Catholic New Times back issues from March 2005:
From the editor's desk.(Letters)
Mar 06, 2005 ... Conversations on same-sex legislation are taking place all across the country. My hunch, and I would dearly love to be proved wrong here, is that the place we will find some honest dialogue is in the church ...
Priests agents of state?(Letter to the Editor)
Mar 06, 2005; ... A National Post article on Jan. 5 entitled, "Bishops appeal to parishioners in campaign against same-sex marriage," described how the Bishops of Ontario were requested to write to their Catholic parishioners asking their support to protect marriage as being distinctly between a man and a ...
Thanks to Jim Roberts.(Letter to the Editor)
Mar 06, 2005; ... Many thanks to Fr. James Roberts for his Jan. 16 exploration of the old theology about Mary's virginity. I agree with him that this kind of thinking breeds violence between people or against the self and I admire his courage in speaking out. In her book, Friends of God and ...
Living with the questions.(Letter to the Editor)
Mar 06, 2005; ... Congratulations for printing the various views of learned scholars on the question of homosexuals and the Catholic Church. Gregory Baum asks, "Should homosexuals remain in the Catholic Church?" (CNT, Jan 16, 2005) I personally know a few who have chosen not to. I understand and respect ...
Medieval thinking?(Letter to the Editor)
Mar 06, 2005; ... During Mass on Jan. 30 Father Jim read a message from an unknown group exhorting everyone to call their MP and vote against the same-sex legislation. He encouraged us to do so and did not instruct us to act on our conscience. This is disturbing. My life is often divided between ...
Marriage critical for children.(Letter to the Editor)
Mar 06, 2005; ... Perhaps I've missed something, but it seems to me that in the numerous letters and commentaries which have appeared recently in CNT addressing same-sex marriage, remarkably little has been said about the critical role marriage plays regarding the welfare of children. ...
A foreign policy degraded: Maryknoll nun describes her gradual intellectual coming of age from Bolivia to Nicaragua and Iraq.(Witness)(Sr. Lil Mattingly)
Mar 06, 2005; ... On Jan. 25, Maryknoll nun, Sr. Lil Mattingly, was sentenced to six months in prison for her nonviolent protest at the School of Americas. The following is Sr. Mattingly's testimony at her trial in Columbus, Ga. Your honour Judge Faircloth, court clerks, marshalls, friends, ...
Homosexuality and church teaching: part II.(Editorial)(Editorial)
Mar 06, 2005 ... In 1977, the Catholic Theological Society of America, convinced that a new sexual ethic in keeping with advances in the natural sciences and the lived experience of the Body of Christ, commissioned a paper entitled Human Sexuality: New Directions in American Catholic Thought. The fruit of ...
Fifth world social forum convenes: WSF continues to stimulate theological thinking and international solidarity.(Canada)(World Social Forum)
Mar 06, 2005; ... PORTO ALEGRE, Brazil -- Invoking the memory of the hundreds of women who have been murdered in recent years in Guatemala City and in Ciudad Juarez, Mexican theologian Elsa Tamez rooted her presentation at the World Forum on Theology and Liberation in the struggle for life of young women ...
North Korea: waiting to become friends: North Korea often seems outside the pale of the human community. Marginalized by many, demonized by some, but there are signs that North Korea's marginalization may be ending.(World)
Mar 06, 2005; ... Four years ago, a leaflet advertising an excursion to the demilitarized zone (DMZ) between South and North Korea promised highlights such as the "Infiltration Tunnel and the Anti-Communism Hall. Through a telescope you can watch the North Koreans going about their daily life." I took the ...
Wal-Mart accused of 'union busting'.(Wal-Mart Canada Inc.)(Brief Article)
Mar 06, 2005 ... JONQUIERE, Que -- Wal-Mart Canada Corp. says it is set to close its first unionized store in North America after contract talks, but denies it is "union busting." Canada's largest retailer announced it would close a Quebec store this spring, marking the first time Wal-Mart has ...
G7 pledges to relieve poor nations' debt burden.(Group of 7)(Brief Article)
Mar 06, 2005 ... LONDON -- The world's richest "countries formally agreed to write off 100 per cent of the $70-billion (U.S.) debt owed by the poorest nations to big institutions like the World Bank. Finance ministers from the so-called Group of Seven major industrialized countries met in ...
