Catholic miscellaneous facts.

Suzuki to speak

Ottawa--For years the Catholic Health Association of Canada (CHAC) has avoided studying Catholic moral teaching as an aid to Catholic health personnel facing modern medical developments. Instead, it has dabbled in selective social justice issues: the poor, ecology, the environment.

Some years ago the keynote speaker at its national convention in New Brunswick was former priest and sociologist Gregory Baum. In April 2000 the keynote speaker for its Victoria, B.C., convention--held in conjunction with the Salvation Army--will be pop-scientist David Suzuki, columnist, depopulationist, broadcaster, agnostic, evolutionist. Here are a few quotes from him:

* "The time at which we define humanness is arbitrary, an expression of personal and social values" ("Scientists don't have answers on the abortion controversy", Aug. 1989);

* "There are too many people demanding too much of our planet ("Time to cut back on everything so we have a chance of survival"--Nov. 1989);

* "The current pope claims to care about the environment but his pronouncements on birth control mean the destruction of the planet" (Sept. 1990);

* "The so-called pro-life movement is actually anti-life and must be countered. Population growth is the issue of our time" (Sept. 1990);

* [The gravest threat to the world is overpopulation, and the Catholic Church and right-to-lifers are to blame] (gist of Suzuki's remarks on CTV's Dini Petti Show, Dec. 19, 1990).

Why would a Catholic organization invite such a person to be its keynote speaker?

Respect for the transgendered 

Toronto--The Catholic Children's Aid Society of Metropolitan Toronto has developed a policy that includes "transgendered" youth in its intervention policy. The policy states that all staff care providers and volunteers must undergo training with regard to the needs, concerns, language, symbols, and culture of gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgendered youth and their families. Issues concerning sexuality that arise in service delivery to transgendered youth "should be treated with the same respect, concern, sensitivity, and confidentiality accorded to heterosexual youth and families" (LifeSite News, Oct. 25, 1999).

Christ redundant

Found on a St. Michael's Hospital (Toronto) bulletin board: "The next meeting of the St. Michael's Hospital Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgendered Employee Association will be on November 2, 1999."

St. Michael's Hospital (now merged with Wellesley Hospital) also has a new mission statement. The one printed in November 1992 listed a number of general values and principles and then stated: "We will treat all with respect, compassion, and dignity in the tradition of the healing ministry of Christ."

The last nine words printed above in bold are absent from the April 1999 statement. Oh, explained the since retired Sister of St. Joseph of Sault-Ste-Marie in charge of the Statement to a small group of nurses, we "thought it really redundant."

Redundant perhaps in the same way as in Saudi Arabia or Israel where this name may not be pronounced in public?

Feminist website

An article on women religious in the Church in the Hamilton Spectator (June 29) mentioned SisterSite, the website which provides information on the following communities: Benedictines, Carmelites, Sisters of the Cenacle, Daughters of Charity, Daughters of St. Paul, Dominicans, Franciscans, Sisters of Mercy, Sisters of St. Joseph, and Ursulines.

The unsuspecting websurfer--and perhaps the unsuspecting religious sister--who visits the site (www.geocities.com/Wellesley/1114/sindex.html) is in for a shock. Aside from information on traditional communities, the website is mainly devoted to listing references for feminist and lesbian "spirituality", links to dissenting Catholic groups such as the now prohibited homosexual group New Ways Ministry, and groups like the Catholic network for Women's Equality (i.e., women's ordination).

Other links include Radical Catholic page, Lesbian Gay and Bisexual Catholic Handbook, Quest (lesbian/gay Catholic organization in the UK), and its American/Canadian counterpart, Dignity. One can find such articles as "Homosexuality and the Bible", denying that the Bible rejects homosexuality.

SisterSite is also linked to Call to Action, the group of dissenters who claim to represent the "70 per cent of American Catholics" calling for women's ordination, married priests, as well as further dialogue on human sexuality!

One should assume perhaps that some religious congregations are not aware what they got themselves into when somebody volunteered to put them on the internet. But they had better do something quickly to change it.

New Age retreats

Notices for October 1999 from St. Joseph's Centre at Bayview Avenue in Toronto, a centre which claims to serve Catholic spirituality, advertise the following titles: Spiritual journey lectures: Canticle on the cosmos; Enneagram Basics I and II; Earth Covenant/Earth Charter workshop; the Pilgrim Self; Journalling; Dreams; and the Spirituality of the Enneagram.

"Insights leading to the principles of transformation will be explored", the brochure says.

One wonders what kind of transformation the Centre has in mind. Several of the above titles are straight New Age.

St. Joseph's Centre as well as a number of other Canadian Catholic retreat centres has turned to non-Christian, pseudo-psychological methodologies. Not so long ago making a religious retreat meant meditating for a weekend on Our Lord Jeus Christ.

For a description of the enneagram, see our issue July/August 1996. We also have available a 32-page booklet of which part one is entitled "New Age in the light of Christian teaching", pp. 1-14, by Michelle Fleming. The other ha If is a Vatican document on Christian meditation (price: $1.00 plus postage.

General absolution 

Archbishop Terence Prendergast, S.J., of Halifax, 54, has eliminated the practice of general absolution in the 53 parishes of the diocese in accordance with Vatican instructions (see CI, May 1999, pp. 24 and 27). The Bishop of Antigonish, N.S., Most Rev. Colin Campbell, is also phasing out this practice in his diocese.

In the Archdiocese of Toronto, Cardinal Aloysius Ambrozic has let it be known that general absolution is unacceptable. It is destroying the practice of individual confession which is necessary for the forgiveness of serious sins.

Highest honour to Canadian

In Rome, on November 5, 1999, the Canadian Ambassador to the Holy See, J. Fernand Tanguay, was awarded the Grand Cross of the Order of Pius IX by Pope John Paul II in a special ceremony. The Grand Cross is the highest award conferred on a lay person who is not a head of state or government (Zenit, Nov. 25).

The Church in Toronto

Toronto--In an Advent 1999 pastoral letter entitled "Our Yesterday and our Today," Aloysius Cardinal Ambrozic presents some figures on the growth of the Archdiocese of Toronto. In 1900, Toronto, which then included what is now the Diocese of St. Catharines, had 45 parishes and 65,000 Catholics, which constituted 12 per cent of the overall population. Today it has 225 parishes with a million-and-a-half Catholics, who form some 35 per cent of the area's population.

Then it had 27 Catholic elementary schools and seven academies (elementary and high school combined); today it has 446 elementary schools and 80 high schools. In 1900 there were four religious orders of women and four of men; now there are 47 orders of women and 34 orders of men. In 1900 Mass was celebrated in Latin with homilies in English, French, and occasionally Italian; today the Holy Eucharist is said in 29 languages every Sunday.

As for recent Sunday attendance, the pastoral letter states: "The regular Sunday Mass attendance has ceased falling since 1994; according to independent statistical evidence, it stands at 33 per cent; we must add also that the percentage of Catholics attending Mass twice or three times a month has risen from five per cent to 12 per cent in the past five years."

The letter mentions that in September 1999 the Archdiocesan seminary admitted 20 young men to the study of first year theology, more than double the yearly average since before 1970. The Archbishop also notes that the growth of the Church in Toronto has gone hand-in-hand with the growing secularization of Canadian society with the result that a hundred years ago God meant far more in public and private life than today.