When Terry Vanderpool moved from Texas to Alberta two years ago, the biggest adjustment wasn’t to the cold winters. It was to the cold shoulder given the Catholic Church in Canada.
Vanderpool made the move when his wife, Sinda, was appointed president and vice-chancellor of St. Mary’s University in Calgary.
“When it is cold,” Vanderpool told The Catholic Register, “you can put on more clothes. The biggest cultural difference we experienced was how people view the Catholic Church and being Catholic.
“Where we’re from, and in America in general, there is plenty of secularism and plenty of atheists. But there is an equally robust conversation about how wonderful and beautiful the Church is. There are people who not only love being Catholic but love talking about being Catholic.”
Vanderpool said that in Canada he experienced “a cloud, or a depression, around talking about the Catholic Church.”
He set about planning how he could help break the Canadian ice encrusting Catholic conversation, and thought the solution might be the creation of a Catholic think tank, of which there are none. An accompanying website could serve as a virtual hub for Canadian Catholics.
“If you only get a certain side of a story, then that’s the story that is believed,” he said. “The people who are most vulnerable to that negative message are people who aren’t in contact with vibrant Catholic communities here in Canada.
“There are so many people, so many kids out there that aren’t being given the option of the Catholic faith, not because there aren’t churches, but because their understanding of it is very negative just because that’s what they’ve been fed over and over and over again.”
Before he embarked on building something from scratch, Vanderpool was encouraged to seek out Peter Nation and Scott Heathe, founders in 2015 of Catholic Voices Canada (CVC). The two were about to shut down a project they had started that mimicked Catholic Voices UK.
In advance of Pope Benedict XVI’s contentious 2010 UK trip, Catholic journalist Austen Ivereigh and communications specialist Jack Valero saw the value in training Catholics to speak intelligently in front of the media about hot button issues.
Vanderpool spoke with Nation and Heathe and told them it wasn’t time to shut down but to rebrand.
Looking over its mission statement, Vanderpool felt there was plenty of overlap between the original mission and “what I believe the Holy Spirit is guiding me to work on here while I’m here in Canada.”
Vanderpool plans to completely re-work the old website. The vision is not to provide apologetics or debate, though Vanderpool sees the value in both, but to proclaim all that is good and attractive about the Catholic Church.
“There’s a place for justice and truth, in the sense of defending the Church, but primarily, if we don’t have a sense that it’s a wonderful thing, then it’s not going to change lives.”
Vanderpool has a particular heart for those who are isolated in their practice of the faith and hopes to provide online resources to break the sense of spiritual isolation.
“We will make these messages available to people who feel they’re alone trying to live a faithful Catholic life, whether because their parish is not great, or their work community does not support their faith,” he said.
He hopes to harness social media for the good of the project.
“We want to meet people where they are, whether that’s a channel on YouTube, Instagram or a blog on the website.”
Pope Francis has declared 2025 as a Year of Hope and encouraged all Catholics to participate in a Jubilee pilgrimage, if not to Rome then within their own country. Catholic Voices has chosen to frame its work in 2025 as the Pilgrims of Hope Initiative. Hope is the theological virtue Vanderpool senses is most absent for Canadian Catholics.
“The theological virtue of hope is an absolute confidence and trust that our Lord loves us, wants what’s best for us, is going to take care of us completely,” he said. “When we have that hope, we can reach out in faith and envision great things. When we have that hope, we have the courage to go out and accomplish those things.”
Vanderpool knows he has work to do — “I’ve got to do some fundraisers. This cannot happen without money” — but he is ready to do the work and there is a sense of urgency to his talk.
“I think it’s a serious situation. What’s happening in Quebec, it’s going to happen all over Canada. The momentum is all in the same direction. There are less priests, there are less people going to Mass. I want to communicate how important it is for people to know that they do make a difference, and what they do is going to determine the fate of the Church in Canada.”
