{mosimage}MONTREAL - Close to three-quarters of Quebec parents want the right to choose between a secular Ethics and Religious Culture program and denominational religious instruction for their children, suggests a new poll.

The poll by Leger Marketing on behalf of the Catholic Parents Association of Quebec was released Oct. 28. It found that 72 per cent of those surveyed agreed that parents should have a choice between denominational religious instruction and the new non-denominational course all Quebec schools — public and private — are being told to provide for students.

{mosimage}OTTAWA - The Canadian Catholic Organization for Development and Peace is seeking funds to help Haiti recover from a series of devastating hurricanes.

“This is the worst impact from hurricanes that we’ve seen in decades,” said Anne Catherine Kennedy, Development and Peace program officer for Brazil and Haiti.

{mosimage}OTTAWA - The Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops wants Canada to express “grave concern” to India about Christian persecution and cut off funds if aid money supports persecuting groups.

“According to substantiated news reports, this past summer there have been pre-meditated mob attacks in the state of Orissa as well as in the states of Karnataka and Madha Pradesh,” bishops' conference president Archbishop James Weisgerber wrote in an Oct. 15 letter to Prime Minister Stephen Harper.

{mosimage}TORONTO - Deborah Sinclair’s first introduction to the reality of women’s abuse happened when she was 12, while having lunch at a friend’s house. The friend’s father lifted up the kitchen table in rage despite the fact she, the other six kids and their mother were all present.

“I wondered if he knew I was there,” she said. “And you know I didn’t tell my parents because I was fearful they wouldn’t let me go back.”

{mosimage}TORONTO - While bishop after bishop at the recently wrapped up Synod of Bishops on Scripture has decried the state of preaching in the church, Dominican Sister Mary Catherine Hilkert argues church leaders are ignoring a potential gold mine of superior preaching.

At the annual Dominican Family Justice Seminar at the University of Toronto’s Newman Centre Chapel, Hilkert said bishops should commission lay people to preach at parish Masses. A former president of the Catholic Theological Society of America, Hilkert led a small group in two days of discussion about the charism of preaching and how it is exercised in the church Oct. 17-18. It was the ninth annual Dominican Justice Seminar in Toronto.

{mosimage}TORONTO - Pope Paul VI’s controversial encyclical Humanae Vitae will be under the microscope at a Toronto conference later this month.

“Celebrating the Richness of Humanae Vitae: a buried treasure” is the theme of the Nov. 15 conference. It will examine Pope Paul VI’s 1968 encyclical in light of church teaching on sexuality and marriage, marking the document’s 40th anniversary.

{mosimage}TORONTO - It was a bad month for just about all investors, but a little bit worse for ethical investors in September.

The Jantzi Social Index of 60 Canadian stocks chosen for their environmental, social and governance performance plummeted 15.3 per cent in September, compared with a 13.76-per-cent drop in the S&P/TSX 60 and a 14.45-per-cent slide in the S&P/TSX Composite.

{mosimage}TORONTO - Women’s work is good work, it’s the work of faith and sometimes it involves power tools.

More than 30 women of all faiths came together to do one of the toughest, dirtiest jobs in house construction at a Habitat for Humanity site in the Beaches neighbourhood of Toronto Oct. 16. They put up vapour barriers and drywall in six units on Kingston Road near Main Street.

{mosimage}TORONTO - Every year during the world’s largest Holocaust education event the links between Christians and Jews — both now and during the Second World War — are visible.

Of the 160 events that make up Toronto’s Holocaust Education Week starting Nov. 2, a dozen will be held in Catholic schools. Most of the presentations at Catholic schools involve Holocaust survivors telling their stories.

{mosimage}TORONTO - The rich are getting richer, poor are getting poorer and even the middle class is losing touch with wealthy Canadians, according to a new report from the Paris-based Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development.

After 20 years of declining inequality from the mid-1970s to mid-1990s, the gap between rich and poor has risen sharply in Canada since 1995, the OECD said in Growing Unequal, released Oct. 21. Canada is now one of the more unequal countries among the 30 rich nations who make up the OECD.