SPECIAL PRESENTATION — At the recent CCCB plenary, Thunder Bay Bishop Fred Colli presented Archbishop Pedro Lopez Quintana, the apostolic nuncio, with a special stole to mark the canonization of Kateri Tekakwitha in October. (CCN/Gyapong photo)

Nuncio warns of religious freedom threats in Canada

By Deborah Gyapong

Canadian Catholic News

SAINTE-ADELE, Que. (CCN) — Canada’s apostolic nuncio warned Sept. 24 of threats to Catholic education in Canada and urged Canada’s bishops to “remain aware of developments in our society that jeopardize religious freedom.”

Archbishop Pedro Lopez Quintana, the Holy See’s ambassador to Canada, told the annual Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops’ plenary here Sept. 24-28 that “many Catholic institutions are in danger of losing their Catholic character.” The pope has spoken of an “educational emergency” worldwide in the face of rampant individualism that “reduces reality to something to be manipulated,” Lopez Quintana said.

Using careful diplomatic language, he criticized Quebec’s Ethics and Religious Culture program (ERC) and Ontario’s Bill 13, which would impose gay-straight alliances on Catholic schools. This mandatory program was also imposed on private schools, including Catholic schools.

The nuncio described the new religious curriculum designed for Quebec schools as “obliging a syncretistic study based on world religions” and noted the province “does not give parents the right to opt out.”

The Ontario government is basing its intervention into Catholic education on “a rather flawed anthropology” that sees the human person solely determined “by desires and passions” and not “in the image and likeness of God,” he said.

The program “impedes the right of the church to teach a right anthropology according to the truths of the faith,” he said.

Lopez Quintana praised the CCCB Permanent Council’s pastoral letter on religious freedom. He noted one of the freedoms “cherished by the Catholic Church is the establishment of Catholic schools.”

The nuncio spoke of the importance of new evangelization in light of the upcoming Synod on New Evangelization in Rome, to which the CCCB is sending delegates, the 50th anniversary of the opening of the Second Vatican Council and the 20th anniversary of the Catechism of the Catholic Church.

“The Holy Father hopes to awaken in all the baptized the profound gift of faith and also the responsibility to evangelize,” he said, and that includes in evangelizing in the workplace, in scientific endeavours and economic life “so they may be turned into places for proclaiming the Gospel.”

The nuncio praised the Canadian bishops for their pioneering work in responding to the sexual abuse crisis, noting that one must confront the mystery of evil in the church.

“We who care to evangelize must be prepared to be evangelized ourselves and challenged by the very Gospel we proclaim,” he said.
Christians seem to be facing an increase in persecution and marginalization for their faith and being driven from the public square, he said. “In many cases Christians are finding themselves in minority situations.”

The pope made three trips recently to places where “common sense and prudence” might advise one to “avoid,” Lopez Quintana said. Pope Benedict travelled to Benin, to Mexico and Cuba and most recently to Lebanon.

“This most recent visit was taken amidst potential dangers,” he said. But the Holy Father’s “gentle, thoughtful presence has the effect of winning over even his most hardened critics.”

The announcement of the Gospel is part of these apostolic journeys, he said. “The world, even if it is estranged from God, watches closely the ministrations of the successor to Peter.”

“At the heart of the work of evangelization is the transmission of the faith in the celebration of the sacred liturgy,” he said. Catholics are to be “transformed by the liturgical life and prayer,” he said, noting the intrinsic relationship between one’s life and how one prays.

“The recent revision of the Roman Missal has been for the most part a positive one,” he said. “Nevertheless there has been a degree of controversy over postures.”

The Holy See seeks to “support the role of the bishop as the high priest of his flock, allowing adaptations as necessary,” he said.