure they remember the reason for the season.

“They’re about an inch-and-a-half in diameter and it has ‘Christmas’ at the top and ‘birth of Christ’ at the bottom and a picture of the Holy Family,” said Donald Halsall, financial secretary of the North Bay Council 1007, which was chartered in 1905.

“It’s to remind our Christians what the real meaning of Christmas is. We get wrapped up in gifts… but we should be remembering the purpose of Christmas is the birth of Christ,” said Halsall.

CHARLOTTETOWN, PEI - A project begun a couple years ago to affirm the value of the family and the importance of unborn life has resulted in a statue of the Blessed Virgin as a pregnant young woman erected in Charlottetown’s St. Dunstan’s Basilica. 

Named Our Lady of Hope, the statue was a collaborative effort between the local Knights of Columbus, Catholic Women’s League and PEI Right to Life.

“I can’t tell you how delighted I was when I was approached with this suggestion,” said Charlottetown Bishop Richard Grecco, who gave his blessing to the project.

TORONTO - For the 19th year running, the Fairmont Royal York Hotel is offering “room at the inn” for out-of-town families visiting hospitalized relatives at Toronto’s St. Michael’s Hospital, Casey House Hospice and Hospice Toronto.

The Room at the Inn program offers families up to 10 guest rooms for a maximum of seven nights free of charge.

“It relieves some financial burden especially at this most difficult time of year for them,” said Eduarda Costa, administrative secretary for the social work office at St. Michael’s Hospital. “It allows families to be at the patients’ bedside offering support for a longer period of time.”

TORONTO - Pro-life activist Linda Gibbons, just two days removed from appearing before the Supreme Court of Canada, was arrested again Dec. 16 outside a Toronto abortion clinic.

Gibbons began her protest around 9 a.m. at the Morgentaler Clinic near Bayview and Eglinton Avenues. Toronto Police arrested her about two hours later.

Gibbons has been arrested multiple times for violating a temporary injunction issued in 1994 that prevents her from protesting within 150 metres of Toronto abortion clinics. Since then, she has served more than nine years in prison for her protests, with judges refusing to grant her bail unless she promises not to continue her protests. She refuses to abide by these conditions.

OTTAWA - Lawyers for oft-arrested pro-life demonstrator Linda Gibbons argued before the Supreme Court of Canada Dec. 14 that using the criminal courts to stop her protests is like using a butcher’s knife where a scalpel would be more appropriate.

Attorney Daniel Santoro told the land's highest court that criminal courts should not be used to enforce an injunction made by a civil court, an injunction that has been used to jail Gibbons repeatedly. Instead, violations of civil injunctions or orders made by family courts or human rights tribunals should go back to the civil courts for enforcement, where there are a wider variety of remedies, including the lifting of the injunction.