NEWS

CHARLOTTE, N.C. - The Department of Health and Human Services' mandate that would force many religious institutions to provide free contraceptives against their consciences is illegal, former U.S. Rep. Bart Stupak said Sept. 4 during a meeting of pro-life Democrats.

During debate over the legislation that would become the 2010 Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, Stupak negotiated an executive order with the Obama administration that guaranteed the act would not violate the Hyde Amendment, which forbids federal funding for any abortion or abortion-related care. The HHS mandate violates that executive order, as well as the Hyde Amendment itself, Stupak believes.

"Specifically, as written, it violates the law and violates the executive order," said Stupak, who decided not to seek re-election after passage of the health reform law.

Last year, as her agency set forth the nuts and bolts of the Affordable Care Act, HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius declared that nearly all employers must include free contraception and sterilization services in their health insurance policies.

HHS drafted a narrow exemption for religious employers who object to providing contraception, sterilization and abortion-inducing drugs as mandated, but to be exempted they must serve and hire people primarily of their own faith. Catholic schools, hospitals and charitable organizations would not qualify under that standard; they would either have to provide such coverage in violation of Catholic teaching, pay steep annual fines in order to keep providing health insurance to their employees and students, or stop providing health insurance entirely.

Stupak said he was "bewildered" and "perplexed" by the HHS mandate when it was announced last summer. Religious organizations led by the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops bristled, and under the vocal leadership of Cardinal Timothy Dolan of New York, conference president, they fought back. They denounced the move at first, asking the Obama administration to back off the HHS mandate. Belmont Abbey College in North Carolina was one of the first to file a federal lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of the HHS mandate. More than 20 similar lawsuits are now in the works.

In response to the criticism, President Barack Obama announced a compromise, giving Catholic institutions a year's reprieve from having to comply with the HHS mandate and allowing them to pass the coverage costs onto their insurance carriers rather than pay for it directly.

But the bishops and other religious institutions argued that the mandate itself was unconstitutional because it violates the First Amendment protection for religious freedom.

The Affordable Care Act was upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court earlier this year, but the court did not review the HHS mandate or other details of the act. One justice even hinted in her written opinion that the HHS mandate, if challenged in federal court, is at risk of being ruled unconstitutional.

Stupak said he agrees with the public outcry over the HHS mandate and its assault on religious organizations' freedom to not offer health insurance coverage for services they consider immoral. He smiled when he was asked about the court battles now getting under way, and he said the Catholic bishops are absolutely right to challenge the HHS mandate. He also noted, without giving specifics, that there have been some moves by the Obama administration to modify the mandate. Dolan and the USCCB staff have asked to meet with administration officials to work out a fix, but those efforts have so far been unsuccessful.

Stupak hinted it is in the Obama administration's best interest to bend on this controversial issue, because the HHS mandate could be overturned in court.

"We don't want this stuck in the courts, being challenged for years," he said.

VATICAN CITY - Thanks to a French automaker and an Italian utility, Pope Benedict XVI now has a pair of all-electric minivans and a series of recharging stations with which to power them.

Two custom-made editions of Renault's Kangoo Maxi Z.E. cars were delivered personally to the Pope Sept. 5 at the papal summer villa in Castel Gandolfo.

At a Vatican press conference the next day, representatives of Renault told reporters the two cars were made specifically for the Vatican.

The white version, with the papal stem on the front doors, was designed for the Pope to use, probably at Castel Gandolfo, but Jesuit Father Federico Lombardi, Vatican spokesman, said it also could be used on other occasions when the Pope is in the midst of a crowd.

The roof over the back seats opens and the side windows are removable, so it can be used as a popemobile, the Renault representatives said. It also has a retractable step to make it easier to get in and out of the vehicle.

On a full charge, they said, the Pope's car can cover 160 km. While they did not say how fast the Pope's Kangoo Maxi Z.E. could go, Renault says its unmodified version can reach speeds up to 125 km an hour.

The second Kangoo Maxi Z.E. given to the Pope was designed for the Vatican police force, the "gendarmeria Vaticana." Painted blue, the minivan has police lights on top and a white-and-gold stripe around the sides.

Pope Benedict, the Italian police who patrol St. Peter's Square, and the staff of Castel Gandolfo and the Vatican press office already use electric vehicles, which is why the Italian electric company ENEL has installed recharging stations at the Vatican as well as at the summer villa.

