Here at the CCPC, you'll connect with people who take progressive thinking seriously - seriously enough to challenge the church to a complete overhaul of the beliefs it has been carrying about for the last several hundred years. It's not that we're trying to do something new. It's that we're trying to catch up on a thousand years of backlogged progress files that have yet to be inputted into the 21st century.
Thinking ourselves forward to a sustainable future for all life on the planet requires that we allow our beliefs - all our beliefs - to be examined in the light of critical contemporary scholarship and understanding and, if they are found to be destructive, divisive, or simply unhelpful, to work toward opening ourselves to new ideas and the possibility of new beliefs. As far as we're concerned, it's the only way forward.
So come on in, take a look around, read what others are thinking and, if you want to participate in our blogs and forums, just register through our webmaster and become part of this important piece of work. What you will find here is a safe place to explore your questions with others who, like you, are willing to brave the unknown - a place where every idea, concept, ritual, and belief can be examined, where that which keeps us from living life freely and fully can be set aside, and where that which is worthy of our highest ideals can be upheld and celebrated.
Welcome to the journey, friend. Welcome.
Bleak Portrait of Haiti Orphanages Raises Fears
Feb 6, 2010 - The New York Times
PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti — The floors were concrete and the windows were broken.
There was no electricity or running water. Lunch looked like watery
grits. Beds were fashioned from sheets of cardboard. And the only
toilet did not work.
But the Foyer of Patience here is like
hundreds of places that pass as orphanages for thousands of children in
the poorest country in the hemisphere. Many are barely habitable, much
less licensed. They have no means to provide real schooling or basic
medical care, so children spend their days engaged in mindless
activities, and many die from treatable illnesses.
Haiti’s child welfare system was broken before the earthquake
struck. But as the quake shattered homes and drove hundreds of
thousands of people into the streets, the number of children needing
care grew exponentially.
Chronic problems — like inadequate
services, overwhelming poverty and shady orphanages — have only
intensified, while the authorities fear that some of the less
scrupulous orphanages are taking advantage of the chaos to round up
children in crisis and offer them for sale as servants and sex slaves.
OTTAWA, Februrary 1, 2010, PublicValues.caby Ish Theilheimer
Public appointments process is used to pursue ultra-conservative political agenda.
Rights and Democracy, the agency that promotes democracy
internationally and in Canada, is the latest victim of the Harper
government's drive to stamp extreme conservative views on everything it
can, says its founding president.
Ed Broadbent, founding president of the Montreal-based organization
formally known as the International Centre for Human Rights and
Democratic Development, calls recent developments there an
"extraordinarily serious scandal."
Troubles there became public in early January. Rights and Democracy's
president, Rémy Beauregard, died of a heart attack immediately after a
turbulent board meeting in which he and the Centre's staff were
viciously attacked by recent political appointees over grants to
organizations working on social justice issues in the Middle East.
Harper's recent appointees charged the grants were going to
anti-Israeli organizations with terrorist connections, despite
extensive vetting with Canadian and international authorities.
Whereas Canada/Ontario was found in violation
of its international human rights obligations by the United Nations Human
Rights Committee in 1999 and again in 2005 by virtue of discrimination in the
funding of Roman Catholic schools in Ontario;...
The
CCPC Board of Directors, at their meeting on Jan28th unanimously agreed that
there should be NO PUBLIC funding of PRIVATE SCHOOLS.
As
Gretta Vosper states on her Facebook page:
This
petition puts the issue of publicly funded faith-based schools on the agenda
for the provincial New Democratic Party and makes it part of their party
platform. That will keep it on the agenda of the provincial government as it
challenges other parties to also help drag the constitutional privilege given
the Roman Catholic School system before the courts. Please consider signing it.
Pope Benedict Targets UK Equality Bill
Feb 2, 2010 - BBC News
The Pope has urged Catholic bishops in England and Wales to fight the UK's Equality Bill with "missionary zeal".
Pope
Benedict XVI said the legislation "violates natural law". Supporters of
the law see this as a wish to keep a ban on gay people in Church
positions.
Gay rights campaigners condemned his comments,
saying equality had to apply to everyone, and Labour MEP Stephen Hughes
said he was appalled.
The Pope will this year make the first papal visit to the UK since 1982.
Jonathan Finney, from gay rights charity Stonewall, told BBC Radio 5
live: "People should not be denied access to services and employment
purely because they are gay.
"We've got to guard against
sweeping exemptions seeming to protect one person's freedom, which
actually really impact on other people's."
There was no electricity or running water. Lunch looked like watery
grits. Beds were fashioned from sheets of cardboard. And the only
toilet did not work.
Rights and Democracy, the agency that promotes democracy
internationally and in Canada, is the latest victim of the Harper
government's drive to stamp extreme conservative views on everything it
can, says its founding president. 
Pope
Benedict XVI said the legislation "violates natural law". Supporters of
the law see this as a wish to keep a ban on gay people in Church
positions.