MISSISSAUGA, ONT. - Teachers should address homophobia in Catholic schools and embrace the objective of gay-straight alliances, two presenters told delegates at a major education conference.
Kevin Welbes Godin, chair of the Catholic Association of Religious and Family Life Educators, and co-presenter Dave Szolloy, religious department head at Scarborough’s Mother Teresa Catholic High School, said GSAs are necessary to combat bullying in Catholic schools. They were speaking to about 30 teachers Oct. 28 at the When Faith Meets Pedagogy conference.
Teachers can help make for a more just society, Leddy tells conference
By Sheila Dabu Nonato, The Catholic RegisterMISSISSAUGA, ONT. - Catholic teachers, in their “noble and ethical task” of educating youth about the Catholic faith, can help create a more “just” Canadian society by welcoming refugees, social justice activist Mary Jo Leddy told the 15th annual When Faith Meets Pedagogy conference.
The Oct. 27 to 29 conference, which was sponsored by the Catholic Curriculum Corporation, featured workshops for Catholic school teachers across the province.
In keeping with the conference's theme “Room for all at the table: Gathered, Nourished and Sent Forth,” Leddy spoke on welcoming refugees in Canada.
Religion is part of holistic education of children, Pope says
By Cindy Wooden, Catholic News ServiceVATICAN CITY - A holistic education of children and young people must include religious education in accordance with the wishes of the children's parents, Pope Benedict XVI told Brazil's new ambassador to the Vatican.
The teaching of religion in public schools, "far from signifying that the state assumes or imposes a specific religious creed, indicates a recognition of religion as a necessary value for the holistic formation of the person," the Pope said Oct. 31.
The following is an address delivered by Toronto Archbishop Thomas Collins at the 32nd Annual Archbishop’s Dinner, Oct. 27, at the Metro Toronto Convention Centre, Toronto.
This evening, as we come together for this great annual dinner in support of so many worthy causes, our joy is tempered by our sadness at the recent death of His Eminence, Aloysius Cardinal Ambrozic, who so faithfully served our family of faith as its spiritual leader from 1990 until 2007, and who now has completed his earthly journey. We continue to benefit from the blessings that flowed from his wise leadership, and I in particular will always be grateful for his warm welcome when I came from Edmonton to succeed him here as Archbishop. May his soul, and the souls of all of the faithful departed, through the mercy of God, rest in peace.
TORONTO - While Toronto’s Coptic Catholics drive their kids to school each morning, show up for work every day and go home to their families in the evening, part of them is living in the Shubra district of Cairo.
They fear for families back home in Shubra. They say relatives they left in Egypt are by turns fearful about the future and their personal safety or marching in the streets. But none predict a refugee crisis on the scale of Iraq’s exodus of Christians.
An Oct. 9 army attack on Coptic demonstrators that killed 26 and injured more than 300 Shubra residents hasn’t really changed the situation, Toronto Copts told The Catholic Register after Mass at Holy Family Coptic Catholic Church Oct. 23.
TORONTO - Nobody is claiming Occupy Toronto protesters are a Catholic crowd. Not many have Bibles and copies of Pope Benedict XVI's latest encyclical in their backpacks. But it's amazing how many echoes of Scripture and Catholic social teaching there are in the worldwide Occupy movement, say Scripture scholars and social teaching experts.
"The issue is Mammon. To me it's very biblical," said Redemptorist Father Paul Hansen, director of the Redemptorist Biblical Justice Consultancy.
Hansen spent a day among the protesters camped out next to the Anglican St. James Cathedral in downtown Toronto. The demands he heard reminded him of Jesus cleansing the temple (John 2:13-25).
TORONTO - At the height of her career, Dorothy Pilarski was training hundreds of women how to be successful in business. But Pilarski says her most rewarding endeavour has been as a mother to her two children.
In her new book, Motherhood Matters: Inspirational Stories, Letters, Quotes & Prayers for Catholic Moms, Pilarski invites women to reflect on the vocation of motherhood. She shares personal experiences through inspirational stories on the joys and challenges of motherhood that show how she has shared the Catholic faith with her son and daughter.
“We need a movement to reclaim motherhood to the dignity that Our Lady (gave) it,” Pilarski said.
Lisa LaFlamme - Reading the news and keeping the faith
By Vanessa Santilli-Raimondo, The Catholic RegisterTORONTO - Lisa LaFlamme’s Catholic faith has helped her learn empathy, the concept of truth and “doing right by another person.”
“Those are the same principles that guide good journalism as far as getting to the truth on something and particularly focusing on the oppressed in the world,” the new chief anchor and senior editor of CTV National News told The Catholic Register.
She has taken these values with her to the prestigious position she assumed Sept. 5 when LaFlamme replaced Lloyd Robertson, the long-time anchor known as Canada’s “most trusted news anchor.”
Along with every university in Canada, the nation’s Catholic colleges are stuffed to the gills with undergraduates. More than 90,000 Ontario students showed up for first-year classes this fall, almost 2,000 more than the double cohort year 2003, when the province’s universities were accepting two-years’ worth of high school graduates because Grade 13 had been eliminated.
“When I run a principal’s orientation session at the beginning of the year, I can only fit 250 into the room. We have 900 first-year students,” said David Sylvester, principal at King’s University College in London, Ont. “We can’t even fit them into a room to talk to them.”
Sylvester looks forward to running a more efficient orientation session in the fall of 2013, when the new $11-million Daryl J. King Student Life Centre will be completed. The new complex, designed to meet stringent environmental standards, will include a theatre, student union offices, informal meeting space, a cafe and games area and a learning commons.
Sacred Heart satisfies Peterborough’s hunger for Catholic education
By Sheila Dabu Nonato, The Catholic RegisterPeterborough’s first Catholic liberal arts college is responding to the need for solid Catholic education for youth in the diocese, says Fr. Joseph Devereaux, chancellor of the Peterborough diocese.
“The focus is to provide something for youth that will help them,” said Devereaux.
“(It’s about) what can we do for youth intellectually, spiritually, socially. A well-rounded education can help provide that.”
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OTTAWA - A new research centre at Ottawa’s Saint Paul University will study the contribution Canadians made to Vatican II as well as how the Council has shaped religious communities here.
A year before the 50th anniversary of the opening of the Second Vatican Council, the Research Centre for Vatican II and 21st Century Catholicism launched Oct. 13. It will examine ecumenism and interreligious dialogue in contemporary society and look at issues of progress and decline in the Catholic community.
College president sees similarities between priesthood, armed forces
By Chris Miller, Canadian Catholic NewsEDMONTON - Basilian Father Terry Kersch is a walking enigma, previously living the life of a soldier and then another as a man of the Gospel.
“The religious life and the military life, in some fundamental ways, are not all that different,” said Kersch. “In the military life, it’s the mission that takes precedence and part of your identity is putting yourself at the service of an overall mission.
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.
MISSISSAUGA, ONT. - The Resurrection Dance Theatre of Haiti is bringing its musical and dancing talents to the Greater Toronto Area to help it rise out of the rubble of the 2010 Haitian earthquake that devastated much of its home.
The dance troupe will be coming to Canada as part of its “Rising from the Rubble” tour to raise funds for the rebuilding of its schools, while also bringing awareness to the continued plight of Haitians still recovering from the quake.
“Since the earthquake, it’s more demanding for us to go on tour so we can rebuild our home,” lead dancer Walnes Cangas, 26, told The Catholic Register on the phone from Haiti.