2011‑2022, and is preserved here for archival purposes.
Historically, it justified the torments against Jews that Bishop Crosby and Rabbi Frydman-Kohl now protest against being inflicted on Christians in the Islamic world “From Egypt to Iran and from Iraq to Nigeria, Christian communities throughout the region experience persecution in various forms, ran...
Even as the federal government is bringing in its new euthanasia and assisted suicide legislation, we’ll be making Cardus Health a big part of our program for 2016 and beyond. The federal government has yet to introduce medical suicide legislation and already we are witnessing the next convulsion in...
Through her organization, Gather, Cathie Ostapchuk’s mission is to tell the “uniquely Canadian story of Christian women.”
That’s when Ostapchuk, along with Ellen Graf-Martin and Helen Burns, started Gather, a not-for-profit organization that seeks to unite and inspire Canadian Christian women to build a connected and vibrant community of their own north of the border ...
Even as the world was reacting in horror to the slaughter of innocents in Paris on November 13, Father John Walsh was moving past how and what to asking why.
Three days after the Paris murders, Father Walsh brought that emphasis on the “clarity of why” to an annual interfaith conference on extremism hosted by the Montreal chapter of the International Dialogue Institute Rabbi Avi Finegold, in fact, “deputized” all those present to combat fundamentalist ex...
Christmas ought to be a time for thoughtful giving, not giving that is easy or benefits the giver.
Another example: over the past couple of decades, a number of international development organizations have popularized filling up a shoe box with various items during the season of Christmas generosity and sending the boxes overseas to impoverished children From the toy to the hygienic items to the ...
In rereading Michael D. O’Brien’s classic Strangers and Sojourners, Rebecca Walker finds the gift of guidance through the worlds of suffering and grace.
Readers of O’Brien’s other Children of the Last Days novels will realize that he focuses on Anne because she is the matriarch of a line of “truth sayers”: sensitive, but also educated and articulate in a way that Anne’s strong, silent husband is not ...
Comment magazine editor James K.A. Smith finds in Peter Harrison’s The Territories of Science and Religion a remapping of the way we have come to know the world.
Harrison tracks the way religio and scientia of the ancient and medieval world come to mean something very different by the time they are translated as religion and science in early modern England Once science gets into “the truth and goodness business,” as Harrison puts it, and goodness is identifi...
Resisting the reasoning power of Saint Augustine, Jim Payton writes, the Orthodox Church offers Western Christians the treasure of celebrating mystery rather than explaining God.
But when it came to “figuring out” God, to “understanding” God as God, to “explaining” how God could be both One and Three and how Jesus Christ could be only one person while both fully divine and fully human, the Church fathers universally and constantly rejected what human reason could make of tho...
An eclectic roundup of incidents, events and oddities that catch our editor's eye.
Temperatures will be warmer in Rome, where Small Talk will be for the opening of the Jubilee Year of Mercy this December From time to time, a special jubilee is declared in addition to the regular schedule, and Pope Francis has declared a special Jubilee Year of Mercy for 2016, to begin December 8, ...
Franciscan priests and friars, Alan Hustak writes, became part of the Canadian landscape when their now-800-year-old order arrived here from Europe in 1615. Despite drastically reduced numbers, they bring the hope of the Gospel to their work in the world.
There are three orders of Franciscans – the Friars Minor (Franciscans), the Poor Ladies or Clares, and the Brothers and Sisters of Penance – generally referred to as the First, Second and Third Orders of Saint Francis The first of the friars to arrive in French North America 400 years ago with Champ...
Father Raymond J. de Souza’s continuing survey of religion, culture and public life.
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In his review of Eric Dietrich’s Excellent Beauty: The Naturalness of Religion and the Unnaturalness of the World, Convivium assistant editor Doug Sikkema finds a phantom war being fought by warriors of the author’s imagination.
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Political theorist Travis D. Smith maintains that liberalism as a credo is worth approaching if we do so with full awareness of its perpetual distance from reality.
To sum up, whether from a Biblical perspective or one guided by classical political science, nobody is required to deny that there is such a thing as the good life and that such a life is not the explicit (or even likely) goal of liberalism in order to be a good liberal – one who recognizes that in ...
Ink on skin, philosopher Adam Barkman illustrates, can mark the meeting of cosmic justice and cultural confusion.
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Earlier this year, Convivium publisher Peter Stockland sat down with former Blackberry Chief Operating Officer Don Morrison in his Toronto home. While many might know of the highly successful Canadian telecom business, few likely know that one of its highest level executives was immersed in pursuing both international business success and reading religious classics.
C: There’s a story from many years ago that leads me to question how we act on those things in the world when we’re still given to our basic human impulses, basically giving in to our nervous system, to our fight or flight or that part of our brain He said it’s all very well and good, Don, that you’...