Last Updated:Friday - 09/24/2010

WCR Letters to the Editor

Restore Catholic teaching

Re: Bishop Fred Henry's stand on gambling (WCR, July 3).

How we, and so many other parents, wish similar actions would have been taken years ago, not over gambling, but over such topics as religious and sex "education" in our Catholic schools.

So many of us have pleaded with our bishops and school trustees, from the early 1970s through the 1980s, begging them to look into the prevalent modernist trend in religious education, as well as into the influence of Planned Parenthood in our schools.

To our frustration, we were never taken seriously.

Many of us opted to have our children exempted from sex-ed in desperation about what was being taught. Quite a few went all the way and started home schooling their children.

However, to this day, we continue to brag about how Catholic our schools are and yet nothing much has changed. Which is the reason home schooling is becoming so popular among many Catholic families.

We suggested then and still maintain that if nothing can be done about it, to please remove the Catholic designation. Ditto for Catholic hospitals which perform vasectomies and tubal ligations regularly and are still designated as Catholic.

Catholic schools and hospitals are great as long as the teachings of the Church are respected and implemented. Otherwise, it is an exercise in hypocrisy. But these lines will again go by the wayside no doubt, as they have some 30 years ago.

To anyone interested in knowing more about that era, the book Salvation Redefined by Lorene Collins is a must. One may obtain this book at Life Ethics Information Centre, 104 Bond St., Toronto M5B 1X7.

During our children's schooling years, when we parents raised objections about the "un-Catholic" teachings that were circulating in the classrooms, we received, at best, a condescending response.

Most parents of today were taught the "modern" way in their school days. Yet they are now asked (and rightfully so) to teach their children about sex (see Father Gallagher workshop in WCR, July 3).

The problem with this is that these parents simply do not know how to teach the Catholic way, not by any fault of their own, but because it has not been part of their upbringing. Unfortunately, the vicious circle continues.

Jeanne McCusker
Edmonton

Support culture of life

Our Lady of Guadalupe appeared several times to Juan Diego in Mexico in 1531. By doing so, she changed the culture. Mexico had been a culture of death with widespread human sacrifice by the indigenous peoples.

Eight million conversions occurred in Mexico over the next seven years - a rate of 3,000 conversions to the Church each day for eight years.

Unfortunately in Canada we seem to be going in the opposite direction, from a country that at one point in its history embraced life (four children per family in 1960) to one promoting and encouraging death (less than two children per family in 2006).

This culture of death in Canada all started with the legalization of abortion on May 14, 1969.

The clergy, including the cardinals and bishops of Canada, have remained strangely silent about the ongoing, predominant culture of death. We have to remember that silence implies consent with the culture, with the current climate whereas Christianity has consistently in her history been a religion willing to take on unjust government, unjust cultures, evil empires.

The late, great Pope John Paul II once said, "Some people think the pope talks and writes too much about the culture of death; on the other, the Church cannot ignore what is happening."

The purpose of the Church is not to just blow which ever way the wind blows and follow the existing culture, but to challenge and change it for the better, leading it out of darkness into the light of Christ.

Gerard Liston
Edmonton

Ghanaian church asks for help

I am a leader of Children of Mary in Ghana and am asking you to help us by providing some Catholic materials so that I will get more people in the Church. Help us by sending Catholic materials like Catholic books, Bibles, rosaries and statues. It will help the Catholic people in Ghana.

Augustine Romeo Appiah
St. Paul's Catholic Church
P.O. Box 13969
Kuamsi Adum
Ghana

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