28 October 2004

1)Introduction

I wish to thank Mr. Nixon for giving our guests a brief summary of the origin of this Dinner.  I am proud to be here on the 25th anniversary.  This is a major annual event created by my predecessor.  The monies received through the years from this Dinner are in the area of $4 million.  They support charities which are most in need.  My warmest thanks to those who have supported the Cardinal’s Dinner over the years.I am proud as well to have at our Head Table His Grace the Most Reverend Luigi Ventura, the Apostolic Nuncio, representatives of three religious orders of Sisters:  Sister Josephine Badali from the Congregation of Notre Dame,  Sister Carmen Diston, of the Loretto Sisters and Sister Margaret Myatt from the Sisters of St. Joseph.  Also in attendance is Archbishop Sotirios from the Greek Orthodox Church of Canada, and the new Bishop of the Anglican Diocese of Toronto, The Right Reverend Colin Johnson.  I wish to recognize as well my fellow Bishops, our political friends, and especially the Past Chairmen of the Cardinal’s Dinner. 

2) Archdiocese of Toronto

Prof. Mark McGowan, the Principal of St. Michael’s College and a recognized historian with a number of books and articles on the history of the Roman Catholic Church and its members in Canada to his credit, has written a book, to be published in the spring of 2005, on the founding Bishop of the Diocese of Toronto, Michael Power, Bishop from 1842 to 1847.  Born in Halifax, ordained priest for the Diocese of Montreal, he had little desire to take on what was, to him and in reality, wild West:  poor and unruly, with the Catholic population thinly scattered across a vast territory.  The chief, and only, means of transportation at that time were one’s feet, horse and buggy, and boat.  After five years of hard and successful work Bishop Power died at the age of 48 from the illness contracted in the fever sheds, a stone's throw just East of us.  He died because he looked after the Irish who were escaping the Irish potato famine.  It is good to remember that Bishop Strachan, the first Anglican Bishop of Toronto, also worked in the fever sheds.  I should also mention that Bishop Power had invited the Sisters of Loretto to come to Toronto.  They are the first religious community of women to land among us.  After the death of Bishop Power and the unwillingness of Fr. Larkin to succeed him -  he avoided becoming Bishop of Toronto by joining the Jesuits -  there was no Bishop in Toronto for some three years. Eventually a successor was found in Armand de Charbonnel, a Frenchman.  Being very spiritual and wishing to remain humble, he accepted episcopacy because he was quite certain that being the Bishop of Toronto would do no harm to his humility.  Well, we have come a long way: in a territory much smaller than that of Bishop Power because the Diocese has been divided and thus become an Archdiocese, there is a Catholic population of well over a million and a half, in 225 parishes.  Of these, 50 were founded in the last 25 years.Mass is being celebrated in 31 languages, besides the two official languages of Canada.  In this regard, the Catholic Church in Toronto is a microcosm of the world Church, where the so-called Third Church (the Church in the Third World) now numbers some two-thirds of the world’s Catholics.  The Church is fast migrating towards the southern hemisphere, where there are, further, far more numerous young people than in the Church of the First and Second Worlds.

3) Lay Movements

Tonight I wish to say something about a phenomenon in our Church which is very surprising to some of us, but is most welcome and vastly significant for the present and the future.  I am speaking of the presence of some 240 lay movements in the Archdiocese, some numbering hundreds or even thousands of adherents, others being less numerous.  They have grown spontaneously, in the sense that there was no pre-existing plan or design on the part of the Church authorities for them to do so.  They differ greatly from one another, responding as they do to individual initiatives, insights, needs and desires.  What unites them, however, is a very serious and self-aware fidelity to the Gospel and the Church's teaching - in fact, they see them as one.  They exhibit a vivid sense of God's and His Christ's presence in daily life and a strong prayer life, both individual and communal.  In this connection I wish to quote from Rabbi Dow Marmur's autobiography (Six Lives:  a memoir [2004], p. 196):  "I tried to learn that, despite my propensity to explain and challenge, preaching may be much less important than praying."  Out of this prayer life there comes a strong urge to make Jesus better known in their world.  I must mention that care for their neighbour is very evident as well.  What distinguishes them from some others is their unwillingness to accept or swallow one or another secular social schema and beat the Gospel into fitting its size. I cannot help but see in these movements a corrective of some recent tendencies in our Church, viz., the tendency to imitate secular models of thought and action, the tendency to watch our own belly-button, to be perpetually self-critical, evangelistically comatose and the tendency towards incessant talk.  Instead, they are convinced that listening, praying and doing is vastly preferable.

It is, furthermore, the best way for the lay people to gain their due within the Church.  Their rightful position of importance can be attained by means of profound Christian self-awareness, spiritual depth, Christ-like concern for this world and evangelization of individuals and cultures.  Updating, the great slogan during and after the Second Vatican Council, means, not tailoring our message to the preferences of the world in which we live, but speaking to the world in ways which it understands and feels properly challenged by Jesus Christ.  Inculturation, the slogan of the present, means, not asking the cultures which we inhabit what they will allow us to say to them, but presenting our message in such a way that they can become more fully themselves by transcending themselves.