From Lorene Collins re Lay Movement. (Letters to the Editor).

In your Lay Movements column (Jan/Feb 2003, p.25), Ann Wilson states that Catholics United for the Faith "is still active in the States and has spread to Australia, New Zealand, and Canada. and would like to build up the organization for the whole of Canada and sponsor conferences."

Readers may be interested in the following information. Catholics United for the Faith was active in Canada for the entire decade 1971 to 1981. During that decade, lay people across Canada formed CUF chapters in Victoria, Edmonton, Calgary, Winnipeg, Ottawa, Toronto, Halifax, Montreal, and Quebec City. The members of these Canadian chapters organized and funded an international conference in Vancouver in 1976 and another one in London, Ontario, in 1978.

These dynamic activities by Canadian lay people gradually ceased after a publicly-advertised international conference scheduled for Montreal in 1980 was cancelled on orders of the U.S. headquarters, and after head office policy shifted its emphasis from "grassroots" chapter activities to head office publishing activities. The U.S. Executive Vice President in charge of chapter activities, K.D. Whitehead, was dismissed by the CUF board of directors in 1980; and by 1982, the CUF magazine Lay Witness had dropped from its masthead the names of all nine of the regional directors who had been serving at the local level in the United States.

Canadian Catholics who are interested in bringing their talents and financial donations to bear at the grassroots level might be better advised to assist some of the laymen's associations that have succeeded CUF in Canada, such as Witness in Toronto and Catholic Family Ministries in Edmonton.

Sarnia, ON