By Patrick Jamieson, Victoria

In February I wrote a summary report on The ICN Phoenix Project to accompany the tax receipts mailed out to our donor-supporters who provide the budget funds for the paper. In part it read:

“As you probably are aware, 80-90 percent of our working budget comes from donations from you as readers, subscribers and supporters, so we are grateful for your generous help.

Some interesting news is that the number of subscriptions is rising and our annual total of gifts has jumped twenty to thirty percent.

It is a good sign in terms of developing more progressive Catholic news outlets across the country in line with the Phoenix project we have been working on since 2017, when the Prairie Messenger packed it in.

While the most obvious target area is the prairie region especially Saskatchewan and Manitoba, there have been interesting developments throughout the country.

In Ontario for example, ‘The Community Counts Foundation’ has financially initiated a redevelopment of our ICN website. Many thanks for that. Out of Alberta have come many new subscribers and in Saskatchewan a consultation is planned for a convenient time; hopefully at St. Thomas More College in Saskatoon where a number of staff and faculty have taken an interest in this redevelopment.

What is clear is that each region has its own particular emphasis. The West Coast is distinct from the Maritimes. Ottawa and Toronto each have their own style in terms of progressive Catholicism. My cross-Canada research trip from 2018 made this clear. We now have regular correspondents in New Brunswick and Alberta as well as many centres including Vancouver and Regina.

We are preparing the Spring edition now so shall endeavour to write a fuller report on all of this in terms of ongoing developments.
As mentioned the last begging letter brought in a terrific response. As former Editor Marnie Butler says, “Money is energy” so we are energized by that help and want to thank you again for such a fortuitous turn. Best wishes and good reading!”

2.

Since that time, there have been a number of responses from regions across the country. Yesterday, for example, Ted Schmidt called from Toronto to keep in touch. Ted, a former editor of Catholic New Times, has always been strong on the need for a digital newsletter reporting on progressive Catholicism nationally and internationally. In 2018 I was able to meet with a crew of his colleagues at St. Basil’s College in Toronto. These included Basilian Father Bob Holmes, Redemptorist Paul Hansen, Dave Szollosy by phone, Len Desroches and John Quinn who developed the digital version of Catholic New Times after its cessation of a hard copy.

In line with this ongoing linking function, ICN is as much a networking tool for community development projects around this topic as a newspaper per se. I have been lucky enough to work in every region of the country, and certainly every region has its own emphasis and that needs to be respected and nurtured in an appropriate way.

My background in Community Development practice and social animation techniques is something I wish to bring to bear overall. At the consultation in Saskatoon, I would want to speak from the development perspective. ICN was born and bred on the West Coast and as such reflects attitudes and approaches peculiar to Vancouver Island.

3.

Without prejudice, I wish to claim that with the disappearance of the Prairie Messenger the whole landscape shifted radically. Since Vatican II (1962-65) other progressive newspaper have sprung up on a more or less independent basis. Doug Roche initiated the Western Catholic Reporter in Alberta just after the Council, Catholic New Times rose up in the ‘70s in Toronto with Mary Jo Leddy, Jack Costello and Janet Somerville as well as Ted Schmidt and many others including ‘Bishop Power’s Sister sister’ Margaret Powers, as my friend Gary Burrill used to remind me.

I was working for Bishop William Power in Antigonish at the time and Gary had gone to work with Sister Power to learn how to put a monthly paper together which became New Maritimes. New Maritimes was an exciting socialist alternative media which I was fortunate to be able to string for as its Cape Breton correspondent before coming here to initiate Island Catholic News in 1986, with my father and Bishop De Roo and Esther Jedynak of recent and blessed memory (see Lead story).

[Gary, by the way, became a United Church Minister like his father, serving in Musquodoboit, Nova Scotia where he developed a cooperative burial service. Later he was elected as an Member of the Legislative Assembly when the NDP swept into power for one term. He currently is the provincial leader in Nova Scotia and we endeavour to keep in touch.]

The point is that as long as the Prairie Messenger was intact, with its production going back to the early 20th Century, she provided the framework or protective umbrella. WCR and CNT and ICN were situated in a context that has now radically shifted. ICN as the runt of the litter could afford to be more out there in a way only the West Coast finds entirely amusing or fully entertains and encourages. It is hardly a firm model for other regions.

Vancouver Archdiocese (which many commentators suggested never bothered with Vatican II) and Victoria which pushed the boundaries the furthest, sat side by side as testament of the Left Coast’s extremes. Every other region has its own natural parameters as defined by its history and geography.

What is possible is a connecting network that facilitates the local development of whatever form of communication makes the most sense – completely digital or hard copy version or the on-line newsletters currently produced by The Oblates out of Ottawa or the Roman Catholic Women Priest movement out of Regina or Critical Theology, a national replacement for Gregory Baum’s Ecumenist.

When the announcement of the closure of the PM was made, somehow, strangely perhaps, it felt more like an vocational opportunity rather than a verdict. The Phoenix Project was the result and the returns and responses have been encouraging and in fact enabling, as a clarion call to further action which has the effect of encouraging and enabling what is needed and hoped for and believed in.

As the Good Book puts it: If you wish to have faith, act as though you do and you will have it.