Ideas

  • The Mission Continues

    Convivium publisher, Ray Pennings, writes the last Convivium column as a tribute to this unique platform, expressing the gratitude we feel for all of you who have breathed life into it for over a decade.

    Whenever we need to make statements of conclusion, we’re tempted to say, “mission accomplished.” We’ve done what we have set out to do, so the job is finished.

    As publisher of Convivium, I need to let you know that this will be the last ...

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  • Stockland Moving On… But Not Out

    Convivium's co-founder says goodbye to become publisher of the Catholic Register but Ray Pennings, Cardus Executive Vice-President, welcomes Peter Stockland home as a Senior Fellow.  

    It is said of Cardus that once you’ve worked here for a certain length of time, you never actually leave; you’re just not there at the moment.

    So it is that while, officially and formally, I’ll be stepping down as editor of Convivium.ca effective Dec...

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  • Chief Concern With Conversion Therapy Law

    Drawing on history and imagination, André Schutten “interviews” former Conservative Prime Minister John Diefenbaker about Conservative Party failure to properly oppose the new legislation.  

    On December 1st, I watched in stunned disbelief as the Conservative Party of Canada proposed, and then unanimously supported, a motion to expedite the Liberal’s Bill C-4, an act to amend the criminal code in order to ban conversion therapy. In less than 30 ...

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  • True Progress Moves Us To God

    As Advent foreshadows the Christmas narrative, Peter Copeland and Father Deacon Andrew Bennett write that our end is not in restless secularism but the peace of union with the Father.

    Returning to where we began, to find out what ends we seek, what is the story we claim to be a part of?

    The secular progressive story is one that is inherently ill-defined. The end, the telos, are goalposts that are constantly changing. Its gaze is s...

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  • The Secular Servants of Abstraction

    As Advent leads us to Christmas, Peter Copeland and Fr. Deacon Andrew Bennett map Christian clarity of the common good against secular confusions of equity and equality. Part two of three.

    When it comes to the social and political spheres, the dominant secular vision of the social good is a utilitarian or egalitarian one. In the case of the former, the collective good is an aggregate of individual pains and pleasures. We ask – what does the g...

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  • The Christian’s Progress

    As Advent moves us toward the promise of Christmas, Peter Copeland and Fr. Deacon Andrew Bennett chart the Christian progressive vision against its static secular form. Part one of three.

    In our heart of hearts, we know that we are not all that we can be, personally, or collectively. We cry out for more, not knowing where to go, or how to get there, but led forward by this flame that burns within.

    Christians have long thought that tho...

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  • Follow the Political Science

    In the second of two parts, Travis Smith argues that our responses to the pandemic reveal a Canada progressively squeezing out its commitment to liberty.

    Part One: The COVID Golden Calf

    “The passion to be reckoned upon is fear.” 

    – Thomas Hobbes, Leviat...

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  • Laugh or Cry After COP26

    Peter Stockland notes theopoetics of Christian leaders and 277 Canadian delegates at the recent Glasgow climate conference equal bupkas unless we tackle climate change profitably.

    Prior to the so-called COP26 conference, Pope Francis, the Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby, and the spiritual leader of Orthodox Christians, Bartholemew I of Constantinople, urged the world to “listen to the cry of the earth” regarding climate change...

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  • Is Canada Worth Our Sacrifice?

    On the day Canadians remember those who died fighting for freedom’s sake, Rob Joustra challenges us to name what we would give up, here and now, for our country.

    What would you give up for Canada? Not for your home, your kids, your community, your mosque, or your job: for Canada. What would you give? What's it worth to you?

    Issue polling gets a famously bad name, in part because it's hard to accurately measur...

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  • The Stampede to Crush Privacy

    Sandra B. Julian warns a basic human right is being trampled in the COVID-fed panic to digitize and QR code where we can go and what we can do based on whether we’ve had the jab.

    As a bonus feature, we’re linking Sandra Julian’s article to a Long Way Podcast discussion on vaccine passport policy.

    ...

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  • The Tyranny of Pragmatism

    Ominous State expansion under cover of the COVID crisis isn’t a sign of future despots at work but the consequence of a culture in which outcome trumps process, Robert Joustra argues.

    The overreach of government is a common refrain among conservatives this pandemic, and not without cause. As those such as Father Raymond de Souza, Ed Bosveld, and others have argued, the State has not merely expanded to the occasion of the crisis, nor only...

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  • The Politics of Red Team! Blue Team!

    Don Hutchinson notes that when sports and politics overlap we become "fan-atics" cheering for our favourite sweaters and socks. 

