{mosimage}TORONTO - An Ontario Catholic school board has pulled The Golden Compass and other His Dark Materials novels by outspoken atheist Philip Pullman from school library shelves in response to a U.S.-inspired campaign against both the books and the movie version of The Golden Compass, which opens across Canada Dec. 7.

TORONTO - The future of Catholic education in Ontario may be bound up with the Khalsa Community School for Sikh children in Malton, or Bialik Hebrew Day School in Toronto. Key figures in Catholic education are thinking about winning the debate over faith-based education by opening a non-Catholic religious school.

{mosimage}TORONTO - The Ontario election is over, but not the hard feelings and not the debate.

Catholics are under new pressure to justify public funding for their schools following three months of faith-and-education debate leading into the election earlier this month that saw Dalton McGuinty’s Liberals win with a solid majority.

{mosimage}Despite a recommendation from its own review committee that The Golden Compass continue to be available to students in Grade 7 and above, the Halton Catholic District School Board has banned the book from all its libraries.

{mosimage}TORONTO - It isn’t always teachers who are critical to education. Among the annual education awards handed out by Ontario’s Minister of Education Kathleen Wynne April 30, an award to the special needs education assistants at Ottawa’s Sacred Heart High School honoured a team that does far more than teach.

{mosimage}TORONTO - Having spent $900,000 on questionable expenses in 2007, Toronto’s Catholic school trustees face a political crisis.

“If the perception is that the board is frittering the money away on things that aren’t prescribed under the legislation it makes it difficult for us to win the public relations battle with the Minister (of Education) over underfunding. That’s a given,” said newly appointed Ward 6 trustee Rob Davis.

{mosimage}TORONTO - If you want to meet the standard for Grade 4 religion in Toronto’s Catholic schools you had better know the other name for Candlemas.

{mosimage}TORONTO - With three-years-plus remaining on the current term, Toronto’s Catholic school board is appointing a replacement trustee rather holding an election to decide who will represent Catholic school supporters between Bloor Street and Highway 401 west of Bathurst and east of Jane.

{mosimage}TORONTO - In separate research, two economists with ties to the C.D. Howe Institute have found Catholic schools are outperforming public schools in Ontario on standardized tests.

The economists believe competition between the two publicly funded systems may, in part, explain higher success rates for Grade 3 and 6 pupils in Catholic schools when compared with their public school counterparts.

{mosimage}TORONTO - As they swing through North America drumming up interest and financial support for Bethlehem University , Br. Jack Curran and Br. Peter Bray of the Christian Brothers warn against any hard and fast convictions about who is right and who is wrong in the Middle East.

“To be pro one side or the other side is simplistic,” said Curran, the vice president for development at Bethlehem University. “But there has to be a truth some place in the middle.”

Tiny Bethlehem University, with less than 3,000 undergraduates and a sprinkling of graduate programs leading to masters degrees, isn’t going to singlehandedly find that truth and light the path to peace — but it has a role to play, said Bray.