2011‑2022, and is preserved here for archival purposes.
Jeremy Hexham argues for the greatness of the English king
From this it seems clear that without Alfred's programs of education and translation, Norman French would have replaced Old English to become the language of England Today, however, most people get their limited knowledge of history from programs aired on the History Channel or from novels such as t...
Janet Epp Buckingham’s new book on Canada’s history of duelling deities
As religious adherents with a wide variety of religious practices seek to find their place in a Canadian society that seems to be reluctant to publicly include religion, public institutions may find it increasingly difficult to exhibit traditional Canadian tolerance and equality Issues relating to t...
Shortly before his sudden death, the former finance minister evoked the ghosts of D-Day for Convivium
The Dieppe Canadian War Cemetery is located about five kilometres south of Dieppe In May 2013, I visited the places where many young Canadians gave up their lives for freedom, democracy and the rule of law; that is, for our way of life in Canada Standing in front of the memorial, humility, given the...
Richard Bastien reviews Robert R. Reilly’s Making Gay Okay and Brad S. Gregory’s The Unintended Reformation
In support of this thesis, he sets out the long-term consequences of the Reformation in six areas: the relationship among science, religion and metaphysics; the basis for truth claims about "life questions" related to human values and meaning; the institutional locus of political power; moral discou...
Trinitarian love is the heart of community in Combermere, Ont.
I want to emphasize this difference between traditional culture and the modern culture-creation of the subjective self as it forms one of the very major differences between life in the modern world and what people will experience in Madonna House "The defining features of evangelical Catholicism are...
Summer and sacrifice Convivium Jun / Jul 2014 Peter Stockland
It is, of course, the acme of unfashionability in this particular political season to think of gratitude going the other way as well: from Canadians so blessed to live in this country towards politicians such as Jim Flaherty who serve and sacrifice to fulfill those blessings Jim Flaherty was but one...
Comment magazine editor James. K. A. Smith on understanding Charles Taylor
Your neighbours inhabit what Charles Taylor calls an "immanent frame"; they're no longer bothered by the "God question" as a question because they are devotees of "exclusive humanism" — a way of being in the world that offers significance without transcendence Think of me as an "assistant guide" to ...
What Prof. John von Heyking would say if these were his last words
All these great texts operate under the kind of insight Søren Kierkegaard offers when he states in Works of Love: "Alas, many think that judgment is something reserved for the far side of the grave, and so it is also, but they forget that judgment is much closer than that, that it is taking place at...
Rex Murphy answers questions his way at a Convivium event in Vancouver
Then, providentially or otherwise, an oil boom was going on in Alberta and people like my closest friend, destroyed by the three or four years that he didn't work, got divorced, gave his house to his wife — because we're fairly civilized down there and when they break up, they do those things — and ...
Hello Irshad Manji, urbane atheist; goodbye Crad Kilodney, writer of the streets
I don't know if Jansen has ambitions now that Redford has resigned, but Alberta did once have a premier who was a TV journalist before he entered politics In relation to journalism and the spectacular fall of Alison Redford, former Alberta treasurer Ted Morton—defeated by Redford in the 2011 leaders...
Dr. Nicholas Newman takes issue with our editor on Israel
Harper was effusive in his praise of Israeli democracy and Israeli respect for human rights, and de Souza likewise The last several Israeli governments, including the current one supported by Harper and de Souza, have increased the rate of Israeli settlement in the occupied lands, deliberately makin...
Editor-in-Chief Father Raymond J. de Souza bids farewell to Jim Flaherty and ponders the need for political apologies in Alberta
Jim Flaherty had a great public life, but even the greatest of public lives — and our common life together — only endures to the extent that it touches on those mysteries that lie beyond death, mysteries for which a place like St Thirty years on, it is more difficult to speak in the unadorned, simpl...
Our munus is perhaps the answer to Wendell Berry's question: What are people for? But we could expand the question and also ask: what are neighbours for? What are families for? What is the State for? The church? The school? The corporation? It seems that we can't begin to discus the proper differe...
While privacy laws applied to information relating to minors, those discharged from bankruptcy, or to protect those who have been the victims are part of almost every legal system, the emerging "right to be forgotten" is a European legal concept that has been gaining traction over the past few decad...
Indeed not only would they disavow any new public privileges that might be dangled in front of them by governments seeking to curry their favour, but they'd have the nerve to take the initiative in offering to relinquish any inequitable financial or constitutional advantages they'd inherited from th...