Activist nun shot dead in Amazon rainforest.(Dorothy Stang)(Brief Article)
Mar 06, 2005 ... SAO PAULO -- Cabinet ministers and police officers arrived in the eastern Amazon region of Brazil Feb. 13, to investigate the fatal shooting of a missionary nun. Dorothy Stang, 74-year-old Dominican nun and environmentalist, was shot three times near Anapu, a rural town about ...
School stops sniper fundraiser.(World/Canada Notes)(Brief Article)
Mar 06, 2005 ... CHICAGO -- A Wisconsin university last month prevented Republican students from raising money for a group called "Adopt a Sniper," which subsidizes U.S. sharpshooters in Iraq and Afghanistan. Selling bracelets bearing the motto "1 Shot, 1 Kill, No Remorse; I Decide," students ...
Gethsemane as liminal space.(theology)
Mar 06, 2005; ... There's never a good time to die, to bid final good-byes, to lose health, to have a heart attack, to be diagnosed with terminal cancer, to lose friends, to be betrayed, to be misunderstood, to lose everything, to be humiliated, to have to face death and its indescribable loneliness. That's ...
Sisters working for 'education and action' on behalf of women, children and poor.(Anna Keim)(Crystal Clark)(Sisters of the Holy Names)
Mar 06, 2005; ... Leaving behind, the young person's high-pressured world of career ambitions, dating and complex relationships, Anna Keim and Crystal Clark took themselves out of society and found a quiet space in Windsor, Ont. "The novitiate is giving me the time and space to really think ...
Sir John A. meets the Sisters of Providence.
Mar 06, 2005 ... Once the home of Canada's first prime minister and now the nerve centre of the only religious congregation founded in Kingston, the property known as "Heathfield" has a long and proud history. The original villa, built in the 1830s, was described in this May 7, 1842, Chronicle and Gazette ...
Questions for Lent.
Mar 06, 2005; ... Keep your eye on the sun in this season. It will give you the primary cue as to what this period we call Lent is all about. In our northern hemisphere, Lent coincides with the turning of the earth towards the sun, the springing forth of life from the apparent death of winter's frigid ...
Building relationships of trust and respect in 'a place of our own'.(A Place of Our Own)
Mar 06, 2005; ... My ministry with youth has recently taken me to the Drouillard Road community in Windsor, Ont. Once a thriving section of Windsor called Ford City, the 'face' of the neighbourhood drastically changed when the Ford Motor Company moved to Oakville, Ont. in the early 1900s. Among other ...
Lent came early this year.(Lent)
Mar 06, 2005; ... Lent came early this year and for good reason. In the last few months we have seen, heard, felt and tasted such pain. "We have experienced much. The season of Lent invites all Christians to come to their senses, to know the times and our moment in them. In times past we were told to ...
A sacrament for grandmothers.(Church)(baptism)
Mar 06, 2005; ... Were you aware that grandmothers have their own sacrament? It's baptism! Because so many young parents haven't been to church since the day they were married, grandmothers, sometimes even before the babies arrive, begin to feel a real responsibility to make sure that their grandchildren ...
How my thinking has changed: part 8.(Church)
Mar 06, 2005; ... I've been a priest for most of my adult life. One scriptural line that inspired my decision to follow this calling was John 10:10, "I have come so that they may have life and have it to the full." Fully alive and with 28 years of worldly experience, I wanted with all my heart to help God's ...
Vatican welcomes aboriginals, encourages dialogue.(Church Notes)(Pontifical Council for Interreligious Dialogue )(Brief Article)
Mar 06, 2005 ... ROME -- Sister Kateri Mitchell, SSA, a Mohawk from Akwesasne, Ont., in traditional Haudenausonee garb, moved into the centre of the circle, surrounded by experts on traditional religions from four continents, and the executive staff of the Pontifical Council for Interreligious Dialogue ...
Canadian church delegation meets with Palestinians.(Church Notes)(Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops)(Brief Article)
Mar 06, 2005 ... OTTAWA (CCN) -- While visiting the Holy Land, the President and the General Secretary of the Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops (CCCB) met with the newly elected president of the Palestinian Authority, Mahmoud Abbas. The meeting happened within days after Abbas' Jan. 9 election win. ...
Jesus' third way.(Faith & Spirituality)
Mar 06, 2005; ... * Seize the moral initiative * Find a creative alternative to violence * Assert your own humanity and dignity as a person * Meet force with ridicule or humour * Break the cycle of humiliation * Refuse to submit or to accept the ...
