Feature

Study finds divide exists in how Catholics read church news

October 15, 2011

WASHINGTON - A Catholic Press Association-commissioned study showed that 26 percent of adult Catholics had read a print copy of their diocesan newspaper or magazine in the past three months, but only 4 percent had gone to their computer to view the online version of the publication. The study also revealed that readership of Catholic newspapers has held steady over the past six years, a far cry from the daily newspaper business, which has recorded continuous declines in revenue, readership, advertising and employment. One area that showed a drop was Catholic readers' awareness of nationally distributed Catholic newspapers and magazines. But, counterbalancing the low numbers of Catholics going to the Web to read their diocesan newspaper, there was a marked increase in the percentage of Catholics visiting their parish's website, up from 9 percent in a similar study in 2005 to 14 percent in the 2011 study.

Taking on China’s ‘gendercide’

October 14, 2011

Chai Ling, a leader of the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests and now the founder of the American NGO All Girls Allowed, believes China’s one-child policy is undermining the moral and spiritual values of the nation, going so far as to call what’s happening there a “gendercide” — a regime of coerced abortions that brings the state right into the wombs of China’s women and distorting Chinese culture and values. “The one-child policy is becoming more than just a population control policy,” said Chai, author of the just-released book A Heart for Freedom. “It has become a policy of control of its own population — to put fear of the state into the hearts of women, into the most intimate part of the relationship between a man and a woman.”

New study shows thriving parishes engage people

October 8, 2011

The accepted premise that religion is withering away in Canada is being debunked by a new study from Canada’s most published and quoted sociologist of religion, Reginald Bibby. Bibby has just released numbers showing the percentage of Canadians committed to regular church attendance is rock solid. He largely attributes the continued vitality to a Catholic Church that is constantly renewing itself through immigration. “If we were thinking, as so many people have been thinking, in terms of secularization — where religion is in retreat mode and things are bad and getting worse — we’re saying that really has been an interpretation that has been very inaccurate,” said the University of Lethbridge sociologist.

Evidence 'incontrovertible' that priests are happy

October 8, 2011

WASHINGTON - Msgr. Stephen Rossetti is out to correct the myth that the typical Catholic priest is "a lonely, dispirited figure living an unhealthy life that breeds sexual deviation," as a writer for the Harford Courant once put it. And he's got the data to prove it. The research is "consistent, replicated many times and now incontrovertible" that priests as a group are happy, Rossetti told a symposium on the priesthood Oct. 5 at The Catholic University of America in Washington. The symposium was built around Why Priests Are Happy: A Study of the Psychological and Spiritual Health of Priests, a new book by Rossetti. A priest of the diocese of Syracuse, N.Y., he is a clinical associate professor of pastoral studies at the university and former president and CEO of St. Luke Institute in Silver Spring, Md., a treatment facility for Catholic clergy and religious.

Veteran reporter debunks myths surrounding the Vatican

October 5, 2011

OTTAWA - Veteran Rome-based reporter and author John Allen Jr. says there is no such thing as “the Vatican” as commonly portrayed by the mainstream media. “Only seen from afar” is the Vatican perceived as a bunch of “Stepford wives all in lockstep,” the National Catholic Reporter’s senior correspondent recently told the Canadian Catholic School Trustees Association annual conference here. Those who work in the Vatican come from a wide variety of backgrounds and have sometimes widely differing viewpoints, he said.

Dead wrong: Catholics must no longer support capital punishment

September 30, 2011

VATICAN CITY - The Catholic Church's position on capital punishment has evolved considerably over the centuries. And as a result, "it is not a message that is immediately understood -- that there is no room for supporting the death penalty in today's world," said a Vatican's expert on capital punishment and arms control. Because the church has only in the past few decades begun closing the window -- if not shutting it completely -- on the permissibility of the death penalty, people who give just a partial reading of the church's teachings may still think the death penalty is acceptable today, said Tommaso Di Ruzza, desk officer at the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace. St. Thomas Aquinas equated a dangerous criminal to an infected limb thereby making it "praiseworthy and healthful" to kill the criminal in order to spare the spread of infection and safeguard the common good.

The Vaniers valued family values

September 25, 2011

The year 1959 is a couple of generations ago — hardly a blink of an eye in the gaze of history. But on Sept. 15, 1959, Georges Vanier took office as Governor General of Canada with words few leaders would speak in public today. “My first words are a prayer,” said the old soldier. “May almighty God in His infinite wisdom and mercy bless the sacred mission which has been entrusted to me by Her Majesty the Queen and help me to fulfill it in all humility. In exchange for His strength, I offer Him my weakness. May He give peace to this beloved land of ours and, to those who live in it, the grace of mutual understanding, respect and love.” A new biography of Georges and Pauline Vanier by Mary Frances Coady tells the story of their lives lived in tandem, driven by high ideals and understood as a spiritual enterprise. Georges and Pauline Vanier: Portrait of a Couple covers a century of history in which Canada emerged from a semi-colonial backwater to become a modern nation. But rather than a march through two world wars and into the Cold War, Coady presents this history through the intimate lens of a marriage.

Adoration brings Scripture alive

September 21, 2011

OTTAWA - Many people find that getting away for a retreat is impossible due to time, money or family reasons. Even finding a free weekend can be difficult in our busy lives. Aside from a day at my church during Advent and Lent, where parishioners gather for lectures, quiet time and a silent meal, I haven’t attended a formal retreat in more than a decade. Instead, I have discovered the simplest, most flexible way for me to make a retreat is to find my way to the nearest adoration chapel and stay there for an hour or two. Over the past year, I have done this frequently. I have also been blessed with the grace to pray three novenas that included a minimum of an hour of adoration for every one of the nine days.

Community building and vulnerability

September 21, 2011

VANCOUVER - Every May, the graduating class of St. Thomas Aquinas Regional Secondary School in North Vancouver, B.C., attends a three-day retreat organized and facilitated by school staff and alumni. My Grade 12 retreat four years ago is one of my fondest memories of high school. So it was a blessing this past May to be invited to help lead the 2011 class in this spiritual exercise. The objective of the retreat, held at Camp Stillwood (about a two-hour drive from Vancouver), is to help students open up to God and to each other. Students begin from varying levels of spirituality; we had to ensure they understood that. The retreat had all the activities that a large-scale retreat should have: a morning of team building exercises and games, a campfire, free time and an evening devoted to hilarious skits (making fun of teachers is encouraged). As a leader, I was responsible for leading some of these games, leading small group discussions and helping lead worship.

Retreats program sets young adults’ ‘Hearts on Fire’

September 21, 2011

The first thing Fr. Phil Hurley makes clear is that when he is speaking about Hearts on Fire he is not referring to a popular line of engagement rings. “This is not the world’s most perfectly cut diamond,” he jokes. The priest is the national youth and young adult director of the Apostleship of Prayer, a Jesuit association leading the Hearts on Fire retreats. The retreats are for young adults ages 18-39, married or single, based on the Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius and the spirituality of the Apostleship of Prayer. “It’s a crucial time for people in their lives,” Hurley told Catholic News Service. “They are at a place in their life that they can make decisions soon and take action on it right away and make a big difference.”