The Mission Continues

Ray Pennings

February 18, 2022

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.

Cardus launched Convivium in 2011 with Father Raymond De Souza as editor and long-time journalist Peter Stockland as publisher So, while we’re sad about discontinuing Convivium, we’re also excited about the opportunities that lie ahead in the various other platforms Cardus is cultivating ...

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Science can Strengthen Faith

Kyelle Byne

February 7, 2022

Kyelle Byne attended a talk by renowned Christian author Philip Yancey in which he borrowed centuries-old lessons from John Donne to frame the challenge and opportunity for Christian scientists in our pandemic context. Suffering can uncover contours of our faith and motivate a Christian witness of care and understanding.

Early in his career as a journalist, Yancey came across the works of John Donne, a pastor and poet serving in England at a time when the bubonic plagues swept across Europe, killing one-third of the continent’s population In late January, Philip Yancey spoke at the American Scientific Affiliation’s ...

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Humanitarian Crisis Adds to Burdens of Afghan Religious Minorities

Susan Korah

February 4, 2022

Media attention may have shifted away from Afghanistan, but suffering families and religious minorities remain in the country. On-the-ground relief efforts are in dire need of support, writes Susan Korah.

Mirzad has some specific suggestions for the Canadian government to help restore a measure of calm and stability to the heart of darkness that Afghanistan has become under Taliban rule El Shafie plans to return to Afghanistan soon to oversee operations, because he expects the humanitarian crisis to ...

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Covid and the Tears of Christ

Tim McCauley

February 2, 2022

We must not let fear of this pandemic stop us from trusting God and praying through our doubt and frustrations, writes Father Tim McCauley.

Christ wept over ancient Jerusalem for the people’s lack of faith, failing to recognize God in their midst in the Person of Christ But that does not mean that it is His direct will that people die from this pandemic, that society shuts down, that churches are limited in their capacity, and that peop...

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Home is More Than Just a Place

Abigail Sefzik

January 26, 2022

Do younger Canadians lack a strong sense of home? Is that why they tell pollsters they’re more willing to pack up and leave for another country? Abigail Sefzik, a young writer herself, takes up these questions for Convivium.

It seems their sense of home and attachment to their country is fluid, if not weak Cardus, in partnership with the Angus Reid Institute, conducted a study revealing trends among leaders in Canada, young and old, capturing an array of cultural concerns across several generations ...

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Remembering Cairine Wilson, Canada’s Mother of Refugees on Holocaust Remembrance Day

Susan Korah

January 24, 2022

In time for International Holocaust Remembrance Day, Susan Korah writes a commemorative piece on Canada’s first female Senator—Cairine Wilson— a “firm but gentle voice” who advocated for refugees entering Canada after WWII.

In 1938, she established a non-sectarian organization the Canadian National Committee on Refugees and Victims of Political Persecution (CNCR) and for the next ten years, led a two-pronged campaign— an educational one to combat anti-Semitism— and an epic political battle for the liberalization of Can...

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The Trial of Big Porn

Maxime Huot Couture

January 19, 2022

Cardus NextGen Fellow Maxime Huot Couture summarizes important progress in 2021 towards cancelling porn culture. He hopes both the law and the culture will continue to make anti-porn progress in 2022.

Behind those victories, we find some energetic individuals fighting to protect children and women from sexual exploitation and from the fangs of the porn industry We now know, based on evidence presented against the industry, that porn is also a public threat – a real pandemic that affects the physi...

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Unlocking the Doors of Education

Joseph McDaniel

January 17, 2022

Life’s circumstances have a way of reintroducing us to grace, writes Joseph McDaniel. His personal journey refreshed his perspective on his vocation and encourages us to be open to the expansion of our own horizons by the grace of God.

In a Catholic high school in the United States where I had the blessing of being able to serve as a teacher for many years, there was a motto emblazoned above the study hall of the school library that I believe summarized the true power of education: “Knowledge is the eighth sacrament of the Church ...

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Why So Vindictive, Mr. Mandate Man?

John Jalsevac

January 14, 2022

The increasingly heated rhetoric towards the unvaxxed is designed to assuage the feelings and retain the confidence of the vaccinated. At least, so argues John Jalsevac, a FAST Fellow and PhD student at the University of Toronto, who is concerned the current trajectory will not end well.

Without a course correction, there is a very real risk that the deep divisions and distrust fomented by misguided mandates will remain with us for years, if not decades, imperiling our ability to respond effectively to future public health crises If vaccines no longer meaningfully slow or prevent in...

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Defining Canada?

Ray Pennings

January 12, 2022

In his most recent Insights newsletter, Cardus Executive Vice-President Ray Pennings emphasizes the need to recover a sense of vision and national purpose as Canadians, especially as we think about the future of young Canadian leaders.

Reading the round of end-of-year media features, summarizing the past and projecting the next year in every sphere of life, reminded me of this perennial question: What holds Canada together? What makes Canadians one country from sea to sea to sea? The Charter and our health care system have taken a...

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Chicken Little and Teens

Paul Bennett

January 10, 2022

Author and educator Paul Bennett reviews recent books and articles by Dr. Erica Komisar that have stirred a viral hornet’s nest. Komisar, a New York psychoanalyst, highlights the importance of parent-child attachment and argues that believing in God is so important to parenting, that those who don’t should “lie about it.”

Five years after the appearance of her first book Being There: Why Prioritizing Motherhood in the First Three Years Matters and two years after one of those Wall Street Journal columns went viral, she’s still holding her ground after weathering the media storm While many parents regret not spending ...

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Remembering Ted Byfield

Jonathon Van Maren

January 6, 2022

Ted Byfield was no quitter and until his passing over the holidays, he was a front-line culture warrior in the journalism, publishing, and Christian education spheres, Jonathon Van Maren writes.

For more than a half-century, he was one of Canada’s most significant public Christians, and his life’s work included the founding of a religious order, the formation of several Christian boarding schools for boys, a series of influential newsmagazines, laying the groundwork for a political movement...

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Time to Challenge and Comply

Don Hutchinson

January 3, 2022

When it comes to Canada’s recently passed ban on “conversion therapy," Don Hutchinson argues that it’s bad legislation, not good faith religious counselling, that should be put on trial.

It was Minister Lametti’s responsibility to provide Parliament with “a statement that sets out potential effects of the Bill on the rights and freedoms that are guaranteed by the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms” before it could legally proceed beyond first reading in the House Because the pr...

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Stockland Moving On… But Not Out

Peter Stockland and Ray Pennings

December 24, 2021

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.  

In return, through the new audiences we reached, Convivium was able to help Cardus grow from its origins and deep roots in the Reformed community to cultivate a broader cohort of Canadians, Catholic, Protestant, even non-Christian, and all with an interest in engaging the interplay of faith and comm...

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True North Interview

Jonathon Van Maren

December 23, 2021

Reading the Canadian storyteller’s posthumous new book, Jonathon Van Maren retraces in imagination his travels from his own driveway to the main streets of small towns and cities across the land.

But the reason his work rings so real to me is that so many of his experiences in “real” Canada echo mine, and so many of his ruminations on our small towns perfectly encapsulate my own experiences over the past decade Such was the intimacy and immediacy McLean’s magnificent voice engendered that wh...

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