TORONTO - The complexity, heartbreak and bitter politics of the endless Palestinian-Israeli conflict are no reason for Christians to either settle for easy answers or to throw up their hands in despair. The situation calls for Christian charity and solidarity, Cardinal Thomas Collins told a packed theatre in Toronto Sept. 5.

Collins was on hand for the Toronto premiere of the Salt + Light TV documentary Across the Divide. The full-length documentary takes a close look at Bethlehem University — the only Catholic post-secondary institution in the Holy Land — and the trials of fourth-year commerce student Berlanty Azzam. Azzam was caught up in a maze of Israeli military security procedures that saw her detained and prevented from returning to Bethlehem to finish her degree.

Azzam's detention by Israeli forces while she was on her way to a job interview in Ramallah became an international incident in 2009. The case blew up while Salt + Light producer Kris Dmytrenko and a crew were on the Bethlehem University campus making a film about the Christian Brothers and their 39-year-old university just outside Jerusalem.

If the Church has to pick a side, it chooses to stand with the poor and the refugees, said Collins in a panel discussion after the screening. Collins was a participating bishop in the Synod on the Middle East in 2010.

"We have to help them," said Collins, who has spearheaded efforts by Canadian dioceses to sponsor Iraqi refugees displaced by the turmoil in their homeland. "We would prefer, of course, that they can flourish in their home."

The whole point of Bethlehem University is that it is a means for Palestinians — Chistians and Muslims — to flourish where they are, said Robert Smith, the university's vice chancellor. The university's student body is about 70 per cent Muslim and 30 per cent Christian.

"They (graduates) will be trained and professional and committed to build a nation as well as a Church," he said.

Dmytrenko, co-director of Across the Divide, warned against the temptation to name good guys and bad guys in the conflict.

"There's a lot of people suffering on both sides," he said. "It's not a case of who is suffering more."

"People think that all Muslims are terrorists trying to get rid of all Christians. That's not true," said Catholic Near East Welfare Association Canada director Carl Hetu.

As a Maronite Catholic from Lebanon, it was important to Mona Dagher to be at the documentary's premiere.

"I would hope that people will at least know what is going on there," said Dagher.

She praised the film for accurately depicting the lives of Palestinian Christians.

Ajax high school teacher Deanna Wilson said she plans to show the movie to her Grade 12 World Religions class.

"We have an obligation to open our lens to other religions and realities," she said.

She hopes particularly that her comfortable, suburban teens are moved by Azzam's struggle to get an education.

"There are a lot of details I wasn't aware of," said Danny Ferguson at the end of the evening. "It's important to understand the political environment."

"This gets the word out. This gets out the truth and the fullness of the truth," said Smith.

"Our purpose in making this documentary was not to convince. It was simply to tell a story," Salt + Light CEO Fr. Tom Rosica told the audience.

Rosica said he's received calls from committed advocates for both sides in the conflict — Palestinians, Jews and their allies — all equally unhappy with the film. But rather than buying into the rhetoric of the conflict the film strives to accurately fill in the political, economic, social and religious reality Bethlehem University struggles with daily.

OTTAWA - Fr. Joe LeClair, a popular Ottawa priest who has been charged with theft, fraud and breach of trust, had his first court appearance postponed until Oct. 17 after one of his lawyers asked for more time to examine the evidence.

Defense counsel had only received disclosure of evidence in the previous week and also wished for pre-trial consultations with the crown, the lawyer told the court on Sept. 5. LeClair was not present.

LeClair was charged July 3 with one count each of theft, fraud, criminal breach of trust and laundering the proceeds of crime after a lengthy Ottawa Police Organized Fraud investigation that was launched more than a year ago following a complaint from the archdiocese of Ottawa about missing funds from Ottawa's Blessed Sacrament parish.

Over a review period from January 2006 to May 2011, police found $240,000 in parish cheques were misappropriated and $160,000 in cash that was not accounted for.

LeClair, who has served in the Ottawa archdiocese for 25 years, was largely credited with the revival of Blessed Sacrament parish in the Glebe neighbourhood. In the spring of 2011, he admitted to a gambling addiction after the Ottawa Citizen ran a series of articles revealing huge credit card debts and cash advances. The priest denied ever misusing parish funds to feed his gambling habit.

The archdiocese of Ottawa asked for a forensic audit around the same time the newspaper began its reports. After the audit was completed, the archdiocese filed the complaint.

VATICAN CITY - The "most tragic wound" of clerical sexual abuse will not heal without a response from the entire Catholic Church — hierarchy and laity together — said the chief Vatican investigator of abuse cases.

