Armed with the extraordinary social teaching of the Roman Catholic Church, I recently made a deputation to a City of Toronto committee examining contracting out work currently being done by unionized cleaning staff.

As a concerned citizen, father, grandfather and former educator who has taught social ethics to thousands, I am appalled at the attack on the workers’ rights to earn a living wage. But, sadly, this is not an isolated case involving one group of low-paid cleaners. There is a trend evident across many levels of public life and private enterprise to squeeze wages from working families.

Writing in the National Post Oct. 25, Terrence Corcoran insists that even more important than criticizing the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace for talking about the “ideology of markets” is a need to “head off the Roman Catholic Church’s mad rush into global statism and authoritarianism.”

Corcoran was commenting on the recent statement by council president Cardinal Peter Turkson, entitled “Towards Reforming the International Financial and Monetary Systems in the Context of Global Public Authority.”

The Vatican bureaucracy has been known to make a mess out of public relations. This is not my own unique discovery. Last September I attended a course for journalists at the Vatican and this was a major topic of discussion.

Even journalists from the Catholic press could not believe how poorly the Vatican handles the dissemination of information. There were journalists based in Rome who spoke of the gross incompetence of the Church in trying to explain itself to the world.

The following is an edited excerpt from Motherhood Matters: Inspirational Stories, Letters, Quotes & Prayers for Catholic Moms by Dorothy Pilarski and published by Catholic Register Books.

At the beginning of November we celebrate All Saints Day and All Souls Day, and Remembrance Day follows soon thereafter. These three days remind Catholics to be united in mind and heart with both the saints in heaven and the souls in purgatory. We should be thankful for those who died as martyrs defending our faith and those who died to preserve our freedom.

There was an interesting moment in the Republican presidential candidates’ debate in California a few weeks back. Brian Williams, the NBC news anchor and moderator, asked Rick Santorum, a prominent Catholic running for the Republican nomination, a question about poverty.


“The Catholic faith has as a part of it caring for the poor,” Williams said. “One in seven people in this country now qualifies as poor. Where do the poor come in? Where do they place? In this party, on this stage, in a Santorum administration?”

The Supreme Court of Canada in its decision handed down on the legality of InSite, the Vancouver drug injection site, has arrogantly decided that it is more capable of determining Canada’s national drug policy than the nation’s elected government.

It has ordered the Minister of Health to continue the operation of this controversial drug injection site even though, under the Controlled Drug and Substances Act (CDSA), this is supposed to be a matter for the Minister’s discretion.

Jonathan Sacks, Chief Rabbi of Britain’s United Hebrew Congregation and a member of the House of Lords, is a remarkable man.

Educated at Cambridge, he obtained first-class honours in philosophy and pursued postgraduate studies at New College, Oxford, and King’s College, London, gaining a doctoral degree in 1981. He has been a visiting professor at several universities in Britain and abroad and holds honorary degrees from several universities. Unlike many academics, he writes clearly; unlike many clerics, he is not afraid to speak his mind.

All this is evident in a recent op-ed piece he wrote in the Wall Street Journal.

The following is an extract from Dorothy Pilarski's forthcoming book "Motherhood Matters".

Click here to read more about the book or place an order.

One day at Sunday Mass a well-meaning dad arrived with a large plastic bag from a popular store. It contained a big, new toy for his young son. Something to entertain him during Mass. I can still see the bag’s big, green logo appearing from behind the kneeler, interrupting prayers.

Being a brand new toy, it was in plastic packaging that was torn open in the middle of Mass. What a racket! Several people nearby, including me, were mortified.  

I had to fight all my motherly instincts to lean over and give the man a scolding. What I really wanted to do was tug him out of the church by his ears and ask him: “What are you teaching your child? Do you want to teach him that no matter what is happening around him he is entitled to have fun?”

The Ontario election campaign has been on for a few weeks now and I have yet to hear Catholic education mentioned once.

That’s odd, considering all three main party leaders are graduates of the Catholic school system.
 Yet none of the three main parties specifically mention Catholic education or faith-based education in their platforms.

In the 2007 election, it seems that’s all we talked about.
The Ontario Progressive Conservatives promised to extend funding for faith-based schools beyond the Catholic system and include Protestant, Jewish and Muslim schools. The Liberals met that proposal with derision, claiming there should only be one public system that did not divide Ontario.

The first book that made me think seriously about Catholicism, that made me realize the depth of the faith and exposed its beauty to me, was Thomas Merton’s The Seven Storey Mountain.

It literally put me over the hump past any lingering issues that were keeping me outside the Church.

The 1948 autobiography of the young American’s route from New York intellectual and man about town to Catholicism and finally the Trappist monastery in Gethsemani Abbey in Kentucky is one of the great modern spiritual journeys.