News

Image

OTTAWA, January 22, 2014 (LifeSiteNews.com) – An Ottawa parent is outraged after discovering a Catholic high school allowing its students to pledge support to an organization that champions women’s rights by promoting abortion and contraception. 

Image

Teens of Notre Dame High School attended their first Girls Night Out event in October where money was collected for Plan Canada’s “Because I am a Girl” campaign. Earlier in the week students were signing a pledge of support for the group promoted by the school’s chaplaincy department. 

Plan Canada equates sexual health for girls with easy access to abortion and contraception. “[It’s about] having control over your own body when it comes to having sex and having children,” the group states on its website for teens. 

“Girls and women have been in a looonnggggg (sic)  fight to have control over their own bodies, especially when it comes to getting pregnant and having babies. The fight isn’t over yet…”

James Doak, a concerned parent and rate payer in the Ottawa Catholic School Board (OCSB), told LifeSiteNews.com that pro-abortion-and-contraception organizations should not be in Catholic schools. 

“It either shows that school administrators don’t care that Catholic kids are being indoctrinated into these organizations right in their own schools or that they actively want kids to support these disturbing organizations,” he said. 

Doak said that a dedicated group of parents have been trying for years to get the OCSB to cease partnering with groups that oppose Church teaching on life issues, but anti-life-and-family organizations continually show up in the schools. 

Last summer the OCSB amended its “Partnership, Sponsorship, and Donations” policy at parents’ insistent request on account of numerous board-partner scandals taking place in local schools. The amended policy states that “Catholic Social and Moral Teaching” will “direct partnerships and sponsorships”.

“Clearly their partnership policy from last summer is not working,” Doak said. 

He added that the OCSB is not living up to its motto “By Our Works We Show Our Faith”. 

“They may say that they are Catholic, but their works of introducing youth to these organizations betray them.”

In December Notre Dame students sold raffle tickets to raise money for Oxfam, an organization that provides livestock to families in developing countries but supports abortion and contraception. 

Doak and many other Catholic parents argue that bringing in groups with a message contrary to Church teaching will form a whole new generation of dissident Catholics who will hold a wrong interpretation of Catholic moral teaching. 

Ottawa’s Archbishop Terrence Prendergast warned Catholic schools at a benefit dinner in October that if they are not “fully Catholic” they risk descending into “demonic worldliness.”

Notre Dame High School and the OCSB did not respond to LifeSiteNews.com’s request for comment. 

Contact info:

Notre Dame High School
Bonnie Campbell, Principal
710 Broadview Avenue
Ottawa, Ontario  K2A 2M2
Phone:  613-722-6565
Email: [email protected]

Julian Hanlon, Director of Education
613-224-4455 ext 2272
[email protected]

Contact info for trustees can be found here.