News/Canada

For the sixth year in a row Canada’s birth rate has inched up, but a polarized job market and pressure on young couples to obtain and pay for their education before starting a family is pushing mothers up against a biological wall.

Statistics Canada reported the nation’s fertility rate for 2008 was 1.68 children per woman, up slightly from 1.66 per woman in 2007. The 2008 fertility rate produced 377,886 babies, a 2.7-per-cent increase over 2007.

Much of the increase can be attributed to the population bulge of children of baby boomers, the so-called “echo generation,” now in their 20s and 30s.

“Canada, in terms of fertility, is the middle of the pack (compared to other Western nations),” said Vanier Institute for the Family director of programs Katherine Scott. “Obviously, we’re below the replacement rate of 2.1.”

TORONTO - There are about 6,900 languages in the world. Anthropologists and linguists believe 90 per cent of them will be extinct by the end of this century. But Scarboro Mission priest Fr. Ron MacDonell is doing his best to save one of them.

MacDonell works with the Makushi people deep in the Amazon rainforest, near the border between Brazil and Guyana. Working with his parishioners, MacDonnell has produced a trilingual book of Makushi myths in Makushi, Portuguese and English.

The English title for the collection of 30 legends and folk tales is Jaguars, Tapirs and Foxes.

Years in the making, the book is only MacDonell’s latest effort to give momentum to Makushi language and culture. In 2008 he published a Makushi dictionary and since 2006 he has worked with native Makushi speakers to broadcast Makushi lessons on the Raraima diocese’s FM radio station.

OTTAWA - The Supreme Court of Canada heard arguments May 18 in a religious freedom case that pits parental rights against Quebec’s mandatory Ethics and Religious Culture program (ERC).

The case was brought by a Roman Catholic couple from Drummondville, Que., who requested their two children be exempted from the ERC. Their name is protected by a publication ban.

Mark Phillips one of the two lawyers representing the parents, said the government insists the ERC is “about teaching tolerance and diversity.” The parents have nothing against those objectives, he said, but they say the course is “a form of indoctrination,” seeking to cultivate worldview and a framework for ethics that is different from their Catholic faith.

Co-counsel Mark Pratt told the court “the state has no right to program people” in arguing for the prior rights of parents to educate their children and to choose how that education is delegated. Many of the questions from the bench concerned whether the onus should be on the parents to prove harm, or whether the state had the onus to prove its course was neutral on religion.

TORONTO - A leaked private e-mail between two Australian bishops that was critical of Toronto Archbishop Thomas Collins briefly threatened to halt the process of forming a Catholic Anglican ordinariate in Canada.

The message from Traditional Anglican Communion primate Archbishop John Hepworth to Melbourne’s Catholic Bishop Peter Elliott accused Collins of “the wanton destruction of their (Anglican Catholic Church of Canada) communities, the absolute disregard for their ecclesial integrity, and the brutish manner in which these edicts are being communicated.” Hepworth said that he and Anglican Catholic Church of Canada Bishop Peter Wilkinson would immediately place “on hold” further steps toward creating an ordinariate in Canada.  

Collins has been put in charge of the processes of forming an ordinariate for ex-Anglicans in Canada under the terms of the 2009 apostolic constitution Anglicanorum Coetibus.

In a statement posted to the archdiocese of Toronto’s web site May 16, Collins said his job was to offer the terms of Anglicanorum Coetibus to any and all former Anglicans, not just the Traditional Anglican Communion, of which the Anglican Catholic Church of Canada is a member.

During the 1994 genocide in Rwanda, Fr. Ubald Rugirangoga lost 80 members of his family and 45,000 members of his parish. He later found the people who murdered his family and despite the pain they inflicted on him, Rugirangoga was able to forgive them for their crimes.

And then he went one step further — he paid for the education of the daughter of the man who murdered his mother. Otherwise, the girl would have had no opportunity of going to school.

Rugirangoga said he has discovered the secret of peace is through forgiveness.

