Post for August 18, 2009
I got together with an old friend today: Keith Donoghue, a buddy from high school and university who is now a financial planner. He’s invested some of his own money to investigate a tool called Bible-based money management seminars. It’s a USA-based program, so some of the financial terminology would need to be translated for Canadian users. It also is coming out of a Protestant background, so our meeting was more about going over the material to see how it can be used in a Catholic context. I’ll be going over the workbook, and Keith will in turn be looking at the Catholic concept of stewardship (which, from what I can see, has direct parallels in this program).
I’m proud of my friend Keith for wanting to take his talents and use then in the service of others in a way consistent with his beliefs. A number of people, including our current Pope, believe that our current economic problems stem from fundamental moral issues of honest and justice. I tend to agree, and so I’m glad to see a program that offers people a way to help live their economic life consistent with the gospel.
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Post for January 5, 2008
I’ve been working in partnership with Archbishop Terrence Prendergast (formerly of Halifax, now of Ottawa) and Msgr. Mario Paquette to get the US bishops document on stewardship translated into French. Today I met with Fr. Roger Martineau, recently retired as pastor of St. Luke’s parish (a bilingual parish where I was once assigned) to see if you could use his pastoral connections to form a translating team. He really took to the project, and I’m hoping he can find some parishioners excited by it. I’ll be visiting in a month to give a parish mission, and hopefully I can help boost those who are on board. Here’s to bringing the message of stewardship to all of Canada!
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Post for October 26, 2007
I had a chat with Monseignor Mario Paquette, the General Secretary of the Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops, this afternoon. I’ve known Msgr. Paquette for several years now, and we’ve always gotten along well. He has asked me to help form a team to translate the pastoral letter on stewardship of the US bishops into a Canadian context (including into French).
How did I get involved with this? A few years ago I participated in a conference in Toronto of the International Catholic Stewardship Council, and while there I met Archbishop Terrence Prendergast (then in Halifax, now in Ottawa). He has a strong personal interest in the topic, and so we exchanged ideas on how to help bring the stewardship perspective to the Canadian milieu. Some months later I got asked to be part of a diocesan committee that (in part) looks at the funding and budgets of our parishes, and I saw right away that the issue is not really funding and budgets, but discipleship and stewardship. In other words, it is a spiritual problem, not a business problem, and so when I started working here at the archdiocese I got in touch with Archbishop Prendergast to see if he had made any progress on bringing the US document to Canada.
It turned out the answer was no, but not for a lack of interest. I asked my own Archbishop, Cardinal Turcotte, if I could poke around on this topic, and he gave me the green light. The first step will be to get the document translated into French, and that will take time and resources. Msgr. Paquette said he’d send me a copy of the US document next week, so I can get started making a budget estimate. It seems like things might just be starting to move!
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