OTTAWA - Throughout the developed world, lowered birth rates and family breakdown will have a devastating effect on the global economy and the welfare state’s viability, says an international study released Oct 3.

“On current trends, we face a world of rapidly aging and declining populations, of few children — many of them without the benefit of siblings and a stable, two-parent home — of lonely seniors living on meagre public support, of cultural and economic stagnation,” says the study, entitled “The Empty Cradle: How Contemporary Trends Undermine the Global Economy.”

Co-sponsored by the Institute of Marriage and Family Canada (IMFC) and pro-family groups in the United States, the Philippines, Spain and Colombia, the study shows even developing countries such as Iran, Lebanon, Chile, Thailand and South Korea have seen their lifetime births per woman shrink to fewer than two from averages as high as six. Canada’s birth rate is only 1.5 children per woman.

TORONTO - Young Ontario pro-lifers are gearing up for Canada’s first “Defund abortion rally” on Oct. 22 at Queen’s Park.

Instead of controversial photos of unborn babies, ads for the Campaign Life Coalition Youth-led rally are highlighting a new approach: an appeal to taxpayers.

“Ontario taxpayers pay over $30 million annually to cover the cost of abortions in their province,” begins a YouTube ad created by Campaign Life Coalition Youth.

EDMONTON - The Bible should be part of the daily life of every Catholic, says Archbishop Terrence Prendergast.

“You need to feed on it,” the Ottawa archbishop said at ScriptureFest 2011 on Sept. 24.

Prendergast noted Catholics are not known for their appreciation of the Bible, but that has to change if we are going to evangelize the world.

“God wants the Word to be known by everyone,” he said. “All the baptized are called to make Jesus known.”

BARRIE, ONT - Depending on who he was with,  Deacon Ted MacDonnell was affectionately known as detective, sergeant, deacon, pastor, professor, Teddy, dad or papa.

He was a man of many names and even more friends, someone who always had time for people, whether it was in his role as an OPP detective or a deacon in the Church. Above all, though, he was a husband, father of two daughters and grandfather of five children whom he baptized.

“Everyone he came in contact with remembered him warmly and with a genuine smile because dad simply cared,” said his youngest daughter, Janet Small.

TORONTO - Fr. Edwin Platt, a well-known priest who served throughout his hometown of Toronto, died Sept. 17. He succumbed to the stroke that had felled him while he was saying Mass at Corpus Christi parish.

Fr. Platt was 89 and was in his 62nd year as a priest.

Fr. Platt had returned in his later years to the east end where he grew up. He was educated at St. John’s and Corpus Christi Schools before moving on to St. Michael’s College School. He entered St. Augustine’s Seminary and was ordained a priest in 1948.

TORONTO - A multi-faith group of parents has banded together to urge voters to be mindful of the importance of parental rights and education when voting in Thursday's Ontario election. 

“We are looking (towards) the future, what should happen when new government is elected,” Peter Chen of the Toronto Chinese Catholic Task Force (TCCTF) said after a Sept. 29 press conference. “As Catholics, as religious groups, we hope that our parents would have their own basic rights in deciding what they'd like to hear and what should be taught (to their children).”

OTTAWA - International Planned Parenthood, which promotes and provides abortions, has received a federal grant under a G8 initiative that Prime Minister Stephen Harper said would not fund Third World abortions.

Conservative MP Brad Trost calls the $6 million CIDA grant to Planned Parenthood a “slap in the face” to all social conservatives in Parliament and the Tory caucus.

“I am very, very disappointed, very unhappy,” said Trost, the pro-life MP who campaigned last spring on getting Planned Parenthood de-funded.

TORONTO - Baby Joseph Maraachli, who had been at the centre of a legal battle between his parents and doctors, died on Sept. 27 surrounded by his family.

Joseph's father, Moe, told The Catholic Register that the funeral for the 18-month old child was held Sept. 28.

Br. Paul O'Donnell, Major Superior of the Minnesota-based Franciscan Brothers of Peace, announced the death on Facebook: "(Baby Joseph) passed away peacefully at home with his parents and family at his side. Praise God he had seven precious months with his family to be surrounded by love and was not put to death at the hands of doctors,” he wrote.

TORONTO - Critics often wonder how a Harvard-educated man like U.S. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia can believe in God. Scalia answers that being a devout Catholic does not mean you forgo your intellect or reason.

“A faith that has no reason is not sound,” Scalia said to a packed room of more than 200 lawyers and judges as keynote speaker following the 87th annual Red Mass on Sept. 22 at the King Edward Hotel in Toronto.

“That is why I am not a Branch Davidian,” he joked, with chuckles from the audience. (The Branch Davidians are the infamous sect notorious for the 1993 siege in Waco, Texas, where more than 80 people died during a standoff with the FBI.)

OTTAWA - Catholic judges, lawyers and politicians must never divorce their Catholic faith from their public duties, Ottawa Archbishop Terrence Prendergast told a group of civic leaders that included Supreme Court Justice Louis LeBel.

In a homily given Sept. 22 at the annual Red Mass for the legal profession, Prendergast said lawyers and lawmakers must bear witness to the Gospel in the public square and urged them to infuse the rule of law with the rule of faith.

“On matters of who is entitled to live or die, on the status of marriage and the family, on the critical issue of religious liberty, the totalitarian impulse is not absent from Canada,” he warned.