Living With Mary Today

The Marian Library/International Marian Research Institute plans to hold a four day symposium on Mary in July 2006.  For more information click into: http://www.udayton.edu/mary/symposiun06.html.

The director and editors of Mary Page under the auspices of the International Marian Research Institute do not necessarily endorse or agree with the events and ideas expressed in this feature. Our sole purpose is to report on items about Mary gleaned from a myriad of papers representing the secular press.

Vandalism on statue of the Virgin Mary by high school students unacceptable to church
[Source: The Guardian (Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island), October 29, 2005]

The Holy Redeemer parish is wondering what it must do to curb rampant student vandalism of its grounds, especially now that a statue of Mary at a shrine was toppled and broken.

"At noontime (Wednesday), some kids presumably from the high school or junior high school, knocked over the statue of Mary in the Marian Shrine area," said Father Eric Dunn, pastor of Holy Redeemer parish in Charlottetown.

The church is located directly across the street from Colonel Gray high school which in turn is close to Queen Charlotte junior high school.

The tumble of the concrete statue knocked the head off the Virgin Mary. Dunn said the local contractor who cast the statue has been contacted to see about a repair or replacement if required.

The shrine area cost close to $6,000 to create, money raised by the Knights of Columbus chapter at the church. Holy Redeemer is home to some 2,300 families, representing about 8,000 parish members.

"That is the tough part, there were so many people involved," said Dunn of the creation of the outside shrine area.

The shrine was dedicated on Aug. 14 this year.

"It was a sacred area and it was meant for people to come to an environmentally friendly area to pray, to meditate, to reflect or just to sit and do whatever they want to do," said Dunn.

"The police were notified," said Dunn. " They are going to increase surveillance and things like that."

He was eating lunch in the rectory kitchen at the time and was not aware of the vandalism despite the close proximity of the shrine to the rectory.

"We have had to have the police here on numerous occasions for various things," said Dunn.

The schools went smoke-free about two years ago and that is when vandalism on the church grounds really increased, said Dunn.

"They have zero tolerance for smoking and that means that the kids went off their property to smoke. I understand too that they have employed security people, especially at noon time and what's happening is, the kids are simply coming over here.

"They are smoking cigarettes, they are smoking dope," said Dunn. "We have about 2,000 students going through here morning, noon, and night; coming to school and then going at noontime over to the fast food outlets and back.

"We have a problem with garbage, we have a problem with smashing bottles on the pavement, pelting buildings with chestnuts, snowballs and so on, climbing up the roof of the church. How they do that, I don't know, but they do it.

"My maintenance person and myself discussed that with the principal and the vice principal only about two weeks ago and they would readily admit that what they have done has added to our problem," said Dunn regarding the no-smoking on school property.

Dunn said he sees that a popular activity in the parking lot of the church is to have a youth lie on the engine bonnet of a car, which is then accelerated forward a few feet before the brakes are slammed on to propel the youth forward off the car.

It is being done on purpose in the pursuit of thrills, said Dunn.

"Last year in one incident the ambulance had to be called," he said. "There was a slight concussion that the child had. There is going to be more of that. They are up to that trick this year and they are racing through the parking lot."

The church has tried to quietly deal with each issue as it arose over the past few years, said Dunn, but the destruction of the shrine this week has lowered the bar of their tolerance.

"This afternoon we are definitely looking at putting in video cameras," said Dunn. "You have to do something but it is a very costly thing to protect your grounds.

"Most of these kids are good kids, they really are, but like in any group of kids, ten per cent of them or so are going to be a problem," said Dunn.

"We have a problem with garbage, we have a problem with smashing bottles on the pavement, pelting buildings with chestnuts, snowballs and so on, climbing up the roof of the church." Father Eric Dunn

Don't Have a Cow, God!
[Source: Daily Star, November 25, 2005]

Here's bad boy Bart Simpson in a most unlikely role as baby Jesus.

He gets a halo in a Nativity scene for The Simpsons Christmas special, featuring parents Homer as Joseph and Marge as the Virgin Mary.

Sister Lisa sprouts wings as the Angel Gabriel, and the Three Wise Men are Principal Skinner, Dr Hibbert and Professor Frink.

Show boss Al Jean said: "We always do Hallowe'en and Christmas specials so this year we thought it would be fun to do a Nativity.

"The Simpsons are about as different as you can get from Our Lord's family, so we've had a lot of fun with it."

The special episode will be shown on Sky One at 6pm on Christmas Day.

Last year Marge took on the Queen with her alternative Christmas speech.

Comic Book on late Pope is bestseller
[Source: The Times (London), November 19, 2005]

In life John Paul II was a global superstar who produced several bestsellers, including memoirs, plays and poetry. Yesterday he proved that he had star appeal even in death as a comic book that tells his life story sold out as soon as it appeared in the bookshops.

Depicting the Pope as a superhero, the book is aimed mainly at the young. But bookshops on Via della Conciliazione, the boulevard leading up to St Peter's Basilica, reported that as many adults as children were buying it.

The 95-page book is published jointly by Libreria Editrice Vaticana, the Vatican publishers, and Piemme, an Italian publishing house. It is drawn in a style that crosses Tintin with Disney, complete with "Ka-Boom" and "Crash" at one point as the departing Nazis blow up a church in Poland while retreating at the end of the Second World War.

The Life of John Paul II in Cartoons tells the story of Karol Wojtyla's childhood in Poland, his life as a worker and secret seminarian under Nazism and as a bishop and cardinal under communism, his election as Pope, the attempt on his life in 1981 and his global travels, including his trip to Jerusalem in 2000. It ends with the image of the pages of the Gospels fluttering in the breeze on his coffin at the funeral in April in St Peter's Square as the huge crowd called for his instant sainthood. Significantly the preface is by Cardinal Jose Saraiva Martins, the head of the Congregation for the Causes of Saints, who is in charge of the "fast track" procedure for beatifying and canonizing the late Pope.

The opening pages depict the moment in 1978 when the first non-Italian Pope in four centuries prayed to the Virgin Mary for the strength and courage to take up the papacy before being presented to the crowds from the balcony of St Peter's Basilica. "Holy Father, do you remember everything you have to do?" a cleric asks as he makes his way to the balcony. "I remember everything," the new Pope replies.

There follows an extended flashback to his early life, the death of his mother when he was 9 and the subsequent deaths of his brother and father. The young Karol, nicknamed Lolek, is shown playing football with Polish school-friends some wearing Jewish skullcaps -and later acting in a love scene in the theatre. He stops short of developing a relationship with his attractive co-star, instead discovering his vocation and studying in secret for the priesthood while working in a quarry and a factory as forced labor.

The book covers his subsequent rise in the Church and his consternation at being unexpectedly named Pope at a conclave where, by his own admission, he was mostly preoccupied with his gaffe in not wearing regulation scarlet socks--the text is largely taken from his writings. It ends with John Paul being received into the arms of the Virgin Mary after death and the inspiring messages he left behind.

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