Category: BC Catholic

If I use the term Raspberry Pi, many of you will think I’m making a spelling error, or possibly an attempt at being clever with the famous mathematical constant.

In this case it is neither. Raspberry Pi is the brand name of a class of ultra small computers, initially aimed at hobbyists but which have gained so much traction over the past decade that they are now being produced at around a million units a month.

Raspberry Pi units vary in size from credit card dimensions up to about the size of a small paperback book. They are also relatively inexpensive, from a few tens of dollars up to about a hundred dollars.

First introduced in February 2012 by the Raspberry Pi Foundation in the U.K., the small single-board computers were intended to introduce students to computer science. Their use quickly branched beyond education into fields such as robotics, weather monitoring, and earthquake detection. Within three years the Raspberry Pi was outselling the original U.K. domestic market record holder, the ZX Spectrum.

Just a dozen years after that initial launch, some 60 million Raspberry Pi units had been sold. Some of the heaviest demand came during the pandemic years, not just from work-at-home types having more time for hobbies, but also for industrial uses such as ventilators in hospitals.

In their initial decade the little computers became ubiquitous. Industrial demands, coupled with supply chain issues and chip production problems meant fewer of the small computers were available for hobbyist users. The net result is that reseller prices skyrocketed. Official sellers maintained their price points but had no stock for a couple of years.

Reseller operations such as Facebook Marketplace showed sellers setting Pi unit prices at double or in some cases at quadruple the nominal official prices. However, by May 2023 came the first word that the Pi Foundation expected to ramp up production by summer. Indeed, by July last year new Pi units were appearing at local outlets. Those who didn’t get their outlandish asking prices by then had to begin slashing, and by September the market was basically back to normal, although not necessarily with all models in the Pi lineup.

I’ve been a user of Raspberry Pi hardware for a number of years. Presently there are half a dozen Pi units (mostly model 3B+ and 4) running various radio-related applications at my house: two for weather satellite signals decoding and processing, one for aircraft tracking, one for marine vessel tracking, and two for a big-screen application displaying current space weather and radio signal propagation conditions.

Recently I decided to test the educational waters with a Raspberry Pi and a six-year-old grandson.

Re MAiD in Canada Crisis, B.C. Catholic, June 10:

As a serious pro-life person, I am grateful that we have the Christian Heritage Party – CHP Canada and Christian Heritage Party of BC. As a Catholic, I have enough problems with my taxes being used to kill people as part of health care, so donating to a political party that supports killing as health care and a right is too much for my conscience.

We need to pray and act to get Christian values back in our government.

Nancy Peirce
Surrey

As long as the cost of euthanasia is a fraction of that for treatment or palliative care, there is danger, and the vulnerable and seniors must be on their guard. 

How can one fully trust a system that considers homicide to be a medical treatment?

Gerry Hunter
Burnaby

It was timely to see an update on the situation with St. Paul’s Hospital and MAID access. Apparently, St. Paul’s is waiting for an update from Vancouver Coastal Health as to access and connection, as well as from the Ministry of Health on the land acquired to build a euthanasia facility. 

The waiting and questioning of these government bodies would not be relevant if our Catholic moral stand had been taken seriously from the onset. We do not accommodate or accompany MAID. Providence would not be in a position of “attempting to make the best of a bad situation or facing “a conundrum.” Mary Wagner has been well quoted twice now in The B.C. Catholic as to maintaining the Catholic position.

What is the purpose of clearly stating this position many times in The B.C. Catholic but not carrying through to refuse MAID entry or connecting.

Cecilia von Dehn
Vancouver

Bravo to the Roy family for writing these books. Why are they not available at the Catholic bookstore or in the little shop in the cathedral?

Many people like me do not order online. We would like to see the book first before we purchase it. I am sure it would make a great gift, especially for grandparents to give to their children and grandchildren. 

Marianne Werner
Vancouver

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Serra International is an organization created by Catholic laity whose objective is to foster and promote vocations to the priesthood and all religious vocations in the Catholic Church, as well as encouraging the laity to fulfill their Christian vocation to service. Serra is named after St. Junipero Serra, a Spanish Franciscan missionary who played a leading role in early missionary work in Mexico and the United States. Below, local Serrans share their experiences.

“I joined Serra over 20 years ago, wishing to be a part of those eager to promote vocations. The outcome is the opportunity to know seminarians in their place at the abbey, the several times we can convene at Holy Rosary Cathedral to support our faith, and in our activities to be together for the greater glory of God.” — Mike

“I joined Serra shortly after I was baptized and confirmed in the Church. The organization was instrumental in helping me to build my faith over the last 20+ years. The fellowship and purpose of Serra kept me engaged with the Church.” — Ben

“Just as a number of Catholic mothers pray, I too prayed that my son would have a vocation to the priesthood. When I realized the priesthood was not his vocation, I joined Serra so that I would have Spiritual Sons who would become priests – thereby making me a Spiritual Mother of priests.” — Ethelyn

“After many years of struggling with my two sons, they decided not to pursue the priesthood and my heart was broken. I lost all my desires in my life until I joined Serra Club where I encountered seminarians. Therefore, I am not only a mother of two sons but also a mother of all the seminarians, to whom I share my heart, and pray for their vocations.” — Cathy

My passion now is to promote vocations, particularly to the priesthood, so when my time comes I may have a priest to celebrate my funeral Mass.

