TORONTO - The long-standing shortage of Catholic foster parents in Toronto isn’t getting any better. The Catholic Children’s Aid Society of Toronto has 297 foster care spots available on its own roster. This year it has had to rely on 412 out-of-town spots it purchases from private contractors.

Out-of-town care costs a lot more and it removes kids from their school, their circle of friends and family — everything that can help maintain their sense of belonging. Trouble is, there aren’t a lot of couples like Nellie and Bernie Desroches left in the city. And it is likely there will be fewer in the future.

TORONTO - Marianne Moroney wants justice on the streets of Toronto — justice that can deliver a simple, cheap, satisfying meal. As executive director of the Toronto Street Food Vendors’ Association, Moroney has been fighting city hall for the rights of Toronto’s hot dog stands.

“City councillors have set out purposely to strangle this industry,” Moroney told The Catholic Register.

Moroney is a tenacious and tireless advocate for the mostly poor, mostly immigrant hot dog sellers of the city. It’s an endless and thankless task, but she derives her inspiration from a deep instinct for communion and her attachment to the Eucharist.

“Libera nos a malo” is usually translated “Deliver us from evil,” but the Latin word “libera” can also mean liberation.

The fundamental Christian desire to be free comes from the Lord’s Prayer. But a Toronto university professor claims it’s also a good way for a Catholic to understand Hindu theology.

At the University of St. Michael’s College, Reid Locklin has just published Liturgy of Liberation: A Christian Commentary on Shankara’s Upadeśasāhasrī. It is an academic look at the small but influential Advaita tradition in Hinduism.

TORONTO - Christmas has not been banished to churches and pious homes. Commercial Christmas may be everywhere — bigger, brighter  and louder than any tale of how Christ came into the world — but the insanely jovial Santas and blizzard of inane holiday songs on the radio are not the end of the story.

There are Christmas creches in businesses, out on the street, in offices, in all kinds of places around the city.

At Casa Manila in North York the only thing owners Rizalde and Mila Cuachon need to evoke the birth of Jesus is a star — or a couple dozen stars — hanging from the ceiling of their restaurant. The traditional Filipino parol is a lantern made from bamboo and Japanese paper. It evokes the star that led magi to Bethlehem. The Cuachons’ collection of parols joyously declare, “Christ is here.”

When Canada’s first aboriginal saint is canonized, it will be an answered prayer for native people across Canada and beyond.

“There’s a natural sense of pride and joy,” among native people said Whitehorse Bishop Gary Gordon.

On hearing the news that Pope Benedict XVI had cleared the way for Blessed Kateri Tekakwitha to be canonized, perhaps as early as spring 2012, Gordon planned to phone his old friend Steve Point, the Lieutenant Governor of British Columbia. Point is a former elected chief of the Skowkale First Nation.

TORONTO - As hopeful Anglo-Catholic parishes across Canada completed two months of catechetical study Dec. 18, dreams of a Canadian Catholic ordinariate for ex-Anglicans are fading.
"We had hoped, of course, we would have our own Canadian ordinariate, but we realize our numbers may not warrant it," Bishop Carl Reid, Anglican Catholic Church of Canada auxiliary bishop, told The Catholic Register.

An American Anglican ordinariate will be inaugurated Jan. 1. About 2,000 former Episcopalians (as Anglicans are known in the United States) have asked to be received into the Catholic Church through provisions of the Anglicanorum Coetibus apostolic constitution.

The number of Canadian break-away Anglicans seeking a place in the Catholic Church has declined in the two years since Pope Benedict XVI issued Anglicanorum Coetibus, an apostolic constitution intended to provide for groups of Anglicans entering the Catholic Church but retaining significant elements of Anglican liturgy.

The main body that had been seeking union with the Catholic Church, the 28 parishes of the Anglican Catholic Church of Canada, split into two non-geographical dioceses Nov. 26. The pro-diocese of Our Lady of Walsingham contains parishes still engaged in the process for entering the Catholic Church. The remaining parishes in the diocese of Canada are taking a wait-and-see approach to the process, said Reid.
Substantial numbers of ACCC members have also left the Church as the prospect of joining a Catholic entity has taken shape.

