Sara Lin Wilde is a recovering Catholic (and cat-holic, for that matter - all typographical errors are the responsibility of her feline friends). She lives in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, where she is working on writing a novel that she really, really hopes can actually get published.
The growing community of Morinville (Alberta, Canada) has a burgeoning youth population; fully one-quarter of the area’s citizens are under 18. Schools in the area are feeling the pinch, and it’s stirring up a holy controversy around the touchy subject of religious accommodation… or the lack thereof. You see, Alberta is one of the Canadian provinces that still retains both public and Catholic school boards, a vestige of historical agreements made to appease a wary French-Canadian population who feared the takeover of their culture by English Protestantism if they joined the Confederation. Now, students in Morinville have two school boards vying to serve them. Both boards recently applied for government funding to build a new school, given the overcrowding in the area’s existing schools: the Catholic board wanted another elementary school, while the public board hoped to create the city’s first secular high school. But when Premier Jim Prentice unveiled plans for the new building, only one was slated for Morinville. Read more
This is Part Four in a four-part series about the Vatican document Instrumentum Laboris, meant to be a working guide for the upcoming Synod of Bishops focusing on the challenges of modern family life in Catholicism. You can read the other parts here: Part One, Part Two, Part Three. … Welcome back to Instrumentum Laboris. Today’s selection deals with the theme “An Openness to Life and Parental Responsibility in Upbringing.” Because nothing is more fun than telling parents everything they’re doing wrong, especially if they’re parents we think are sinners. Of course, the discerning reader will have caught that phrase “openness to life” in there, which can only mean one thing: we’ll be talking birth control, too! Read more
This is Part Three in a four-part series about the Vatican document Instrumentum Laboris, meant to be a working guide for the upcoming Synod of Bishops focusing on the challenges of modern family life in Catholicism. You can read the other parts here: Part One, Part Two, Part Four. … Welcome back to Instrumentum Laboris. Today’s selection deals with “The Pastoral Program for the Family in Light of New Challenges” — basically the section in which the bishops tell priests and other on-the-ground parish officials how they ought to treat ordinary Catholics. Should be interesting… Read more
This is Part Two in a four-part series about the Vatican document Instrumentum Laboris, meant to be a working guide for the upcoming Synod of Bishops focusing on the challenges of modern family life in Catholicism. You can read the other parts here: Part One, Part Three, Part Four. … Welcome back to Instrumentum Laboris. Today’s selection deals with the theme “Communicating the Gospel of the Family in Today’s World” — Vatican-speak for “Making Sure Catholics Know What They Ought To Be Thinking.” Read more
What can we learn about the Catholic Church’s proposed direction on the modern family from the document the bishops released to guide its discussion? In the run-up to the 3rd Extraordinary General Assembly of the Synod of Bishops, slated to run October 5-19, 2014, the document Instrumentum Laboris (“instrument of labour” or “working instrument”) gives us a few helpful clues about the general approach the Synod will be taking to “pastoral challenges of the family in the context of evangelization”… Read more