Therese revives debate about Catholic art.(Arts & Culture)
Mar 06, 2005 ... OTTAWA, CCN -- The movie Therese, produced by devout Catholics, slipped into Vancouver on Ash Wednesday, and is playing on selected screens across Canada since starting Feb. 18. Described on the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops' website as an "earnest if modest period piece which ...
Kinsey talks sex in the public square.
Mar 06, 2005; ... Kinsey starring Liam Neeson, Laura Linney and Chris O'Donnell, 118 minute. The Film's tag line says it all: "Let's talk about sex." Kinsey, Bill Condon's elegantly crafted biopic, begins with an interview of Alfred Kinsey, the stuffy U.S. zoologist who specialized in the study ...
Review: Born into Brothels.
Mar 06, 2005; ... A picture is worth a thousand words, but holds even greater value for dispossessed kids with no birthright--no future. Directed by Ross Kauffman and Zana Briski, Born into Brothels chronicles the spiraling journey of children living in Calcutta's red-light district. A tribute to ...
The Ethical Teacher.(Book Review)
Mar 06, 2005; ... The Ethical Teacher, by Elizabeth Campbell. Maidenhead-Philadelphia: Open University Press. 2003. 176 p. Elizabeth Campbell is a professor at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, who has conducted extensive research on the ethical dispositions and practices of ...
When Clara came to town.(Back Burner)(Biography)
Mar 06, 2005; ... Be not forgetful to entertain strangers, for thereby some have entertained angels unawares. -- Hebrews 13:2 "There are two kinds of stories: someone goes on a journey, or someone comes to town." I heard this one day at Playwright's Workshop Montreal when I worked ...
The big sleep.(Back Burner)
Mar 06, 2005; ... We are all people of conscience. Life throws us many difficult decisions. Some aren't so cut and dried. It all started simply enough. A few puddles on the tile. The odd little depositories on the carpet here and there! His bodily relief--my extra housekeeping. This ...
From the editor's desk.(LETTERS)(Letter to the Editor)
Mar 08, 2005 ... A rare occurrence, a papal election. Benedict XVI is here and we await his presence among us and on the world stage. As usual, we let our readers speaks, and several others as ...
Where is the hope and joy?(LETTERS)(Letter to the Editor)
Mar 08, 2005; ... Just a note to tell you how sad, upset and angry I am at the news that the cardinals have elected Josef Ratzinger as the new pope. Already our media here in Canada, while covering the excitement of some in St. Peter's Square that there is a new pope, are also giving coverage to ...
Was it something we said?(LETTERS)(Letter to the Editor)
Mar 08, 2005; ... In February, Bishop Richard Smith of Pembroke Diocese "banned" Catholic New Times from parishes in his diocese, because of our Feb. 13 editorial on homosexuality. Here, reader John Borst responds. From time-to-time the bishops have spoken against the lack of free ...
The crisis in church governance.(LETTERS)(Letter to the Editor)
Mar 08, 2005; ... Thank you for the excellent article by Bruce Russet. (CNT April 10 2005). I agree with much in his article, e.g., his remark that "No one is free of imperfection or self-centredness. Church leaders, like all of us, will sometimes fail." Many of the faithful have endured the ...
Appreciates CNTers in the media.(LETTERS)(Letter to the Editor)
Mar 08, 2005; ... It was great to hear you CNTers on CBC radio and CBC Sunday Report with Carol MacNeill and Evan Solomon. If it were not for your paper and its ideas, there would be nothing for me in Catholicism. The social teaching, the preferential option for the poor, the church as the people ...
Protestant compelled to write.(LETTERS)(Letter to the Editor)
Mar 08, 2005; ... I just saw your assistant editor's interview on Global News and felt compelled to write. Though I am a Protestant woman, I am heartbroken for Catholic women in regard to the election of Cardinal Ratzinger as pope. There is also heartbreak for the many other staggering issues ...
Quote/Unquote.(LETTERS)
Mar 08, 2005; ... Vatican II enlarged the definition of church, gave us new roots. The church, the Council declared is "the people of God". There and ...
Church that speaks word of life.(WITNESS)
Mar 08, 2005; ... It has been more than a month now since Easter Monday morning, when 19 of us pilgrims from Romero House for Refugees left Toronto for El Salvador. Together, we joined the week-long celebrations marking the 25th anniversary of Archbishop Oscar Romero's assassination--at the hands of a ...
