Perhaps motivated by the Obama regime's assaults on religious liberty in the United States, the Canadian Catholic bishops yesterday released a major pastoral letter on freedom of conscience and religion. The letter addresses an "aggressive relativism" that seeks to relegate religion to the private sphere.From Catholic World NewsArchbishop Terrence Prendergast of Ottawa and an Ottawa Catholic school official said that they will not implement portions of Ontario’s mandatory sex education curriculum. Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty said on April 21 that the curriculum was mandatory for “all students in publicly funded schools, including Catholic schools,” and Education Minister Leona Dombrowsky said, “This is the Ontario curriculum, and it's the curriculum for all schools and all students.”
“Mr. McGuinty seems to be misinformed here,” said Jan Bentham of the Ottawa Catholic School Board. The education ministry, she said, was “very aware there would be some content we would not be delivering in Catholic schools.”
Urging parents to protest, Archbishop Pendergrast said, “I believe one of the most important things for children in learning about family life and sexuality issues is to have it in the context of a warm family that explains things to them and helps them to deal with that. I think parents are the first teachers of faith and moral issues to children.”
The curriculum teaches that homosexuality and transgenderism are normal and that masturbation is “one way of learning about your body.” Seventh grade teachers are prompted to say:
Engaging in sexual activities like oral sex, vaginal intercourse, and anal intercourse means that you can be infected with an STI. If you do not have sex, you do not need to worry about getting an STI. (By the way, statistics show that young people who delay first intercourse are more likely to use protection when they choose to be sexually active.) If a person is thinking of having sex, what can they do to protect themselves?Students are to be coached to respond:
They should go to a health clinic or see a nurse or doctor who can provide important information about protection. People who think they will be having sex sometime soon should keep a condom with them so they will have it when they need it. They should also talk with their partner about using a condom before they have sex, so both partners will know a condom will be used. If a partner says they do not want to use a condom, a person should say, ‘I will not have sex without a condom.’ If you do have sex, it is important that you use a condom every time, because condoms help to protect you against STIs, including HIV, and pregnancy.Source(s): these links will take you to other sites, in a new window.
From National Post (CDN) Vincent Nguyen's journey 26 years ago from Vietnam to Canada culminated yesterday in the pomp and splendour of his ordination as a bishop (Auxilliary of the Archdiocese of Toronto) of the Roman Catholic Church.
More than 1,000 people crammed the pews of St. Michael's Cathedral to see 43-year-old Father Nguyen become Bishop Nguyen in a ceremony that connects back to St. Peter, the first bishop of Rome.
Bishop Nguyen's friends and fellow clergymen describe him as extremely humble and shy, but his pedigree is the stuff of legend.
He is a fifth-generation Catholic, the great-grandson of a man martyred for his faith in the 19th century. As a child Bishop Nguyen dreamed of being a priest, as a teenager he steered a boat of refugees to escape Vietnam so he could live in freedom, and yesterday he became the youngest bishop in the country and Canada's first non-white Catholic bishop.
"You prepare your whole life to become a priest," Bishop Nguyen said in an interview. "But the call to be a bishop is always a surprise; it's not something you aspire to.
"Becoming a bishop shows the connection to the Holy Father, and to the succession of the apostles. It's very overwhelming to be installed in that whole tradition that goes back 2,000 years. You are being called by God so the whole thing is really a mystery."
When he left Vietnam in a rickety fishing boat with his uncles and a dozen others in 1984, he was a 16-year-old dreaming of one day becoming a Catholic priest. "I saw no future in Vietnam."
The group of refugees faced pirates, rough seas and leaks. At one point he was asked to take the helm, essentially putting the responsibility for his fellow passengers' lives on his shoulders.
"His life experience is not dissimilar to many in our archdiocese who have gone through great suffering," Thomas Collins, Archbishop of the Diocese of Toronto, said in an interview yesterday. "I regularly meet people from many countries facing persecution. People I meet tell me of the suffering of their relatives, people who have died for Christ. They are an inspiration to us."
During yesterday's service, Archbishop Collins called the blood of the martyrs "the seed of the Church." He made reference to Bishop Nguyen being a descendant of a "holy martyr."
Bishop Nguyen's great-great-grandfather, Joseph Can Nguyen, was the first in his family to become a Catholic. When Joseph was 21, he was arrested for being a Christian.
"And he was executed for being a Christian," said Bishop Nguyen. "This incredible story has been passed on in my family. The executioners tied him to a post in the river and waited for the tide to come up. The executioners very patiently would come over once in a while to see if he wanted to recant. His answer was consistently no and so he drowned. The emperor was afraid of these Christians who would not worship him.
"Sometimes I jokingly tell people that I'm tired of this story. When we would do something wrong, they told us behave as a descendant of a martyr. It's a kind of pressure, but as we grow up we more appreciate the faith of our ancestors passed on to us with their own lives."
