Fr. Vincent Nguyen has been appointed Auxiliary Bishop for the Archdiocese of Toronto. What a blessing for Toronto. Fr. Vincent will be a great bishop! I met Vincent years ago when he was a seminarian intern at St. Anthony of Padua in Bramalea working with the late Fr. Tony Meagher who went on to become Archbishop of Kingston. That’s now two people that have gone from St. Anthony’s to become bishops!
The bishop-elect was born in Vietnam and is the great, grandson of one of the Vietnamese martyrs who were canonized by Pope John-Paul II. The appointment of the first Asian bishop for Toronto is both sensible and sensitive, responding to the tremendous powerhouse which the Asian community is to our local church.
Vincent is a gentle, humble and pastoral man who will bring even more qualities to the already excellent Toronto episcopacy.
I got the H1N1 Vaccine on Friday at the hospital where I am on-call clergy. It was quick and easy, and I got Tylenol and a candy to go with it. That day I felt some mild pain in the injection site, and a little nausea during the evening. The next day, Saturday, I felt like I was getting a cold… achy, and little miserable. Sunday it was much, much better, but still a little sore at the injection site. So, all in all, no big deal for the injection.
What I could not understand was that for a city the size of Toronto, the general population was given 10 sites for clinics! 10 for a city of 2.5 million . That’s 250,000 per location! Of course, not everyone is going to get it, but still.
We were also told that we had ordered some 50 million doses. Unlike the USA, we had ordered another kind of vaccine and there would be no rationing. What the heck happened? Now we have to stop production to make another type of vaccine for pregnant women and then resume the other one? Doctors are being asked to participate but the vaccine is only being sent out packages of 500 doses. Does this make sense? This is serious business. We need to figure out who messed this up. They need to be fired. Here’s 1o1o Talk Radio’s Dave Trafford’s take on the same issue:
Here’s a really interesting and thoughtful reflection by a former US diplomat in Afghanistan. I find him challenging my own thinking on this war. He leaves me with a lot of important questions. Take a look.
Well, I was at North York General yesterday visiting patients and there’s been a rush at the ER with people with flu-like symptoms. People are especially concerned about kids and teens. I’m going to see about getting the vaccine at the hospital before I visit too many more people. I don’t want to bring H1N1 back to the parish!
I find though, that the process for getting the shot is rather not well organized. When you think of the city of Toronto and the millions who live here… 10 sites does not make sense. Add to that the complicated process of mixing the vaccine before injection and you’ve made the lines a lot longer. What were people thinking? I know one of our docs was thinking of having a clinic at the church but it seems way too complicated.
Keep you posted if I can get the shot. And yes, I’m getting it.. as soon as possible. It’s the right thing to do for me, and it’s even more important for those around me to whom I could pass it on if I should be in contact with the virus.
On Thursday morning last week, Oct 22, our custodian, Luigi, mentioned to me that the small statue of St. Francis that we have in our gardens was missing. I thought maybe someone had taken it indoors already. We do every Fall. However Luigi also mentioned that the flowering vines growing on the walls of our courtyard had all been ripped down. Again, I figured maybe it was just the cold weather. They probably naturally just fell off the walls.
Well, Saturday morning one of our parishioners discovered that our new statue of Mary had been stolen. I went over to discover that all that was left of Mary was the base of the statue and her feet. The 1.5 metre resin/fibre-glass statue is made in Italy and cost some $5000. I loved it because it was of a young, barefoot Mary. We had her positioned so that young children could meet here and feel close to her. The setting was quite beautiful, a small sheltered niche area in our courtyard.
The police were called and our limited security tapes were examined. We found that there was someone walking around the church several times at about 3:00 am on Friday morning. We don’t have any cameras on the statue, but that’s the only suspicious activity we could see. It’s all be given over to the Police.
Late Saturday night the police recovered a portion of the statue. It had been seen by a parishioner (my dentist) while on a run. The statue was decapitated and the hands cut off. Ugh!! It makes me so sick and so angry. It does not seem like just kids fooling around. It feels like more than that. Considering how accessible our church is and how long our office hours are, I am concerned about the safety of our parishioners, staff and clergy at night. We are looking at increasing our security without decreasing our hospitality!
Anyways…. we move on. The insurance will cover the theft. The statue will be replaced… maybe with real bronze? But the emotional shock is still great. Pray for us and for the person who did this. If only they knew that they are worth more than a million statues. Hopefully our care and concern for our “things” will be a shadow of our care and concern for our neighbours.
Here’s some news from Archbishop Terry Prendergast’s blog about Cardinal Turkson. The Cardinal studied theology my Conventual Franciscan provinces own St. Anthony-on-Hudson Seminary. (The school eventually closed in 1987 and we moved to be part of the Washington Theological Union). From the friars who remember Cardinal Turkson, they say that he is a great guy. Read on:
CARDINAL TURKSON TO “JUSTICE AND PEACE”
Yesterday, the last working day of the Synod, the Holy Father named Cardinal Peter Kodwo Appiah Turkson, Archbishop of Cape Coast, Ghana to succeed Cardinal Renato Raffale Martino as President of the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace.
A scripture scholar who received his doctorate at Rome’s Pontifical Biblical Institute, His Eminence is a charming man who speaks an elegant Italian. We worked together last year on media relations at the Synod on the Word of God.
If you’ve ever wondered why the liturgy of the Roman Rite needed renewal to return to it’s simpler origins you need only look at this picture of a “bishop” of the SSPX which is seeking to return to the Catholic Church. We’ve moved on from the Bishop as feudal lord to the Bishop as Shepherd. It may take them a while yet to get there.
Vatican creates new church structure for Anglicans who want to join Catholic Church
By Associated Press
2:27 AM PDT, October 20, 2009
VATICAN CITY (AP) — Pope Benedict XVI has has created a new church structure for Anglicans who want to join the Roman Catholic Church.
Cardinal Joseph Levada, the Vatican’s chief doctrinal official, said Tuesday the new legal entity will allow Anglicans to join the Catholic Church while maintaining their Anglican identity and many of their liturgical traditions.
Levada said the new structure is a response to the many requests that have come to the Vatican over the years from Anglicans who want to join.
"Let us generously open our hearts and make room for everything that the faith itself allows." B16
"Our task is not merely to hoard this precious treasure of doctrine, as though obsessed with the past, but to give ourselves eagerly and without fear to the task that this present age demands of us..."
Blessed Pope John XXIII