Benedict XVI: from guard dog to pastor.(EDITORIAL)
Mar 08, 2005 ... "The servility of the sycophants--false prophets--as they were branded by the true Old Testament prophets, those who shy from and shun every collision, who prize above all their calm complacency is not true obedience. What the church needs are not adulators of the status quo, but men whose ...
Third world debt cancellation due.(CANADA)(Brief Article)
Mar 08, 2005 ... OTTAWA -- The Canadian Press reports that Canada is cancelling debts totalling $52 million owed by the impoverished countries Zambia, Honduras and Rwanda. Zambia owed Canada $39.2 million, Honduras $9.5 million and Rwanda $3.2 ...
Health Minister criticizes Conservative's healthcare fancy.(CANADA)(Brief Article)
Mar 08, 2005 ... TORONTO -- The right-wing vision of privatized healthcare would erode Canada's universal medicare system, Health Minister Ujjal Dosanjh said last month. Charging that Conservative Leader Stephen Harper is "soft-peddling" privatization policies, Dosanjh said Harper supports the ...
Wal-Mart's 'woes' continue in Canada.(CANADA)
Mar 08, 2005 ... MONTREAL -- An employee at a unionized Wal-Mart store in Saguenay, Que., recently filed a request for a class-action suit against Wal-Mart Canada, over its planned closure of the store. The Canadian Press reports that Alain Pednault, expected to lose his job when the store ...
Canada condemned for deportation policy.(CANADA)(Brief Article)
Mar 08, 2005 ... Governments deporting suspected terrorists to countries that reputedly torture detainees are either breathtakingly naive, or complicit in the abuse, a recent Human Rights Watch report charged. According to the New York-based watchdog's 95-page report, Western nations--including ...
Migrant farm workers: Laborem Exercens ... in Canada.(CANADA)
Mar 08, 2005; ... Let me evoke two images. In the first, Prime Minister Paul Martin jets sets around the world with Bono, pledging to end global poverty. In the other, the Martin government at home sets up barriers to the most marginalized group of workers in Canadian society--migrant farm workers--in their ...
U.S. military renames stadium.(WORLD)
Mar 08, 2005; ... "It's a perfect marriage," bleated Washington D.C. City Council member Vincent Orange. He was not talking about Charles and Camilla, although the marriage in question may be just as repellent. The unctuous Mr. Orange was celebrating the National Guard's proposed $6 million ...
Religion as Baseball.(WORLD)(Poem)
Mar 08, 2005 ... <Pre> Religion as Baseball Calvinists believe the game is fixed.Lutherans believe they can't win, but trust the Scorekeeper.Quakers wont' swing.Unitarians can catch anything.Amish walk a lot.Pagans sacrifice.Jehovah's Witnesses are thrown out often. ...
Bringing you the news.(WORLD)
Mar 08, 2005; ... Can you imagine the BBC and other major broadcasters apologizing to a rogue regime that practises racism and ethnic cleansing, which has "effectively legalized the use of torture", according to Amnesty International, which holds international law in contempt, having defied hundreds of U.N ....
Cardinal Ratzinger as pope: 'bad news for the world and for Jews'.(WORLD)
Mar 08, 2005; ... "Since the days as the leader of the forces that suppressed the liberatory aspects of Vatican II and purged or silenced the Church of its most creative leadership (including German Catholic theologians Eugene Drewermann and Hans Kung, Brazilian theologian Leonardo Boff, and several ...
Warning on spread of state surveillance.(WORLD NOTES)
Mar 08, 2005 ... Governments are building a "global registration and surveillance infrastructure" in the U.S.-led "war on terror," civil liberty groups warned in April. The aim is to monitor the movements and activities of entire populations in what campaigners call "an unprecedented project of ...
'Ethical revolution' sweeps up world's sweatshops.(WORLD NOTES)
Mar 08, 2005 ... After a decade of denying any wrongdoing, global brands such as Nike and Gap now admit their workers in developing countries have been exploited and abused, the Independent reports. The multi-national apparel companies recently pledged to improve labour conditions of millions of ...
U.S. says Israel must give up nukes.(WORLD NOTES)
Mar 08, 2005 ... The U.S. State Department recently called on Israel to dismantle its nuclear weapons and accept international Atomic Energy Agency safeguards on all nuclear activities, Ha'aretz reports. Trying to put the nuclear weapons of Israel, India and Pakistan 'on a par,' American ...