"I think that slowly, slowly, slowly we are getting toward a response that is truly ecclesial — it's not hierarchical, it's the Church. We are in this together, in suffering (from) the wound and trying to respond to it," Msgr. Charles Scicluna told Vatican Radio.

The monsignor, whose formal title is promoter of justice in the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, spoke to Vatican Radio during a Sept. 4-5 conference in England titled "Redeeming Power: Overcoming Abuse in Church and Society."

The European Society of Catholic Theology sponsored the conference at St. Mary's University College in Twickenham as part of the International Network of Societies for Catholic Theology's three-year research project on "the power of theology to overcome power abuse in Church and society."

Scicluna told Vatican Radio the conference was an important part of the ongoing conversation about how to empower all members of the Church to prevent abuse and promote accountability.

"We are accountable not only to God, but to each other and to our peers in how we respond to difficult questions, including sin and crime," he said.

The monsignor said Pope Benedict XVI is setting an example for the whole Church when he discusses the abuse crisis, repentance and reform of Church norms with bishops, priests and laity.

Marie Keenan, a social worker and psychotherapist who has worked with perpetrators and survivors of clerical sexual abuse, told Vatican Radio that the Church has been slow in responding to the abuse crisis, "but I think that we're moving in the right direction and I think this conference is part of that."

Keenan, who lectures at University College Dublin, said she is concerned that clerical sexual abuse is sometimes seen as "a problem of individuals, either individual perpetrators who were devious and managed to get through the doors" of the seminary undetected, "or bad or erring bishops who didn't have the right heart or spirit or intellect or knowledge or something."

The conference is part of an effort to look at relationships and structures of power within the Church and determine how they may have contributed to the crisis. Keenan said that without addressing those broader issues, the Church risks placing too much trust in the important psychological tests designed to "screen out deviants."

Relying exclusively on the tests is dangerous, she said, because "some of these men chose an abusive road not because they were deviants to begin with, but because something happened to them in the course of their life, either in formation or priesthood or living their life that wasn't picked up on and with which they weren't helped adequately." At the same time, she said, "even with the same formation and the same lifestyle, many, many men don't turn to abuse," so there must be a recognition that Church culture hasn't caused everyone "to use their power position in an abusive way."

In addition, Keenan said that in her research "I found no evidence that celibacy is a cause of sexual abuse." While "there may be good reasons for the Church to rethink the celibacy issue, it's not because of the child sexual abuse issue," she said.

Sister of Charity Nuala Patricia Kenny, a pediatrician and retired professor of bioethics in Canada, said recent cases of abuse and sexual scandal convinced her that "we had not finished the job" of addressing clerical sexual abuse.

"The Church, in the area of policies and protocols, surely now has become a world leader," she said. But as she told the conference, "we have been a slow learner on this one."

Catholics, she said, need to reflect on the question: "How does power and our sense of Church, how has the inactivity of the laity, our inability to have good, positive, loving experiences between priest and people in our Church that would make us a healthy Church — how has all of that made us continue to deny, to fail to accept the difficult challenges" posed by the abuse crisis?

Kenny, who has been a religious for 50 years, said there were days "when I had to kneel, kneel, kneel at my desk and literally hold on to the New Testament because I've been so overwhelmed by how much harm has been done, not just to the individual victims, but to the whole body of Christ."

"I'm not a woman who breaks down easily and cries, but I have wept about this issue," she said. "On the other hand, I can tell you that I know in my heart that the Holy Spirit is leading us somewhere graced and I am perfectly prepared to do whatever I can with the grace and energy the Lord gives me to contribute to that.

"Walking away is not an option because it belongs to my baptismal commitment," Kenny said. "This is my Church."

Ontario’s Catholic school trustees are pressing for changes to Dalton McGuinty’s Putting Students First Act and insisting that Catholic school boards should not be legally bound to new teacher contracts imposed by the government.

OCSTA officials will continue to push for amendments to the act to remove contentious clauses that strip school boards of important management rights pertaining to teacher hiring and student testing, said Bob Murray, OCSTA director of legislative and political affairs.

Under the proposed new law, Catholic boards will be required to operate by more restrictive policies than the province’s public boards. That inequality was created in late August when the government backtracked on Putting  Students First and returned to French and public boards the right to negotiate non-salary issues with their unions. But the same right was denied to Catholic boards.

