The following text may have been generated by Optical Character Recognition, with varying degrees of accuracy. Reader beware!

Page 4, News, Tuesday, July 24, 1990 Editorial: ee TheTerrace Bay-Schreiber News is published every Tuesday by Laurentian Publishing Limited, Box 579, 13 Simcoe Plaza, Terrace Bay, Ont., POT-2W0 Tel.: 807-825-3747. Second class mailing permit 2264. Member of the Ontario Community Newspaper Assn. and the Canadian Community Newspaper Assn. Single copies 40 cents. Publisher.............. A 'Sandy' Harbinson (5 CNA Subscription rates: $16 per Office Managet............. Gayle Fournier ei ape hea) NewS ENON sisiais.u.i-5 Angie Saunders cy per year (out o mile <8 i ch f radius); $36 in U.S. Advertising Rep..............Halyna Worth 13} Reporter/Phtgr...........Monica Wenzlaff Should celibacy vow be changed? Newfoundland Archbishop Alphonsus Penney recently submitted his resignation to the Pope. Complaints of sexual abuse of boys by priests, and other members of Newfoundland's Roman Catholic Community were ignored by Penney. In a 700-page church commission report, it said that despite complaints and concerns by parents, priests, and parishioners, Penney did not do much to_stop the abuse, which even} continued while some priests were under investigation. | In the two and a half years since the inquiry examining the} sex scandal began, more that 20 priests, former priests, and other men have been charged with or convicted of sexually abusing boys. The number of priests charged or convicted with sexual assault is astounding. It seems you're always hearing of yet another priest that has been charged with violating young bes Z boys. What's causing all these extracurricular activities in the} priest's schedules? The Newfoundland Church Commission Report on sexual abuse by clergy questions the vow of celibacy that all Roman} Catholic priests must take. I know celibacy has been the way of the Roman Catholic church for hundreds of years and it probably won't change, but to me, the vow should obviously be altered. . When dozens of young boys are being submitted to abuse by priests- (some while under criminal investigation), something is obviously wrong. Maybe if the vow was changed, this sort of thing wouldn't happen. After all, priests are human too. The relatively small number of priests who have been charged are setting a shockingly bad example for the Roman Catholic clergy. I'm sure that these priests are only a few bad apples in an otherwise immaculate barrel, but most people will not forget when a worm is exposed. Angie Saunders Dear Editor, The Ontario Humane Society and its tens of thousands of members and supporters applaud the amendments passed in the Legislature on June 28 to the Landlord and Tenants Act. The amendments will protect, from eviction, responsible pet owners with well-behaved pets which have caused no harm and are not dangerous. Applications for injunctions based on "No-Pet" leases will be governed by the same criteria as applications for eviction. Courts will not be able to consider the presence of no-pet clauses. Sadly the amendments will not rectify the circumstances of those who have-already relinquished a pet due to the threat of eviction, or those already evicted because they refuse to give up their pet: Ss ee ee The amendments will affect all court hearings completed subse- quent to Royal Assent. Tenants who have' received eviction notices prior to Royal Assent will benefit from the amendments if" an appeal is launched after the Act receives Royal Assent. The proposal to judge each case on its own merits is:laud- able. There' are thousands of continued on page 6 Heaven goes by favour. If it went by merit, you would stay out and your dog would go in. Mark Twain Old Sam Clemens was right, you know. It's a lucky thing we humans wrote the Bible. It gave us a chance to make ourselves look good and to grab the captain's cabin on Spaceship Earth. Ever since we put ourselves in charge of the planet the way we've treated our fellow tenants has been something less than charitable. When white men first came to this continent, the skies » were blackened by migrating passenger pigeons each year. You can't find a single one now. We slaughtered the beaver and decimated the buffalo herds. We. obliterated the Plains Grizzly and reduced the once common eastern mountain lion to little more than a ghostly rumour. Mind you, we haven't always killed our colleagues outright. Sometimes we humiliation. Tigers pacing in cages, elephants balancing on balls. Bears in clown hats waltzing to Strauss. And all the while, the animals endured, with scarcely a cheep or a hiss or a bellow of protest. Oh, once in a while a Great White picks off a surfer, a tiger snags a Bengali villager or a Spanish toro outfoxes a matador and pins him to the plaza sand -- but tally those paltry victories against, say, the number of Big Macs sold each day. No contest. Ever since man began using his oversized brain to compensate for his undersized musculature, it's been a lop- sided battle, but folks...I think the tide may be shifting. Something tells me the Big Referee in the Sky is about to start marking his scorecard in favour of the, um, underdogs. Evidence? Purely circumstantial, so far. But read these three stories that appeared in the papers recently. of Troy Brewer, delivery boy for Domino's Pizza in Balch Springs, Texas. Troy's no greenhorn in the pizza delivery game. He's handled drunks, deadbeats and no- shows. But he draws the line ee Arthur Black at hold-up amphibians. Late one Tuesday night, two rough-looking customers comered Troy on a dark street. "Don't move," growled one as he drew his weapon from fee. eee ee ee eee a ee Are animals taking over the world? git bit." And there Troy was, nose to beak with a snapping turtle. "A big, huge, ugly one!" recalls Troy. "That sucker was gonna bite me!" The turtle-armed men escaped with about $50. Scary, but not as scary as the story out of Fort Richey, Florida, where an outlaw gang is terrorizing a quiet law- abiding community of peaceful retirees. A gang of Muscovy ducks. It's a big gang -- at least a hundred members. In the past month alone, six residents have been assaulted. One woman had her dress chewed. Another man fell over a fence and cut his hand trying to escape. "They are mean," says one Fort Richey victim. "They keep after you. They get ugly and want to bite people." My final animal horror story occurred right here in Canada - in Fairview, Alberta as a matter of fact, where Donald Zenert decided to climb a fence into a deer a Sa ee ea ee RY some white-tailed does. He apparently didn't notice the white-tailed buck. Next thing Zenert knew, he was parrying antler thrusts from the infuriated male. And it was no bluff. "He was getting in some pretty good shots with his horns," says Zenert. "I figured the only way to keep him from putting an antler through my heart was to grab them and hang on." So he did. For nearly two hours. He might still be there if the owner of the farm hadn't rescued him by shooting the buck. Big deal, you say. Three unconnected stories, you say. Well, maybe. But I've been having nightmares about that Hitchcock movie, The Birds recently. And there was that owl hooting in the shopping mall. All I can say is, if animals do take over the world, I trust the ants will put in a good word for me. They better, after all the nicnice T tank them on_