Dr. Suzanne Scorsone has a longstanding legacy in the Archdiocese of Toronto. She started on contract almost 35 years ago writing a report for Cardinal Carter as he prepared to participate in the 1980 Synod on the Family. After joining the Archdiocese full time in 1981, she served as Director of the Office of Catholic Family Life, Director of Communications and is currently the Director of Research. As a social anthropologist, her experience has allowed her to participate in the work for the Church by participating in various national and international commissions, boards, and ministries. Below she shares some insights from that journey.
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| Dr. Suzanne Scorsone |
1) What do you do on a typical day as the Director of Research?
Right now the bulk of my time is given to analyzing data from the Statistics Canada Census and the National Household Survey data coming out of the 2011 Census for the area of the Archdiocese and its parishes. These numbers can be exceedingly useful in pastoral planning, in knowing where the needs, the strengths and the challenges are.
2) What would you say is the most interesting fact or stat about our Archdiocese which most people wouldn’t know?
People may be surprised to hear that the City of Toronto is now the fourth largest in North America, and it will grow for at least for two or three decades. This is also perhaps the most multi-ethnic, multi-cultural, multi-linguistic diocese on the planet.
In 2011, there were 333,390 children aged 0-4 in the total population and 87,460 Roman Catholic children that age within the area of the Archdiocese. Numbers will no doubt increase as people come here from elsewhere in Canada and from abroad. That is a huge number of children to provide with catechesis, education, health care, and all else that they need.
3) What role do statistics numbers and other research play in pastoral planning at a diocesan level?
Future numbers of seniors will be far greater than today, while the numbers of middle-aged working adults (today’s children) will be substantially smaller, even with the addition of immigrants
What does this generational change mean for the Church, not over five years, but over 50 and more? These facts--and many others which can be gleaned from the Census--will be of help to those planning ministry and all kinds of service.
Much the same can be said about immigrants coming from around the globe. While in the middle of the last century most came from the UK, Europe, the US, Hong Kong and the Islands, and many still do, now the majority come from all over East Asia, South Asia and Latin America, with many coming also directly from Africa. This brings about a proportional shift in the languages and cultures of the people within and beyond the Church. Service within our communities will naturally proceed in this awareness.
4) In your role, you read a number of movie and television scripts for groups looking to film in our parishes. Tell us about some of the filming request you’ve received and how they are approved.
If a script shows the film is really a politically partisan tract, or if it involves horror and malice and demons who win, or if the good guys do or say things which make the film appear to condone unethical acts (such as extra-judicial killing in cold blood, or use of marginalized people for lethal experiments in a search for medical cures), or if it misrepresents the Church or Catholics, it doesn’t get filmed in one of our churches. I have seen scripts involving any of these things.
That’s not to say that a script has to be a kids’ cartoon. People may go through any number of thorny situations in a tale, and so long as the ultimate message names evil as evil, good as good, and comes down on the side of the angels, or at least of peaceful co-existence with mutual respect, it can work.
Every film, every TV show, has a moral and ethical subtext, whether its creators consciously intend it or not. That message may be positive; it may be negative. If it is ultimately positive and constructive, we as an archdiocese are glad to help enable it.
5) As a past participant in the Holy See’s delegation at the Commission on the Status of Women meetings at the United Nations in New York, you are familiar with the Church’s teachings on women. What are some of the roles women can occupy in the Church today?
Women have always had a hugely significant role in the Church. Lay women made much of the life of the Church happen in their families and in their communities. For centuries, nuns and sisters, within monasteries and then in the active life, provided enormous service. Education of girls and young women, and later also of boys, was largely in their hands. Women religious have cared for the sick and the elderly, founding and administering entire institutions for this. Now, they have done their job so well that, with the expansion of governmental support to education, health care and the social services over the past century, the work and the leadership is being given in large part by the lay women (and the lay men) the women religious once taught and cared for. It is still very much a Christian calling, but we don’t so readily notice the fact that it is often being done by committed Catholic women, because it is less explicit.
The roles of women in the Church and in all of society are also widening. Women serve in the law (the Catholic Tribunals and the secular courts), in scholarship (Faculties of Theology and the secular universities), and with governmental bodies (from Pontifical Congregations and Councils through Episcopal Conferences to local Dioceses and Parishes within the Church, and within all levels of secular Government and the civil service). This has vastly expanded, within just the past century and in recent decades. As Pope, now Saint, John Paul II said in his “Letter to Women”, while the work is still unfinished, “this journey must go on!” And so indeed, under the guidance of Pope Francis, it is doing, here and in the Church worldwide.
6) If you could spend the rest of your life researching any topic, what would you choose?
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| Dr. Scorsone and Archbishop Prendergast at the The Catholic Organization for Life and Family (COLF) annual seminar on biotechnology, Ottawa, March 2004. Photo: © Concacan Inc. All rights reserved. |
6) If you could spend the rest of your life researching any topic, what would you choose?
Ah! Many things, but they would all converge on the work of the Church among people of greatly diverse communities and cultures and historical contexts, now and over time. Understanding what is and what has been helps us in our work going forward.
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| From 2000-2004, Dr. Scorsone assisted with a project to excavate and relocate Elmbank Cemetery, which used to be within Pearson Airport. Here she is at the site of an excavated church building foundation in 2001. Photo courtesy of ARCAT. |
7) Your daughter, Caterina, is well-known for her role on the TV show Grey’s Anatomy. What is it like to be the parent of a TV star?
Every parent rejoices to see a son or daughter doing work they love, and have loved since they were young. Thorny human issues that need thinking through can be put before people in many ways; drama is one of them. As a parent I am so very glad to see her doing such meaningful work that gives her joy!
8) What is your favourite thing to do in your time off?
Well, of course, spending time with my husband and our now-adult kids and grandkids. After that, though, I have joined the great crowd of genealogy buffs. It very quickly morphs into social history, as you see real people living through the time periods you learned about in school. I call it “history with faces.”