What I have been doing with the Serrans: Since 1981, I’ve been instrumental in starting the club in the Fraser Valley West, started the Serrans in Kelowna, established a Kamloops chapter, organized Stations of the Cross in the Fraser Valley West every Friday of Lent for the FVW deanery (Surrey), and got the traveling Chalice for Vocations that goes to homes promoting vocations to the priesthood, diaconate, and consecrated religious life.

As a result of the above experiences, I am at St. Ann’s Abbotsford re-establishing a parish vocations committee/ministry.  — Leo

“I know that the celebration of the Eucharist can only be done through a priest, and as the Holy Eucharist leads us to eternal salvation, praying for priests is a priority.

“Let me see your hands,” I said to my three-year-old son after he had finished a large piece of orange chiffon birthday cake.

I took his chubby little fingers in my hands and with a warm cloth wiped away the sticky mess between each finger. When I was close to completing my task, he impatiently squirmed and before I was satisfied that all the icing had been wiped away he was on the escape and rushing to play ball with his older cousins and younger brothers. It was just a fleeting moment in time, but a moment that I cherished and held onto. I knew how quickly time would fly by and just as he had escaped my motherly gestures in that moment he would soon be escaping into the world to find his own way in school, in work, in life.

“Hold your hands tighter on the bat,” the baseball coach yelled to my now 12-year-old son. Sitting beside my husband in the small stands, we, along with all the other parents, called out encouragement to our young, energetic ball players. I watched my almost-teenage boy grip the bat as he swung and connected with the ball that had been pitched to him. The stands erupted into cheers as he slid safely into first base. Just like baseball’s first base, he would soon be sliding into high school.

“Wake up, they’re not home yet,” I would sometimes say to my husband, nudging him awake. During the busy years of four teenagers, we had a hard and fast rule in our home; it didn’t matter what time of the night each of the kids came home, but they had to come into our bedroom and let us know they were okay. My husband is a deep sleeper, and my side of the bed was closest to the door, so the kids would always come and talk to me, sometimes just to say they were home before slipping down to their bedroom and other times sitting on the side of the bed talking for hours about things happening in their lives. On one of these nights, our now 19-year-old son stared down at his trembling hands and shared with me his desire to enter into the seminary and, if God willing, become a priest.

This had not been on my radar at all. Our son was in his first year of business administration at university, and I knew he had been thinking of applying to larger universities in Vancouver. This meant he would soon be moving away. But this news sucked all the breath out of my lungs. I never thought about any of our children going into religious life, it had never really been a topic of conversation in our home.

“Faith is God’s gift, received in baptism, and not our own work, yet parents are the means that God uses for it to grow and develop,” writes Pope Francis in his book Amoris Laetitia (The Joy of Love). To get a sense of the vocational journey that parents witness in their child’s formation of faith, we spoke with the parents of priests in the Archdiocese of Vancouver. 

Mr. Tong Lê and Mrs. Mai Nguyễn (Le) are the parents of recently ordained Father Patrick Le, who is now an assistant pastor at St. Matthew’s Parish in Surrey. They are also long-time parishioners of St. Patrick’s Parish in Maple Ridge, their home church. Both Mr. and Mrs. Le credit St. Patrick’s Parish and Father Richard Au for playing a crucial role in their son’s discerning to join the seminary and become a priest.

Can you describe Father Patrick at a young age? 

Mr: Le: Before the seminary, he was really picky. He wanted to do things his way. Even from the way he’s eating, he asked his Mom to cook a different meal every day.

Mrs. Le: I’m a hairstylist and when Patrick was 4, I would bring him to work. He always brought his notebook and a pen. One day I asked him, “What are you writing in the book?” And he said, “I’m writing the Bible.” He showed me the book and there were drawings of different shapes, a square or a dot, things like that, then a heart and a cross. I asked him, “What is this for?” He said, “It’s a heart for the mother. Mother Maria. And the cross is Jesus.” In my mind, I thought that this boy is going to become a priest. But I kept it to myself. I just kept praying.

How did you react to him going to the seminary? 

Mrs. Le: It was a big reaction. He was in Grade 6 and we said, “No, no.” We thought he was too young to think that way.

Mr. Le: Then one of my wife’s customers, a former seminarian, came to us for a haircut. He just asked one question: “If your child wants to play soccer, would you tell him to wait until he’s 25 years old to start playing? Or would you let him play right now?” Only a simple question like that caught our hearts. I said, “Okay, we should let him go.”

What have you learned as parents witnessing him become the person he is today? 

Mr. Le: Do simple things. Pray. A little bit of reading the Bible at night.