Out of sight, alternatives abound

By MICHAEL VALPY, The Globe and Mail
Tuesday, July 23, 2002

The elegant little 1847 church, whose twin towers were once a navigational aid for ship captains trying to find Toronto harbour, is tucked into an arbored nook behind the downtown Eaton Centre. Out of sight. Not visible.

The official WYD is three kilometres away at Exhibition Place, in the massive steel and concrete buildings of the National Trade Centre, the architectural style of which can be described as Soviet realism.

In the quiet gloom of Holy Trinity, Tobias Raschke of Berlin could be found among the tables of literature advocating challenges to papal power, Catholic choice on abortion, ordination of women priests and an end to priestly celibacy. On his table were contraceptives. Catholic teaching forbids contraceptives.

He handed out leaflets and contraceptives to WYD delegates on the weekend but not with much discernible result.

"I don't expect to convince thousands," he said. "But if I can make 200 young people think about these things . . . We want to make the church different. That's the future."

Mr. Raschke was born Sept. 29, 1978, less than three weeks before John Paul II was elected pope. "I'm the future," he says. "I will be going to the next World Youth Day [but] it will be another pope who will be there."

That, of course, is not certain, given John Paul's resilience.

But Mr. Raschke's point is rhetorical. "With a new pope things will maybe be different," he says.

He is youth spokesman for We Are Church, a European Catholic reform organization started in Austria in 1995 after the primate of the Austrian church, Cardinal Hans Hermann Groer, was alleged to have sexually assaulted seminarians.

Mr. Raschke, a political science student at Berlin's Free University, attends mass regularly. He is a member of the council of his student parish church.

A doctor's son whose parents have been ardent advocates of church reform, he joined We Are Church after hearing a German cardinal say the church was open to everybody.

Mr. Raschke says he asked the cardinal if that included We Are Church members and was told no.

He says at that time he was ready for new activism. "I'd already thrown stones at a McDonald's; the environmental thing was sort of behind me."

Mr. Raschke says he has found it useful to come to WYD in Toronto to network with other church reformers.

Like 23-year-old Milton Chan, another baby of John Paul's papacy and one of the moving forces behind the Canadian Catholic reform organization, Operation Guardian Angel.

Mr. Chan, a Ryerson University student, was removed by police from near the entrance to Exhibition Place on the weekend as he handed out contraceptives to WYD volunteers gathering at the site for a mass.

Anyway, 200,000 young Catholics are taking part in Toronto's World Youth Day, and three kilometres away from the event is the alternative in Holy Trinity Anglican Church:

Today, a woman priest from a small U.S. sect that broke away from the Catholic Church in the 19th century will celebrate eucharist. There will be discussions on sexual abuse, Catholic education and sexuality and the impact of Catholic teaching on the spread of AIDS.

Tomorrow, the subject will be women's reproductive rights.

On Friday, Jaggi Singh will give a presentation on "Globalization and Resistance."

Mr. Singh is not Catholic but no doubt he will link the Catholic Church to globalization and resistance.
mvalpy@globeandmail.ca