Dumping hurts world's poorest farmers, Oxfam says.(WORLD NOTES)
Mar 08, 2005 ... The international trade in rice and other foods is rigged--and millions of poor farmers are being squeezed out of business by "rich countries" dumping massively subsidized food, the aid agency Oxfam said in a report, published in the Globe and Mail in April. The situation for ...
The church after JPII.(CENTRESPREAD)
Mar 08, 2005; ... "War is never inevitable," Pope John Paul II said two years ago before the U.S. bombed Iraq. "It is always a defeat for humanity." He was passionate about peace. Eight hundred members of Pax Christi, the international Catholic peace movement, had gathered in Assisi for a week ...
When Catholic women are equal partners.(CENTRESPREAD)
Mar 08, 2005; ... Catholic history is measured in centuries, not decades, and Catholic women have been an integral part from the beginning. One would never know that from observing the funeral, conclave, and plans for a new papacy following the death of Pope John Paul II. A visitor from Venus ...
Gay Catholic group DignityUSA marks the death of Pope JP II.(CENTERSPREAD)(John Paul II)
Mar 08, 2005 ... WASHINGTON, DC The leadership of DignityUSA, the organization for gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender (GLBT) Catholics, marked the death of Pope John Paul II with prayer and reflection and called on DignityUSA members and Catholics everywhere to hold the pope and the church ...
Pope John Paul II and global social justice.(CENTERSPREAD)
Mar 08, 2005; ... The papacy symbolizes the whole church, with all of its diversity, tensions and conflicts, and is larger and more complex than any single papacy--intertwined with the Vatican bureaucracies and curia officials; linked to myriad Catholic communities, movements and institutions around the ...
Enemy of faith: not unbelief, but sentimentality: wrongheaded understanding of cross and suffering played out in deaths of Terri Schiavo and John Paul II.(CHURCH)
Mar 08, 2005; ... The deaths of Terri Schiavo and John Paul II attracted extraordinary attention from the mass media. In these cases, attention was given, not merely as straight reportage, but in a wide range of interpretation. In Ms. Schiavo's case, not only were many medical-ethical views ...
In church's dreams, Vatican II never happened.(CHURCH)
Mar 08, 2005; ... The American TV networks spent huge sums of money and sent scores of people to Rome two weeks ago. Characteristically, they spent little time or energy on research, and hence provided weak and stereotypical journalism, limited to questions about married priests, female priests, gays and ...
Dorothy Stang: defender of the Amazon's peasant families.(FAITH & SPIRITUALITY)
Mar 08, 2005; ... Deep inside the timber-rich forest of the Amazon, David Stang recently walked in the footsteps of his murdered sister, Dorothy, not minding the rain and heat--and the aching reminders of someone he regards as a martyr. To Stang and thousands of supporters in Brazil, the ...
Hans Kung on Benedict XVI.(FAITH & SPIRITUALITY)
Mar 08, 2005; ... The election of Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger as pope comes as an enormous disappointment for all those who hoped for a reformist and pastoral pope. But we must wait and see, for experience shows that the role of the papacy in the Catholic Church today is so challenging that it can ...
Benedict XVI's first 100 days.(FAITH & SPIRITUALITY)
Mar 08, 2005 ... WASHINGTON, DC -- Catholics for a Free Choice is deeply concerned that the election of Cardinal Josef Ratzinger as pope is a strong indication of continued internal dissension within the church. The cardinal's historic role as a disciplinarian means the tradition of the punitive father is ...
Confessing Christ in world of violence.(FAITH & SPIRITUALITY)
Mar 08, 2005 ... Christian leaders protest a "theology of war," while Jerry Falwell says, "Blow them away in the name of the Lord." (CNN, Oct 24, 2004) More than 200 Christian leaders have signed a petition, a "Confession of Faith," condemning a "theology of war." The petition is being circulated by ...
The Natashas: The New Global Sex Trade.(Book Review)
Mar 08, 2005; ... The Natashas: The New Global Sex Trade, by Victor Malarek, Viking, Toronto, 2004, 304 pp. In today's world, over two million women and children are being bought and sold before our very eyes. Why isn't there a global outcry at this scandalous affront to human rights? Victor ...
So Beautiful.(Book Review)
Mar 08, 2005; ... So Beautiful by Ramona, Dearing, The Porcupine's Quill, 2004, 163 pp. Ramona Dearing is a vibrant new voice emerging from the thriving Newfoundland literary scene. She is a member of the fiction collective, Burning Rock, which also includes Lisa Moore and Michael Winter. Dearing ...