News/Canada

MONTREAL - Catholics played a key role in the development of  Canada’s Charter of Rights and Freedoms, yet increasingly the Catholic Church is seen at odds with the so-called rights revolution that in 2005 brought the legalization of same-sex marriage.

Yellowknife, NT - Hundreds of parishioners packed St. Patrick’s Church in Yellowknife, NWT, on Feb. 18 to see Don Flumerfelt ordained as the first Catholic priest married with children in the Mackenzie-Fort Smith diocese.

TORONTO - A man known to the courts only as John Doe is sitting in a jail in Nebraska waiting for a decision from a Canadian judge. He’s a Colombian in the United States because the rebel FARC army has shot at his family and threatened his life, but he is barred from applying for asylum because he has been in the United States for more than a year.

OTTAWA - The Catholic Organization for Life and Family (COLF) says a recent call by Canadian obstetricians and gynecologists for all women to be offered prenatal genetic screening is a “disturbing step toward eugenics in our society.”

OTTAWA - The Canadian Judicial Council has dismissed REAL Women of Canada’s allegations of judicial misconduct against Ontario Chief Justice Roy McMurtry, whose 2003 Halpern decision determined the traditional definition of marriage discriminated against same-sex couples.

OTTAWA - A Kamloops, B.C., city councillor has agreed to pay a $1,000 settlement to a homosexual couple for public statements he made about homosexuality.

OTTAWA - The primate of the Traditional Anglican Communion (TAC) Archbishop John Hepworth consecrated two   auxiliary bishops for the Anglican Catholic Church of Canada (ACCC) Jan. 27 at a ceremony in Ottawa.

TORONTO - The United States human rights record and its war on terror are on trial in a Federal Court in Toronto. The Canadian Council of Churches, Amnesty International, the Canadian Council for Refugees and an anonymous Colombian in a Nebraska jail are trying to persuade a judge to suspend Canadian co-operation with the United States on handling of refugees.

TORONTO - How a community teaches a man to fish is the question Michael Polanyi wants churchgoers and low-income people to start discussing.

OTTAWA - A prominent Canadian public intellectual has set off alarm bells for suggesting the Catholic Church and other religions that don’t comply with so-called Canadian values should lose their charitable tax status.