"A number of our people who weren't clear when they joined us of our intention to seek unity — even though it is in our foundational documents, our constitution — when unity became not only a possibility but a reality they just sort of left," said Reid. "That reduced our numbers from what they were two years ago."

ACCC members in the pro-diocese of Our Lady of Walsingham understand that a handful of parishes, averaging between 20 and 30 members and spread across the country, can't justify a bishop and diocesan structure involved in an ordinariate, said Reid. They are waiting for word on just how they will be accommodated, he said.

Toronto Archbishop Thomas Collins, in charge of guiding the process in Canada, declined to comment.

"There are still some key details being worked out right now and, as you can imagine, this is a sensitive file," said archdiocese of Toronto spokesman Neil MacCarthy in an e-mail.

Among the issues being worked out are the final resting place of ACCC clergy. Where 67 Anglican priests in the United States have submitted dossiers seeking Catholic ordination and 35 have received a nulla osta, or initial approval, from the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, none of the Canadian Anglican clergy who have applied have heard back from Rome.

"We're clearly further behind in the process than the Americans and the Australians," said Reid.

Without clergy, Anglican parishes accepted into the Catholic Church can't function, said the bishop.

Despite difficulties and uncertainty, the Our Lady of Walsingham Anglican Catholics remain hopeful, Reid said.

"Our people fully understand the divine mandate expressed by our Lord in John 17 'That they may be one.' And that's what's driving this whole process," he said. "Our remaining people here at the Cathedral (of the Annunciation of the Blessed Virgin Mary in Ottawa) are committed to the process and understand the importance from the perspective of what God's wish is, not what ours is."

A glance at the mantle this time of year can give the average Catholic entirely the wrong idea about the Bible.

“You see creche scenes — they cram everything from both Gospels (Matthew and Luke) in there, not realizing that if you line up both those Nativity stories there are inconsistencies and contradictions,” said Jesuit New Testament scholar Fr. Scott Lewis. “Don’t try to mix the four Gospels together. Then you just get a meaningless glop.”

The popular mash up of sentimental baby imagery found everywhere from creches to Christmas cards to movies on TV is a problem for priests preaching on Christmas morning, said St. Peter’s Seminary Scripture professor Fr. Richard Charrette.

TORONTO - Shocking, shameful poverty among Canada’s native people goes far beyond the remote Northern Ontario community of Attiwapiskat. Native poverty is walking the streets and crowding the basement apartments of Canada’s largest cities, according to a new report by St. Michael’s Hospital researcher Dr. Janet Smylie.

Smylie gathered detailed health information from 790 aboriginal Canadians living in Hamilton, Ont., and discovered the greatest, most prevalent risk to their health is poverty. Almost 80 per cent of respondents to Smylie’s survey reported an annual income of less than $20,000 per year.

The Canadian Catholic Organization for Development and Peace is not alone in its anxious wait for a funding decision from the Canadian International Development Agency.

There are more than 200 non-profit development agencies waiting for the government to say yes or no to new or continued funding, wondering whether they will have to lay off staff and cut off funding to co-operatives, clinics and seed banks in some of the poorest regions of the world.

In November, CIDA told Development and Peace its proposal for $10 million per year in program funding over the next five years had passed through the CIDA approval process and only needed a final yes or no from the Treasury Board. CIDA expected the Treasury Board to deal with the matter by Dec. 1.

The Town of Midland's Planning and Development Committee won't be talking over plans for a metal and industrial waste recycling facility next to the Martyrs' Shrine at its Dec. 7 meeting.

The Recycling Specialties Inc. proposal for an open-air waste sorting facility on the doorstep of the shrine is off the agenda while the company continues to work on its plans.

Meanwhile, Midland Mayor Gord McKay tells The Catholic Register relocating the Recycling Specialties yard away from the Wye Marsh, Sainte-Marie Among the Hurons and the Martyrs' Shrine is a distinct possibility.