Last Updated:Friday - 09/24/2010

WCR Letters to the Editor

Francophones are not 'ethnic'

The regional council of French parishes of the Edmonton Archdiocese would like to thank and congratulate Archbishop Thomas Collins and the Western Catholic Reporter for the excellent "open house" edition. We find that the goals of the special edition have been well met.

But we would like to bring to your attention the article, "Community Found in Parish Life." In this article, he writes: "There are 15 ethnic parishes in Edmonton, including such as Chinese, Croatian, French (three), German, Hungarian . . . " .

The francophone parishes are not considered ethnic in the context of Canada. We must not forget that a great majority of the early settlers in and around Edmonton were francophone Catholics.

St. Joachim Parish was the first parish of Edmonton and the language in use was French. The first bishops - Grandin and Legal - were members of the greater Canadian francophone community. The Catholic francophone communities have contributed greatly to the life of the archdiocese from the very beginning.

As a founding nation of Canada and of the archdiocese we are proud to take our place as coequal to all our sister parishes and to extend our welcome and empathy to our brothers and sisters who have been blessed with parishes that can offer them liturgy and services in their own language and within their own culture - the importance to which we remain very sensitive.

Furthermore, we take this opportunity to express our gratitude to Archbishop Collins who in the restructuring of the regions within the archdiocese has granted the francophone parishes their own region. This recognition that goes beyond the traditional concept of geographic boundaries is appreciated.

It also serves as a confirmation of our status as one of the three founding nations - First Nations, French and English - of this great archdiocese.

Claude Ouimet
Conseil Régional Francophone
Edmonton

Editorial did a disservice

Re: Unsigned editorial from the Aug. 17-23 issue of the National Catholic Register (WCR, Sept. 8).

I believe that all people have the right to know the consequences of any proposed legislation in our country, and that we have the right to know the facts as far as they can be determined from reliable sources.

Yet readers have no way of verifying the sweeping statements of the editorial which are unreferenced to any specific studies or reports. This is particularly serious, since none of the arguments applies exclusively to homosexual people.

Such an editorial risks bearing false witness against this group in our society, and contributes to the development of angry acrimony instead of intelligent dialogue on an important social issue.

By publishing this editorial the WCR has done a disservice to all its readers, and in particular to those readers who are gay or lesbian or whose children, brothers, sisters, parents, relatives or friends are homosexually oriented.

This is especially tragic given that a special outreach edition of the WCR will soon be going to all households in the archdiocese, and one would presume that homosexually-oriented men and women are included in that outreach.

Rev. Leo Hofmann
St. Matthew Parish
Edmonton

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