News

Friday October 8, 2004


Pro-Abortion Environmental Activist and Renegade Bishops Headline Catholic Program

Event at Ontario Pembroke diocese Grey Sisters convent

PEMBROKE, Ontario, October 7, 2004 (LifeSiteNews.com) – Tickets are on sale now for the October 16 offering of “The Cosmic Culture of the Canoe”, offered as one of many new age programs running at the Marguerite Centre in Pembroke Ontario this year.

The Centre, run by the Grey Sisters of the Immaculate Conception and housed in their Motherhouse, features the Executive Director of the pro-abortion Sierra Club of Canada Elizabeth May as well as renegade Catholic Bishops Thomas Gumbleton and Remi De Roo as part of its series entitled “Created and Sustained By Love: Earth as Home.”

Bishop De Roo is the hard-left churchman who retired from his post as bishop of Victoria in disgrace after leaving the diocese in deep financial trouble losing millions in ‘investments’ of diocesan funds into a friend’s Arabian horses. He will be speaking on “Biblical Characters and the Enneagram” during November, just after the completion of “Introduction to the very Enneagram. De Roo is heavily involved in promotion of the new age Enneagram, speaks on it regularly and includes prominent links to Enneagram resources on his website.

Despite its vast popularity in certain sectors, a recent Vatican document on the new age noted the enneagram is a form of Gnosticism, a formally declared heresy, which says Pope John Paul II is in “distinct, if not declared, conflict with all that is essentially Christian.”

Bishop Gumbleton, the auxiliary Bishop of Detroit known as perhaps the most ‘progressive’ bishop in the Catholic Church will be offering a talk on “Spirit in the World” on October 29-30. The conference organizers did not seem to mind Bishop Gumbleton’s advocacy for women priests or his statements on homosexuality, one of which claims homosexuals “make love more humanely, largely because they are better able empathetically to feel what their partner is feeling.”

Gumbleton has been prominently involved with the dissident church organization Call to Action, which began in the Detroit Diocese.

But to hear the Sierra Club’s abortion-supporting Elizabeth May speak on “The Role of Faith in the Environmental Movement”, thrill seekers will have to wait till April. May’s is a prominent signature on the document “Why Canadians Must Reject Harper: Canadian Women Speak Out.” The anti-Harper manifesto attempts to demonize Conservative Leader Stephen Harper by comparing him to U.S. President George Bush. “Harper, like Bush, would challenge a woman’s right to choose,” warns the document. “Harper has said he would allow the issue of access to legal abortions to be re-opened through an open vote in the House of Commons.”

The Sierra Club is known to be a strong proponent of population control measures as supposedly essential to protect the environment. It formally labels itself as “pro-choice”.

LifeSiteNews.com spoke with Pembroke Bishop Richard Smith about the objectionable speakers featured at the Centre within his diocese. Bishop Smith said he has an “arms length” relationship with the Marguerite Centre. “They are good enough to let me know what speakers that they are thinking of bringing in,” he said. The Bishop said he asks that the Centre ensure that “people who are giving a talk under the auspices of the Marguerite Centre” are “clearly not going to be in contradiction with the teaching of the Catholic Church.” He added, “They’ve certainly assured me on that.” The Bishop was unaware of May’s stand on abortion and seemingly not aware of the dissident history of the two bishops.

Paul Schwartzentruber was appointed Director of Marguerite Centre in 1997 by the Gray Sisters. Schwartzentruber told LifeSiteNews.com that May was not chosen for her position on abortion and that he was unaware of her position on the matter. However when asked if her position on abortion would make a difference he said, “It’s unlikely that it will make a difference. If you’re looking for me to say I’ll un-invite her, that’s not likely to happen. . . . I don’t think a person should be uninvited for one position like you are talking about.”

The Catholic Church, however, has other ideas. A recent document by the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) ‘Catholics in Political Life’, reiterated Catholic practice on the matter saying: “The Catholic community and Catholic institutions should not honor those who act in defiance of our fundamental moral principles. They should not be given awards, honors or platforms which would suggest support for their actions.” (https://www.usccb.org/bishops/catholicsinpoliticallife.htm )

Resources:

* The diocesan record on Bishop De Roo https://bcc.rcav.org/00-07-10/fp.htm

* Links to Enneagram resources on De Roo website https://www.remideroo.com/links.htm

* Vatican document on enneagram https://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/pontifical_councils/interelg/documents/rc_pc_i…

* Bishop Gumbleton’s advocacy of women priests
https://www.quixote.org/pfe/supporters.html

* Gumbleton on homosexuality
https://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=26848

* Call to Action reports on Gumbleton and homosexuality
https://www.cta-usa.org/news12-97/gumbleton.html

* Sierra Document “Why Canadians Must Reject Harper: Canadian Women Speak Out”
https://www.acpd.ca/acpd.cfm/en/section/Elect2004/articleID/241

* Sierra Club officially “pro-choice”
https://www.sierraclub.org/population/faq.asp

To express concerns to the Marguerite Centre and Bishop Smith:

jhw

| Send Letter to Editor

0 Comments

    Loading...