July 5, 2005 |
Note from the Executive Officer:
Pardon this lamentation, but marriage was defeated in my country last week. Late in the evening of Tuesday June 28, the Prime Minster and his supporters cheered as it was announced that Bill C-38 had passed third reading in the House of Commons. Only the formality of a vote in the Liberal-dominated Senate now stands between the bill and its proclamation into law. Behind that cheering, religious Canadians — many of whom had fought long and prayed hard for the tradition of marriage and had every reason to hope that hope and reason would prevail — quietly came to terms with their crushing disappointment. Not a word was spoken, but religious believers across the land realized that silently they had been put on notice. Aside from what it must mean for the social fabric, Orthodox Christian, Jewish, Sikh, and Islamic beliefs about the heterosexual-only nature of marriage have been now defined as in opposition to the Charter of Rights and Freedoms in this country and the official position of the government of the land. What we believe is now in opposition to what is officially defined as right and proper; what we believe is at odds with what is in the best interests of our country according to this legislation. Homosexuality has now been officially embraced and endorsed by the government. And in all but the most narrowly defined circumstances (i.e. ministers will not be forced to solemnize same-sex marriages) religious views on this issue will be at odds with the courts. Conflicts between freedom of religion and conscience and homosexual equality rights have been making their way through the legal system for some time and we have been losing almost all of those challenges. Our position is now immeasurably weaker and it must follow that religious expression will be further curtailed, religious freedoms pushed back, and the tax exempt status of churches now come under attack. Fr. Raymond de Souza draws a large circle around same-sex marriage with his accustomed brilliance in our feature article this week. This is followed by an article he wrote just before the bill passed. "What would Thomas More do?" is an indictment of those Liberal cabinet ministers who denied their conscience by voting in favour of a bill and a principle they didn't believe in. After his own presentation to the Parliamentary Committee on Bill C-38, Iain Benson spoke with Committee members and a few M.P.'s. Iain tells us in a blog entry, "it was generally acknowledged that the most effective presentation before them by anyone or group was that made by Bishop Fred Henry of Calgary". That bold bishop's presentation is offered below followed by Iain's own incisive reflections for the committee.
On a happier note, I'd like to welcome Fr. Thomas Rosica to our board of advisors. Father Rosica was the coordinator and chief organizer for World Youth Day in Toronto in 2002 and is now the CEO of Salt and Light Catholic Media Foundation. He is a remarkably skillful communicator of the Church's message and an apostle in the tradition of Pope John Paul II. His effectiveness with the media is shown off in this "praise-be-to-God" article, "CBC gives Father Rosica glowing review". You'd have to know something of the trouble we've had with the CBC to know what a miracle this article is. Father's talk in the Chapel of the Newman Centre at the University of Toronto on April 4 "John Paul II's Master Class to his 'dear young friends'" is heart-warming. We all need heart-warming. - J. Fraser Field
This
CERC Bi-Weekly Update is also available on our web site here.
