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Christian Women Doubly Vulnerable to Persecution

Susan Korah

December 6, 2021

On a day that will live in infamy to mark violence against Canadian women, Susan Korah reports on a global study of gendered religious persecution.

“There are many Christian women who suffer sexual violence because they are Christian – but we don’t believe the UN quite appreciates this,” Shiner said in the same interview “The research suggests that in the countries under review (Pakistan, Egypt, Nigeria, Iraq and Syria and others), among minori...

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True Progress Moves Us To God

Peter Copeland and Andrew Bennett

December 3, 2021

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.

For, Christianity is not an empty philosophy, but a way of life – truth, goodness and beauty are not meant merely to be articulated, but to be shown in a life lived in love of God All the more reason, then, to live an integrated life, where the distinction between love of God, neighbour, and one’s f...

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The Secular Servants of Abstraction

Peter Copeland and Andrew Bennett

December 2, 2021

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.

If equity were instead recognized as it ought to be, as the flourishing of the person in all their beautiful uniqueness and difference; and if equality were conceived as equal inherent dignity, not in wealth, possessions, talents, abilities, or interests, then a hierarchically differentiated society...

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The Christian’s Progress

Peter Copeland and Andrew Bennett

December 1, 2021

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.

How can one become courageous, loving, kind, and merciful without practice? Instead, we sacrifice the fruits that come from the long pursuit of virtue for fleeting ‘authentic feeling’? How can anyone cultivate the disciplines that make actions into habits, and habits into the virtuous life? How can ...

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Shouting Myself Hoarse for Life

Peter Menzies

November 26, 2021

Peter Menzies is in the house to watch Canada beat Mexico and suddenly a dream comes true to trump eighteen nightmarish months that included – oy! – taking up camping.

I enthusiastically got my first and second vaccines when the world shut down for the second time (the first as I recall was “just a couple of weeks to flatten the curve and, don’t be silly, masks aren’t required) and I was again alone in an empty, hollow workplace Outside of family occasions, life h...

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Monsters, Mobs and Me

Don Hutchinson

November 24, 2021

Don Hutchinson writes that whether we have unwittingly become card-carrying members of monsters at work or mobs inc. is best revealed by a look in the bathroom mirror.

The rash rush of mandatory vaccination policies didn’t start with vaccine availability in March, but five months later following a Nanos poll showing a majority of Canadians favoured mandatory vaccination, and subsequent electoral posturing by a sitting prime minister who declared that all federal p...

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Follow the Political Science

Travis D. Smith

November 22, 2021

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.

According to Hobbes in particular, people have no moral obligations to anybody in the state of nature; it’s indistinguishable from a state of war and individuals there may be treated accordingly Whereas modern political theory asserts the natural freedom of all human beings everywhere, classical pol...

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The COVID Golden Calf

Travis D. Smith

November 19, 2021

In this first of a two-part essay, Travis Smith teases out the new ersatz religiosity of our political, clinical and social pandemic responses.

We are now seeing heterodox health care professionals threatened and sanctioned, placed on leave or their licences suspended—defrocked, as it were—for refusing to comply with mandates, for expressing concern about adverse events, for granting exemptions, or otherwise hesitating to swear by the vacci...

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Climate Change Making Eden a Wasteland

Susan Korah

November 17, 2021

Yesterday, Peter Stockland queried the usefulness of the COP26 conference. Today, Susan Korah reports on the urgency of saving the Garden from climate calamity.

With voices amplified by the world’s focus on COP26, religious leaders have joined activists, scientists and humanitarian organizations in calling on prosperous countries like Canada to address climate change as a global issue that affects populations far beyond their own borders In the run-up to CO...

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Laugh or Cry After COP26

Peter Stockland

November 16, 2021

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.

The debate has been sparked by calculations showing that the combined cost of global damage from climate change can actually produce future savings if we avoid it in the first place As the Wall Street Journal recently reported, there’s vigorous debate, among climate economists, and so cause for real...

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Is Canada Worth Our Sacrifice?

Robert Joustra

November 11, 2021

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.

This may sound like a Canadian debate – certainly peace, order, and good government is a very Canadian trinity – but it’s not But where does Canada sit? What is Canada worth? Is it just another bureaucratic behemoth, take it or leave it, that manages our taxes, paves our roads, and buys our vaccinat...

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The Contagion of Tribal Contempt

Ruth Dick

November 8, 2021

Ottawa writer Ruth Dick argues it’s time to restore political health by purging our viral responses of the urge to condemn and dominate.

We who support vaccination are the ones who have backfilled the message of that sign with hostility and disdain, causing many at whom it’s aimed to feel a sense not of community, but isolation Thus we have people responding in Pavlovian ways to public health measures Instead of realism about the ris...

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The Stampede to Crush Privacy

Sandra B. Julian

November 3, 2021

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.

It's hardly surprising that COVID has caused worldwide panic, but the stampede toward vaccination passports is trampling on privacy Provincial privacy commissioners declared in May 2021 only that forced disclosure of personal information for vaccine certification “is an encroachment on civil liberti...

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That All Faiths Feel At Home

Tim McCauley

November 1, 2021

Father Tim McCauley argues instead of claiming Islamophobia is entrenched in Canada, we must ensure Muslims and all believers are made welcome.

I realize the era of the 1980s was vastly different from our current climate in terms of the number of Muslims in Canada, the rise in Muslim extremism in various parts of the world, and Islamophobia In regard to Muslims, has this changed since 9/11? As the world has witnessed a rise in Muslim extrem...

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The Tyranny of Pragmatism

Robert Joustra

October 29, 2021

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.

State overreach is the consequence of a much more seemingly innocuous pathology: pragmatism Father de Souza argues, for example, that State overreach – no argument from me on that part – is motivated by a tyrannical desire to put its subjects in its place, remind businesses who has what power and ch...

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