The government had previously done a deal and signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) directly with the union that represents Catholic teachers, the Ontario English Catholic Teachers’ Association (OECTA). That deal was negotiated without input from Catholic trustees and their boards, and was allowed to stand after the government relented to opposition party demands to amend Putting Students First.

“While the union has signed, the boards themselves, as the legal employer, refused to sacrifice those rights (pertaining to hiring and testing) that are legally theirs,” Murray said. “So, for no reason should they be legally bound to an agreement they didn’t sign.”

Five Catholic boards had previously agreed to accept the terms negotiated between the government and OECTA and, said Murray, those boards are legally bound to honour the contract they signed. But OCSTA believes the other 24 Catholic boards should have the same negotiating rights as the public boards.

“We have these agreements that were not reached according to the legal collective bargaining process,” said Murray, adding that “labour relations rights of employers and employees have been violated.”

The trustees are concerned that granting teacher unions more input in hiring and a greater say in managing diagnostic testing will negatively impact the quality of education. In a statement, OCSTA expressed concern that decisions about education are being made for reasons of political expediency.

“These rights are important because of the impact they have on students and the quality of education delivery,” said Murray
OCSTA officials were to meet with Liberal and opposition party members to make their case for change.

“There will be opportunities for amendments to be put forward and our hope is that the opposition parties will continue to push very strongly to have these two issues fully removed from the legislation,” said Murray. “Our intention and our desire would be for the bill to be amended further to remove those two provisions to be bound to any board at this point.”
According to a government spokesman, a final vote on Putting Students First is not expected before Sept. 10.

WINNIPEG - The major archbishop of the Ukrainian Catholic Church sent greetings to Canada’s Ukrainian Catholics as he prepared for a multicity visit that includes leading the Church’s Synod of Bishops.

Major Archbishop Sviatoslav Shevchuk of Kiev-Halych, Ukraine, said the synod would “fill all our Canadian community with the special blessing of the Holy Spirit, blowing the fresh wind of this Spirit into the sails of the Ukrainian Church in this country.” His remarks were contained in a message read in Canada’s Ukrainian Catholic churches Sept. 2.
The annual worldwide synod of Ukrainian Catholic bishops is being held in Winnipeg Sept. 9-16 to mark the 100th anniversary of the arrival of Ukrainian Catholic Bishop Nykyta Budka in Canada in 1912. The bishop, now beatified and known as Blessed Nykyta, laid the groundwork for a united Ukrainian Catholic Church in Canada, gathering the scattered clergy, religious and laypeople.

Ukrainian Catholic Archbishop Lawrence Huculak of Winnipeg said the synod would renew ties between the Ukrainian Catholic Church in Ukraine and Canada and would “affirm the struggle of ... the early pioneers who did so much to establish our Church in Canada and bring it to what it is today.”

In his message to the Canadians, Shevchuk appealed for their prayers and support for the synod members. He also expressed thanks for the Canadians’ preservation of the Church’s religious and cultural traditions and for their help after the Ukrainian Catholic Church — a Byzantine rite — began emerging from decades of communist oppression in Ukraine late in the 20th century.

The major archbishop began his visit in the Vancouver area Aug. 31 before travelling to Winnipeg. After the synod, he is scheduled to visit Saskatoon and then speak to the Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops at its 2012 annual plenary in Sainte-Adele, Que., Sept. 24.

He visited Ukrainian Catholics in the Edmonton area in June and will visit Toronto and eastern Canada early in 2013.

VATICAN CITY - The case against a Pakistani Christian girl accused of blasphemy seemed to take a turn in her favour after a Muslim cleric was arrested on suspicion of fabricating evidence against her.

Khalid Jadoon Chishti, the imam or prayer leader who has accused Rimsha Masih of burning pages of the Muslim holy book, was taken into police custody Sept. 2. According to a police official quoted by the Associated Press, witnesses claim the imam tore pages from a Quran and planted them along with burned pieces of paper in the girl's bag.

Rimsha has been in police custody since Aug. 18. Her parents said she is 11 years old and has Down syndrome; a court appointed physician found that she was about 14 and is developmentally delayed.

A Pakistan court delayed her bail hearing until Sept. 1, but postponed it again until Sept. 7 after the judge in the case changed.

The girl's lawyer, Tahir Naveed, told Vatican Radio Sept. 3 that with the arrest of the Muslim cleric, "it is no secret that Rimsha is innocent. This shows that there was a conspiracy."

Naveed said Rimsha's case is just the latest instance of someone misusing Pakistan's strict anti-blasphemy laws to intimidate or persecute others.