| ||||||
| New
Resources: |
|
|
| NEW RESOURCES ADDED TO THE SITE THIS WEEK: |
| |
|
15 Marriage Now Just a Sexual Relationship - Fr. Raymond de Souza - National Post All in all, it is an impressive bit of work for a mere 38 years. |
| |
| 01 On Wednesday, the Catholic Church marked the feast of St. Thomas More, a leading statesman of the 16th century and one of the most noble figures in the history of law and politics. As this sorry sitting of the House of Commons draws to an end, St. Thomas More is strikingly relevant. |
| |
|
12 Bishop Fred Henry Addresses Parliamentary Committee on Marriage - Bishop Fred Henry Bishop Fred Henry of Calgary, Alberta addressed the Parliamentary Legislative Committee on Bill 38 June 6th in Ottawa. |
| |
|
08 A Civil Argument About Dignity, Beliefs and Marriage - Iain T. Benson - Being a Brief for an Appearance Before the Special Legislative Committee of the House of Commons on Bill C-38 Iain T. Benson addressed the Parliamentary Legislative Committee on Bill 38 on June 14th in Ottawa. |
| |
|
04 John Paul II's Master Class to his 'dear young friends' - Fr. Thomas Rosica, C.S.B. - talk at the Newman Center of the University of Toronto John Paul the actor gave the world a command performance on a world stage. To his 'dear young friends', it was truly a Master Class in the drama of Gospel living and dying. He has touched us deeply and changed the world and the Church. |
| |
|
05 Benedict's Better Plan - Colleen Carroll Campbell - Our Sunday Visitor History proves that the Church thrives when it is challenging the culture, not imitating it. |
| |
|
09 Three Simple Truths - Thomas C. Reeves - The History Blog Three statements I often hear and read need brief clarification. All three are essentially about the same vital issue. |
| |
|
11 Oh, the Civility! - Robert J. Hughes - Wall Street Journal What's My Line? — a Sunday night fixture on CBS from 1950 to 1967 — is a bracing antidote to today's dispiriting talk-a-thons, humiliating reality shows and hostile cable-news programs. |
| |
|
16 Who Invented Charity? - Thomas E. Woods, Jr. - LewRockwell.com No wonder even the Church's opponents — not only Voltaire but also Julian the Apostate and Martin Luther — praised her extraordinary work on behalf of her fellow men. |
| |
|
06 Kingdom of Heaven - James Bowman - JamesBoman.net Sir Ridley Scott's Crusades movie, Kingdom of Heaven, though visually impressive as we might expect, is shockingly unhistorical. |
| |
|
14 A Village Called Wakefield: When Western Culture was Catholic - Anthony Esolen - Crisis In 1215, to celebrate the resolution of a controversy regarding Christ's real presence in the Eucharist, Pope Innocent III declared a new holiday: Corpus Christi. What happened then should astonish us. |
|
07 What Difference Does Heaven Make? - Peter Kreeft - from Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About Heaven If a thing makes no difference, it is a waste of time to think about it. We should begin, then, with the question, What difference does Heaven make to earth, to now, to our lives? |
| |
|
10 Forty Years Wandering - John F. Kippley - Touchstone This year marks the fortieth anniversary of Daniel Patrick Moynihan's controversial "The Negro Family: The Case for National Action." |
| |
|
12 We're Split - Dinesh D'Souza - tothesource The courts have become the place where some of the most important issues of American social and moral life are now settled. |
| |
|
13 Scientific Breakthroughs - Robert P. George - National Review Online National Review Online Editor Kathryn Lopez recently asked Robert P. George, a member of the President's Council on Bioethics, to talk a little about the future of stem-cell research and some of the heated rhetoric surrounding the issue. |
| |
| 02 Excessive anger is one of the major sources of marital and family stress. The recognition, understanding and resolution of this powerful emotion are important for the health and happiness of marriage, children, and family. |
| |
| EDITORIALS OF INTEREST: |
| |
| 25 Thou Shalt Split Hairs - Washington Post The Supreme Court rendered two more hairsplitting, migraine-inducing decisions yesterday about when religious displays on public property do and do not violate the First Amendment protection against "establishment" of religion. |
| |
| 25 Conceit of Government - Peggy Noonan - Wall Street Journal What's wrong with them? That's what I'm thinking more and more as I watch the news from Washington. |
| |
| 32 A Timely Reminder in '1776' - George F. Will - Washington Post When George Washington, in a spiffy uniform of buff and blue, sitting his horse with a grace uncommon even among Virginians vain about their horsemanship, arrived outside Boston in July 1775 to assume command of the American rebellion, he was aghast. |
