tinyurl.com/lhhe63e
Dear OECTA Members
Thank you for your decision to march in Toronto’s WorldPride parade on June 29:
“Registering for, and marching in, the World Pride Parade is a visible symbol of solidarity with one of the most marginalized groups in the Catholic community”
However, it appears that honest to God Catholics in Ontario are feeling “shock and anger” that
the Ontario English Catholic Teachers Association (OECTA) has announced they will march in the WorldPride Parade in Toronto this year after a motion was passed at OECTA’s recent annual general meeting.
Terry McDermott, who parrots LifeSiteNews, says
This move is a blatant assault on the Catholic Church from the very people who are supposed to be teaching our children about the Faith. In truth, no one should be surprised at this development because our Catholic schools are not really Catholic at all.
McDermott believes
This latest development continues the meteoric destruction of publicly-funded Catholic schools in Ontario.
If that is the case, thank you again. The significant phrase in McDermot’s statement is “publicly-funded Catholic schools in Ontario” and the Ontario taxpaying public who are not Catholic would applaud the “destruction of publicly-funded Catholic schools in Ontario.” It would save the Ontario Government a lot of trouble and money, money that could be better spent on essential services. Right now publicly-funded Catholic schools in Ontario allow “faithful Catholics” to feel privileged and allow them to continue to cite their Catholic Faith as justification for their bigotry and intolerance.
Both McDermott from CatholicInsight and Patrick Craine from LifeSiteNews encourage all members of the Catholic family to
Make [their] voice[s] heard. Write to OECTA, the bishops, and Cardinal Collins. Ask your parish priest to speak out against this latest assault on God’s natural laws.
Why would people think they have the right to do that? Thomas Collins was made a Cardinal by the leader of a foreign city-state. It is neither rational nor seemly that he should have a say in the running of publicly funded schools. If Collins, Ontario bishops, and parish priests want schools that obey “God’s natural laws,” they should build them, staff them and pay for them themselves.
Keep up the good work OECTA!
Good job Veronica. OCTA tries to be progressive in regards to social issues-but any organization that commences its formal meetings with the Catholic Lords Prayer is suspect.
It should also be noted that OECTA is s strong advocate for the Catholic separate school system and will ‘sell out’ other non-Catholic unions whenever public funding of catholic school s is threatened. For example: signing a Memorandum of Understanding with the Liberal Government which resulted in the loss of bargaining and democratic rights for ETFO, OSSTF and CUPE.
OECTA should never be trusted.
This latest development continues the meteoric destruction of publicly-funded Catholic schools in Ontario.
I won’t be surprised if it has the opposite effect. The more Catholic schools moderate their views on theologically peripheral but socially fraught issues like homosexuality, the less pressure they’ll come under from progressive groups and the media. The logical endpoint is a Catholic school system that has made all sorts of doctrinal compromises but continues to espouse the basic tenets of Catholicism, while continuing to take public money and be wastefully redundant with the mainstream school system. Perhaps that wouldn’t be so bad, in some ways, but I think those of us who object to the whole concept of “publicly-funded Catholic schools in Ontario” might do better to stick to that fundamental point.