Convivium Magazine

When Believers Become Invisible

Jonathon Van Maren

December 4, 2020

COVID-19 has revealed an uncomfortable reality, Jonathon Van Maren points out: closure of churches isn’t State persecution but widespread ignorance of what goes on inside them.

I am emphatically not offering any opinion on how religious leaders should respond to the various COVID-19 restrictions on worship That said, I suspect hostility towards people of faith is not the primary motivator for much of the government approach to churches and other places of worship There is ...

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Religious Persecution’s Red Letter Day

Susan Korah

December 2, 2020

Canadian churches turned red recently hoping to open Canada’s eyes to violence against believers, Susan Korah reports.

“In the year of the pandemic we need to be reminded that anti-religious persecution is increasing significantly,” said Marie-Claude Lalonde, National Director of Aid to Christians in Need (ACN) Canada, the Canadian chapter of the charity “Red Wednesday is an event aimed at highlighting the persecuti...

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Great Reset? Or Grand Unravelling?

Peter Menzies

November 30, 2020

Prime Minister Trudeau has mused that COVID-19 will allow for Canadian society to “re-set” on a number of fronts. Peter Menzies says we’ll have to avoid coming apart at the seams first.

The second group wants an end to the pandemic just as badly as the first and wants protection focused on those most at risk from infection – overwhelmingly the elderly and the ill (Alberta stats indicate 58 per cent of COVID fatalities involved people suffering from dementia; another 24 per cent fro...

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Why Not a Notwithstanding Pause for MAiD?

Don Hutchinson

November 27, 2020

Don Hutchinson argues the Trudeau government should consider the Constitution’s Section 33 opt out rather than rush to pass expanded medically assisted dying legislation under a court-imposed deadline.

Then Minister of Justice Jody Wilson-Raybould presented Bill C-14, An Act to amend the Criminal Code and make related amendments to other Acts (medical assistance in dying), as the government’s response to the Supreme Court of Canada’s 2015 decision in Carter v Canadians remain divided, but most had...

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The Chief Gave Life To Rights

Jonathon Van Maren

November 23, 2020

Canada’s political amnesia leaves Prime Minister John Diefenbaker almost forgotten. Jonathon Van Maren discovers lost letters that affirm how fiercely Dief fought for human rights from womb to tomb.

Diefenbaker was one of 43 Progressive Conservative MPs to vote against Pierre Trudeau’s Omnibus Bill which, among other things, decriminalized abortion for the first time in a century, but his speech on the 1968-69 Criminal Law Amendment Act didn’t mention abortion How many Canadians know, for examp...

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Progress Against MAiD

Peter Stockland

November 19, 2020

Catherine Frazee, a long-time disability Rights activist and Ontario’s former Chief Commissioner of Human Rights, talked to MPs about pending MAiD expansion recently. It wasn’t enough to make her give up hope, Peter Stockland reports.

As a member of the Equality Rights Committee of the DisAbled Women's Network Canada (DAWN), Frazee primarily sought during her Commons committee appearance to get MPs to understand how MAiD and its expansion undermine the equal standing of those with pronounced physical and mental vulnerabilities Li...

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COVID's Contagion of Disbelief

Peter Menzies

November 18, 2020

Drug companies touting new pandemic vaccines should be causing huzzahs. But Peter Menzies warns septic skepticism in the body politic must also be addressed.

And 23 per cent – almost a quarter of our 37.5 million people – believe the threat of COVID-19 has been exaggerated, assumedly by distrusted media and public officials Tom Sampson, the head of Calgary’s Emergency Management Agency, compared the COVID-19 pandemic to a tsunami and described on Twitter...

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Adieu to a Larger-Than-Life Priest

Alan Hustak

November 16, 2020

Alan Hustak reports on the death and contrarian life of Montreal’s Father John Walsh, who began serving the Church as an altar boy while also a member of a street gang.

"People grow in holiness if the Church is there to give them a helping hand, instead of rejecting and condemning them because they aren't perfect," Father Walsh said For years, Father Walsh had a devoted audience for his radio show on English-language CJAD, and also managed to become the first Catho...

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COVID Hope From Healthy Families

Winnie Lui with Todd Martin

November 13, 2020

Winnie Lui reports on research by Trinity Western sociologist Todd Martin revealing that around the world even the hardships of the pandemic have become sources of family strength.

The challenges will be better overcome by some families compared to others, Martin says, meaning they'll be a test of individual family health and resiliency rather than a catalyst for families to become unhealthy As provinces endure the second wave of the pandemic and reimpose increased restriction...

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MAiD to be Vulnerable

Peter Stockland

November 11, 2020

Laval University bioethicist Cory Labrecque argues the debate over medically assisted death ignores the reality we all face risk just by being human, Peter Stockland reports.

For his part, Labrecque ascribes a great deal of the nominal support for MAiD to calculated neglect of the reality of human vulnerability in end-of-life discussion and debate We allow ourselves to believe, as Labrecque himself experienced in the comments of his former med school colleagues about his...

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Is Politics Putting POGG on Ice?

Don Hutchinson

November 6, 2020

Canada’s Constitution gives paramountcy to peace, order and good government (POGG), but Don Hutchinson argues bills on conversion therapy and medically assisted death prioritize progressive expediency.

The prayerful direction found in Psalm 72 describes what Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau termed “a just society,” one in which good government brings peace and order to all the people it governs Introducing legislation to include Canadians with disabilities or living with chronic illness, and mental i...

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Justin Trudeau's Words to the Wise

Peter Stockland

November 4, 2020

The Prime Minister got it right the first time on the limits of free speech. His mistake was backing down in the face of vociferous criticism, Peter Stockland writes.

Elghawaby notes that French Interior Minister Gérald Darmanin has made clear a principal aim of the current crackdown is to “send a message” to French citizens who are Muslims that they are being watched even if they have nothing to do with jihadi, of even criminal, activity In one of the best (albe...

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Borat’s Subsequent Shallowness

Josh Nadeau

November 2, 2020

Sacha Baron Cohen’s sequel satirizing America’s cultural moment is at once crude and convincing yet suffers from a cruel refusal to see those it mocks as human, Josh Nadeau writes.

The movie, for all its points, comes up short when speaking about dialogue, analysis or understanding – this only furthers political polarization and does nothing to heal the wounds of a divided culture It’s a sequel to 2006’s Borat, which saw comedian Sacha Baron Cohen don the role of a fictitious ...

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Masks Speak to Common Humanity

Peter Menzies

October 30, 2020

Peter Menzies encounters fellow citizens who insist that refusing to mask up against COVID strikes a blow for liberty. No, he writes, it’s lone wolf rejection of the Golden Rule.

...

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How MAiD Expansion Mangles Medicine

Peter Stockland

October 28, 2020

Palliative care expert Dr. Leonie Herx is one of 750 doctors publicly urging the Trudeau government to deep-six its new “death on demand” legislation, Peter Stockland reports.

The willingness of the political class to transfer palliative care dollars into billable hours for medically administered lethal injections is an irrefutable marker of the power shift to MAiD from what Canadians prior to 2016 understood as medical care Adding the pressure of Bill C-7’s “death on dem...

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