And so, he set about creating the Centre for the Secret of Peace in Rwanda as part of his vocation to bring peace, reconciliation and forgiveness to the Rwandan people.

“I want to build a centre of peace because I am engaged in the peace process after the genocide in Rwanda,” Rugirangoga told The Catholic Register.

AMMAN, JORDAN - Wafi Youssif asked his daughter Raghda not to go to church because churches had been bombed for years. She told her dad: “If I have to die, I don’t mind dying in church.”

Raghda did. She bled to death in Baghdad’s Our Lady of Salvation Syriac Catholic Church, Oct. 31 last year, only 40 days after her wedding day. Terrorists stormed the church during Mass, locked the doors, cut the electricity and began their killing spree.

Wafi and Jinan Youssif told me the story of their 22-year-old daughter in their Amman apartment where they lived since fleeing Baghdad. They showed me the near-perfect grades she earned studying for her PhD in chemical engineering, the plaque she was given for representing the Syriac Catholic youth community at a National Eucharistic Congress in Amman and the photos of her crowning the statue of Mary in May at their church in 2008.

TORONTO - Ontario’s first Italian Heritage Month kicks off on June 2 and will pay homage to the Italian Canadian community’s cultural and religious heritage.

Michael Tibollo, president of the National Congress of Italian Canadians, formally introduced the line-up of Italian Heritage Month featuring exhibits, lectures, concerts and other festivities throughout the GTA at a May 11 press conference at Queen’s Park.

“One of the pillars of the Italian culture has always been the religious aspect of it,” Tibollo told The Register after the announcement.

Coming on the heels of Mother’s Day, Deborah Morlani believes the timing couldn’t be more right for the National March for Life.

"It’s perfect timing for women to be showing that they’re proud to be mothers and that motherhood is a blessing," Morlani, a pro-life speaker and Catholic writer, told The Catholic Register.

The annual National March for Life takes place in Ottawa May 11 through 13, mere days after Mother’s Day. This year’s theme is "Abortion kills a human being." The aim of the march is to promote respect for life at all stages, from conception to natural death.

Morlani, along with taking part in the march, will be among the guest speakers at the march’s youth conference on May 13.

"I was conceived in rape when my mother was raped when she was 16, so I’ll be sharing my testimonial with youth," she said. The title of her talk is "Every human being deserves a chance at life: no exceptions."

ANTIGONISH, N.S. - Antigonish Bishop Brian Dunn called it a sad day for his Nova Scotia diocese as he spoke to media a day after former Bishop Raymond Lahey plead guilty to possession of child pornography charges.

It was the first time that Dunn, or the diocese, had commented on Lahey’s legal situation since charges of possession and importation of child pornography were laid in September 2009.

"This is indeed a very sad day as we witness one of our Church leaders convicted of these very serious charges connected with child pornography," Dunn said in his opening statement.

"As a Church, we condemn pornography in all its forms since it seriously degrades humanity. We especially find repugnant any forms of child sexual exploitation because of the lasting consequences that these have on the gift of childhood."

OTTAWA — Bishop Raymond Lahey pleaded guilty to the importation of child pornography May 4 and went directly to jail after he asked the judge to be incarcerated while awaiting his sentence hearing.

The former Bishop of Antigonish, N.S., faced two child porn charges, but the Crown and defence counsel agreed to drop the more serious charge of possession of child pornography for the purpose of transmission. Lahey's lawyer told the court there was no distribution involved.

Lahey faces a minimum mandatory sentence of one year in jail and possibly up to 10 years.

He also faces dismissal from the clerical state, or defrocking as it was once known, from the Vatican. In a statement yesterday, the Vatican restated its condemnation of sexual exploitation in all its forms, particularly crimes against minors.

"Although the civil process has run its course, the Holy See will continue to follow the canonical procedures in effect for such cases, which will result in the imposition of the appropriate disciplinary or penal measures," said the statement.