| |
25 I had asked Ms. Fallaci whether there was any contemporary leader she admired, and Pope Benedict XVI was evidently a man in whom she reposed some trust. "I am an atheist, and if an atheist and a pope think the same things, there must be something true." |
| |
| 26 Feasts and famine - Karl Keating Maybe you missed this news release: "At the conclusion of their spring general meeting, held in Chicago June 18-19, the Catholic bishops of the United States voted to petition the Vatican for permission to change the days on which three prominent liturgical events are celebrated. |
| |
| 27 Howard Dean: There he goes again - Terry Mattingly The logic was simple. Since the Democratic National Committee chairman Howard Dean had said (a) that he hates Republicans and (b) that the GOP is full of white Christians, did these statements imply (c) that he hates white Christians? |
| |
| 28 Priest held over 'torture killing' - Times on line Five members of Romania's Orthodox Church could be jailed after the bizarre exorcism of a nun. |
| |
| 29 CBS gives go-ahead for Pope John Paul miniseries - CNN CBS television has given producers the go-ahead for a big-budget miniseries charting the life of the late Pope John Paul II, with guidance from the Vatican, the network said on Thursday. |
| |
| 32 Ecumenical Patriarch Welcomes Pope's Call - AP The spiritual leader of the world's 200 million Orthodox Christians welcomed Pope Benedict XVI's pledge to end a schism between the Catholic and Orthodox churches, calling it a mutual "obligation to God". |
| |
| 33 Chicago Cardinal Reaffirms Longtime Vatican Teaching: No Homosexuals Allowed in Priesthood - Lifesite Over the past weekend, with the American bishops converging in Chicago to vote on the new policies, Cardinal George spoke for the whole conference, stating that homosexuals, as per the universal teaching of the Church, are not to be ordained into the priesthood. |
| |
| 27 Police officer's death no excuse to begin persecuting 'illegals' - Rocky Mountain News Justice can't be served by raging at groups of other people. That kind of anger only undermines our own dignity and pushes common sense to the margins. |
| |
| 28 Cardinal Sin, leader of 'People Power' movement, dies at 76 - The Criterion A prime motivator of the "People Power" movement that led to the ouster of two presidents, Cardinal Jaime Sin of Manila died June 21 at the age of 76. |
| |
| 28 Later they will say we were five or six - Spero News He who controls the media, controls the masses, is the impression one gathers from reading Robert Duncan's reflections after attending Saturday's pro-family demonstration in Madrid. |
| |
| 28 High-Court Showdown - Catholic Exchange Instead of preventing a titanic showdown over federal judgeship nominations, the Senate compromise negotiated last month by seven Republicans and seven Democrats may just have postponed it a few weeks — and guaranteed that when the showdown finally does come, it will focus on the Supreme Court itself. |
| |
| 33 Unreal for 30 Days - Opinion Journal A "documentary" on Islam tells a preconceived story. |
| |
| 33 One-third of Canadian readers believe the Da Vinci Code is true - National Post Almost two million Canadians who read the mega-selling book, The Da Vinci Code, ended the novel convinced that Jesus Christ fathered a line of descendants on Earth, a new survey suggests. |
| |
| 25 Growing family; Oleruds' faith helps them cope with their daughter's illnes - Boston Globe He wanted so badly to explain why the man with the needle was hurting her. He knew he could not. |
| |
| 26 "Sounds like fraud upon the Court" - Annie Banno Blogspot Senator Sessions also remarked that "I've heard these ladies before, known about their wanting to change what was done in their names and without their permission, but to have them here before us, is remarkable. It sounds like fraud was done on the [Supreme] Court. We need to look into this." |
| |
| 27 The priest who bestrides America - The Tablet Joseph Fessio is a million-dollar publisher, the man who runs a university founded on a pizza fortune, a conservative Jesuit who fell out with his superiors and a friend of the Pope. It's made him one of the US Church's biggest players. |
| |
| 28 The priest, his flock and his wife - St. Petersburg Times The Rev. Michael Scheip is a rarity: a Roman Catholic priest with a wife and children. |
| |
| 29 Court: No Ten Commandments in Courthouses - The Guardian In his dissent, Scalia blasted the majority for ignoring the rule of law to push their own personal policy preferences."`What distinguishes the rule of law from the dictatorship of a shifting Supreme Court majority is the absolutely indispensable requirement that judicial opinions be grounded in consistently applied principle,'' Scalia wrote. |