"After the arrest of Imam Jadoon, everyone is talking and reflecting on the fact that this law can be used improperly and even abused," Naveed said.

Capuchin Father Francis Nadeem, co-ordinator of the National Council for Interreligious Dialogue in Lahore, said the charges against the girl appeared to be part of a plot by a local "land mafia."
"Unscrupulous criminals intend to wrest land from Christians and drive them out from Mehrabadi, a suburb of Islamabad where Rimsha's family lives," Nadeem told the Vatican's missionary news agency Fides. "This is why they made up the case, blaming an innocent child."

Accusations that a Christian had burned the Quran drew an angry crowd, prompting hundreds of Christian families to flee the neighbourhood.

VATICAN CITY - Italian Cardinal Carlo Maria Martini, a renowned biblical scholar and former archbishop of Milan, died Aug. 31 at the age of 85 after a long battle with Parkinson's disease.

In a telegram to Cardinal Angelo Scola of Milan, Pope Benedict praised Cardinal Martini's generous service to the Gospel and the Church and his "intense apostolic work" as a Jesuit, a professor and "authoritative biblicist." As archbishop of Milan, the Pope said, Cardinal Martini helped open for the Church community "the treasures of the sacred Scriptures." The Pope prayed that God would welcome the cardinal into "the heavenly Jerusalem."

The cardinal was a prolific author whose books were best-sellers in Italy and included everything from scholarly biblical exegesis to poetry and prayer guides.

He retired as archbishop of Milan in 2002, where he was known as a strong pastor and administrator, and as a very careful, thoughtful advocate of wider discussion and dialogue on some delicate and controversial Church positions. At various times, he expressed openness to the possibility of allowing married Latin-rite priests under certain circumstances, ordaining women as deacons and allowing Communion for some divorced Catholics in subsequent marriages not approved by the Church.

During a special Synod of Bishops for Europe in 1999, he made waves when he proposed a new Church-wide council or assembly to unravel "doctrinal and disciplinary knots" such as the shortage of priests, the role of women, the role of laity and the discipline of marriage. His carefully worded remarks reflected his belief that the Church would benefit from a wider exercise of collegiality, or the shared responsibility of bishops for the governance of the Church. The idea of a new council was not taken up formally by the synod.

Following his retirement, his interests focused on biblical studies, Catholic-Jewish dialogue and praying for peace in the Middle East.

Even in retirement, the cardinal kept up with issues of importance in the life of the Church. He was sought after for interviews and frequently published opinion pieces in Italian newspapers. After Pope Benedict eased restrictions on the celebration of the pre-Vatican II liturgy in 2007, Cardinal Martini wrote a newspaper column explaining why, even though he loved the Latin language and could even preach in Latin, he would not celebrate the old Mass. He said he admired Pope Benedict "benevolence" in allowing Catholics "to praise God with ancient and new forms" by permitting wider use of the 1962 form of the Mass, but his experience as a bishop had convinced him of the importance of a common liturgical prayer to express Catholics' unity of belief.

The cardinal also said the reformed liturgy that came out of the Second Vatican Council marked "a real step forward" in nourishing Catholics "with the word of God, offered in a much more abundant way than before," with a much larger selection of Scripture readings.

In a 2008 book-length interview titled Nighttime Conversations in Jerusalem, Cardinal Martini said Pope Paul VI's 1968 encyclical Humanae Vitae (Of Human Life), which taught that artificial birth control was morally wrong, led many Catholics to distance themselves from the Church and from listening to and being challenged by the Catholic vision of human sexuality. While not specifically addressing the morality of contraception, the cardinal said the Church needed to take a more pastoral approach to questions of sexuality.

"The Church should always treat questions of sexuality and the family in such a way that a leading and decisive role is up to the responsibility of the person who loves," he said.

Born in Orbassano, near Turin, Italy, Feb. 15, 1927, Carlo Maria Martini entered the Society of Jesus in 1944, was ordained a priest July 13, 1952, and took his final vows as a Jesuit in 1962.

The cardinal, a biblical scholar, never held a parish post. With doctorates in theology and biblical studies, he was a seminary professor in Chieri, Italy, 1958-1961; professor and later rector of the Pontifical Biblical Institute in Rome, 1969-1978; and rector of the Pontifical Gregorian University from July 1978 until his December 1979 appointment to Milan.