    Once upon a time in Canada, we knew where we’d be on Sunday mornings and what would hold our attention on Saturday nights. For some, Sunday faith and Saturday fandom were effortlessly exchangeable.

    For today’s Canadian fans of team sports, it’s the b...

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  • Have We Become Not-Canada?

    Travis Smith warns time is running out to free our home and native land from its pandemic-induced contagion of distrust, resentment, and contempt for our neighbours. 

     “But now old friends are acting strange / They shake their heads, they say I’ve changed” 

    – Joni Mitchell, “Both Sides Now”

    We have been learning a lot about each other, ha...

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  • The Path Back to Trust

    The good results notoriously sceptical French are getting by taking a leap of faith in the fight against COVID shows the necessity of trust within democratic life, Peter Stockland writes.

    A photo in Monday’s public prints brought the good news of people dancing in La Grande Motte, France as evidence la République appears on its way out of its COVID crisis.

    Alas, the photo was taken last July, which seems a lifetime in pandemic days, o...

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  • Denying the Reality of Independent Schools

    Policy confusion inflicted on alternative schooling during COVID shows why Ontario needs urgent discussion of an education system that reflects the province’s diversity, Joanna DeJong VanHof argues.

    Recent controversy over the provincial government’s provision of rapid tests to independen...

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  • Separating Sheep From Scapegoats

    Peter Stockland reports on writer Charles Eisenstein’s work to identify a force even more dangerous than contagious public stupidity.

    American writer Lance Morrow recently identified our current moment as the golden age of stupidity.

    No evidence exists that the author of America: A Rediscovery and Second Drafts of History was peeping across the border watching the...

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  • Pushing Back Against Vaccine Bullying

    In the second of two parts, Tara Vreugdenhil writes that regardless of pure intentions, many methods used in the pandemic response are classic harassment tactics.

    This is part two of a two-part series from Tara Vreugdenhil. Click here to read part one: "A COVID Shot in the Dark" 

    The point is made frequently that hospita...

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  • A COVID Shot in the Dark

    In this first of two parts, Tara Vreugdenhil argues the pandemic response has unleashed a contagion of fuzzy language, shifting definitions, and logic that doesn’t follow.

    This is part one of a two-part series from Tara Vreugdenhil. ...

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  • COVID Lessons for the Education System

    The flexibility and responsiveness of Ontario’s independent schools during the pandemic prove the advantage of humanized education in small, family-centric schools, David Hunt writes.

    As Ontario’s public schools struggle to accommodate students in a new school year amid what could be a fourth wave of COVID-19, what can the Ontario government learn from the last 17 months?

    For starters, the government needs to accept that huge, ind...

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  • When Pro Choice Meets No Choice

    The abortion question Canada’s federal leaders should address is why so many women feel they have no viable alternative, Jonathon Van Maren argues.

    The 2021 Canadian election has begun, and that means that Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is talking about abortion. This isn’t primarily a tactic to rake in new votes; Trudeau’s team knows that solidly pro-abortion voters are already voting Liberal, and the ...

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  • Knowing the Limits of Science

    Those who invoke the political nostrum “follow the science” need reminding it is an activity that’s never free of value judgement, Peter Copeland writes.  

    Over the past year or so, there has been continuous reference to complex social decisions as scientific, as though value judgments do not apply, or play only a limited role.

    Some of the most prominent examples include the designation of types of work...

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  • Pearls of Wisdom on (Disabled) Daily Life

    Reviewer Taylor Hyatt finds Larry McCloskey’s latest book the kind of irritating that opens readers to touchstone stories able to articulate the almost inexpressible.

    The latest work by Ottawa author Larry McCloskey, Inarticulate Speech of the Heart, reminds me of a thread with many strands. In roughly 200 pages, the author begins to explore questions of spirituality, the heart, disability, postsecondary educati...

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  • COVID and the Fearful State

    In her review of a 2021 book by British journalist Laura Dodsworth, Anna Farrow highlights disturbing evidence of governments using our primal panic response to push pandemic policies.

    Long before David Attenborough brought his soothing voice to the explication of animal behaviour for the BBC Life series, the North American television public had been introduced to the majesty and oddities of the natural world through Mutual of Om...

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  • Playing the Media Percentage Game

    Peter Stockland flags an institutional shift in journalism that seems to be causing media outlets to follow the State line rather than inquire and clarify in the public interest.

    Warning lights should always flash before our eyes whenever journalists mix raw numbers and percolating percentages in the same paragraph.

    Numbers clearly state actuality. Percentages are the ups and downs of context. Regardless of the axiom attribut...

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