| |
| 30 You ain't seen nothing yet - The Economist Christian America's political arm is more complex and more dynamic than it first appears. And it will be hard to stop. |
| |
| 31 China and Vatican Make No Secret of Thaw - LA Times Both would gain by establishing ties, though complete religious freedom is unlikely. |
| |
| 32 Boffins create zombie dogs - News.com.au Scientists have created eerie zombie dogs, reanimating the canines after several hours of clinical death in attempts to develop suspended animation for humans. |
| |
| 32 US survey shows extent of research misconduct - British Medical Journal A third of US scientists have engaged in serious research misconduct in the past three years, according to a survey published in the journal Nature |
| |
| 32 Betrayal of children - Calgary Herald The most overlooked and disenfranchised group in the current debate about marriage are children. |
| |
| 32 Compendium of Catechism released - CWN Pope Benedict XVI released the Compendium of the Catechism of the Catholic Church at a June 28 liturgical ceremony at the Vatican. |
| |
| 32 Ten Commandments split: Court OKs Texas display, overrules Kentucky' - Catholic.org A Ten Commandments monument on the grounds of the Texas Capitol is permissible under federal law, but those in two Kentucky courthouses violate the Establishment Clause of the Constitution, the Supreme Court ruled in two narrowly decided opinions June 27. |
| |
| 32 Clergy who don't believe in God - The Times (U.K.) Hundreds of Church of England clergy doubt the existence of God and fewer than two thirds believe in miracles, a study out today says. |
| |
| 32 An Autopsy Won't End It - John Leo - US News and World Report Just when it seemed that every liberal commentator on the Terri Schiavo case was starting to sound like Barney Frank, the great Joan Didion published a long and remarkable article on the case in the quite far left New York Review of Books of June 9. |
| |
| 32 Run-Up to Judicial Fight Puts a Spotlight on Bork - New York Times Judge Robert H. Bork, the former Supreme Court nominee whose rejection 18 years ago has hovered over every confirmation since, is back in the spotlight. |
| |
| 32 NYT: This is What Religion Should Look Like - The Revealer Noah Feldman's carefully-reasoned essay on the church/state dilemma of American politics in today's New York Times Magazine reveals a distillation of the Times' sensibility when it comes to religious conflict. |
| |
| EDUCATION MATTERS: |
|
|
| 34 Needed: An Exit Strategy - Albertmoler.com As the Southern Baptist Convention convenes in Nashville next week, the issue of public education is once again at the center of potential controversy. |
| |
| 35 Students at Augustinus College probably didn't see it coming. Most of their teachers certainly didn't. |
| |
| 37 The American Story - Opinion Journal Why failing to teach history is bad for democracy. |
| |
| 38 Jenkins Takes Over as Head of Notre Dame - Guardian John Jenkins had two questions on his mind when he received his philosophy degree from the University of Notre Dame in 1976: "What kind of life would be deeply meaningful? What kind of life would be so important to me that I'd be willing to give my life for it?'' |
| |
| 39 A Teacher Success Story - US News.com This spring on many college campuses, something absolutely remarkable happened: Talented young people lined up by the scores to teach lower-income kids in urban and rural public schools. |
| |
| 40 Kids with bedroom TV have lower test scores - Science Blog Want to improve your child's standardized test scores? You might want to start by booting out the television that likely occupies a place of honor in your youngster's bedroom and booting up a computer elsewhere in the home. |
| |
| 40 Google Earth 3.0 - PC Magazine The $299 service formerly known as Keyhole has been relaunched by new owner Google, and it is even more impressive-and free. It's still in Beta version, but will be available soon from Google. |
| |
| 40 Evolution poll shows majority want change - Kansas.com A majority of Kansans polled say they want public schools to either allow evolution to be criticized or teach other theories alongside it in science classes. |
| |
| 34 Teen witch caught up in spells - Nation News It is the latest craze among teenagers not only in the United States and Europe but also right here in Barbados. Jason is just one of a growing number of youngsters who has rejected Christianity and is embracing witchcraft as a way of life. |
| St.
Justin Martyr, pray for us |