After his retirement in 2002, he moved to Jerusalem and purchased a burial plot there but returned to Milan after his health worsened in 2008. He died in a Jesuit retirement home near Milan, surrounded by his Jesuit confreres and members of his family.

When he was named archbishop of Milan, Cardinal Martini was the first Jesuit in 35 years to head an Italian archdiocese. Pope John Paul II ordained him an archbishop Jan. 6, 1980, in St. Peter's Basilica and named him a cardinal in 1983.

Cardinal Martini's death leaves the College of Cardinals with 206 members, 118 of whom are under the age of 80 and therefore eligible to vote in a conclave to elect a new pope.

It isn’t the construction of the Northern Gateway pipeline that raises great concern for Bishop Gary Gordon. Rather it is the perception that the pipeline is necessary in the first place.

Gordon, bishop of the Whitehorse diocese, said the proposed pipeline symbolizes society’s relentless hunger for oil, and that worries him.

“We’ve got a great problem with the sin of coveting and we export it all over the world,” said Gordon. “That’s kind of a root issue, we’re being driven by an insatiable need to have more but it’s not solving our deepest yearning and hungers.”

Enbridge has been working on its pipeline proposal since the early 2000s but didn’t formally make a public announcement until 2006. The project currently aims to build a 1,177 km sub-surface pipeline from Bruderheim, Alta., to Kitimat, B.C., and its port on the Pacific Ocean.

Since plans were announced, numerous parties have voiced environmental concerns, citing deforestation, wildlife habitat destruction and potential Pacific coast spills due to the treacherous waters near the port.

The religious voice has not been silent either. Recently the United Church of Canada, the country’s largest Protestant denomination at about three million strong, publicly opposed the pipeline expressing similar fears. And the Anglican bishops of British Columbia and the Yukon issued a statement questioning the integrity of the pipeline’s environmental impacts, while Presbyterians representing 28 parishes in British Columbia’s Lower Mainland also made their voice heard. They wrote to Prime Minister Stephen Harper criticizing the government for weakening environmental reviews, citing the same concerns as their United and Anglican brethren.

The Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops is still considering if it will release a public statement regarding the issue. The matter came up for discussion Aug. 22 when the CCCB executive met outside Calgary, but there has been no public comment to date.

But there’s still a missing piece of the puzzle, said Gordon, and that makes things more problematic.

“I don’t know if we (should be) taking a position of opposing it. We (should be) taking a position of let’s give this a longer second look and a longer view on the real outcomes for Canadians,” he said, hoping the CCCB takes this stance. “We need to check our consumption and figure out a more simple way of living.”

Gordon’s not saying that we need to abandon every byproduct of the oil industry — he isn’t willing to give up his V8 4X4 Toyota Tundra and doesn’t expect anyone else in North America to ditch their ride. Rather, he’s suggesting that we re-evaluate how we use, and at what rate we consume, oil-based goods such as gasoline.

It’s an idea wholeheartedly supported by Dennis Patrick O’Hara, director of the Elliot Allen Institute for Theology and Ecology, as well as an assistant professor of theology, at Toronto’s University of St. Michael’s College.

“We wouldn’t be needing some of these (pipelines) if people weren’t consuming so much and if people weren’t so wasteful with resources,” said O’Hara, adding that oil companies are not to blame.

“We’re building this (pipeline) because we have a voracious appetite for this oil. That’s a part of the conversation that I’m not seeing or hearing.”

According to Statistics Canada, the annual gross sale of gasoline rose by 1.5 per cent in 2011 to 42.1 billion litres, marking the third consecutive increase despite prices rising at the pumps for Canadians.

This statistic highlights O’Hara’s, and Gordon’s, point that what is good for the economy is not always good for the environment — a point both men said is hard for Canadians to fully grasp.

“We have a petroleum-based economy and that’s not going to be changed overnight,” said O’Hara.

While profits are measured quarterly, the payoffs of environmentally friendly living aren’t truly seen for many years.

“We’ve got a cultural mindset that is set against, it is contrary, to the very thinking that we need for the kind of issues that we have now,” said O’Hara. “With climate change you improve your behaviour and you’ll see the benefits about 35 years later. It’s not that if you behave well today things are going to be better tomorrow.

“Things are actually going to get worse before we see the benefits and things getting better.”

A necessary commitment to consumption reduction Gordon said will only be successful if parishioners, who are the consumers, have their parish’s support.

“We’re shepherds of souls,” said the bishop. “The sacrifices of a simpler life are quite daunting for most of us.”