Susan Korah reports on the plight of global millions fleeing persecution unnoticed while our attention is fixed on the pandemic.
Whether internally displaced in their own countries or seeking refugee status from temporary homes elsewhere, these diverse groups of people are clinging to the fragile threads of their lives in tents, cramped, airless apartments or even in the streets and alleyways of countries such as Lebanon, Syr...
Father Deacon Andrew Bennett, program director for Religious Freedom at Cardus, and Hannah Marazzi, former Cardus staff member, celebrate and mourn their dear friend, Rabbi Reuven Bulka.
Yet to see Rabbi Bulka as simply a kind man whose kindness was active in the community is to fail to see what that kindness was a manifestation of: the divine life He was known to so many as Rabbi Reuven Bulka and his death on June 27 has brought forth both mourning and rejoicing in a life that brou...
The Assembly of First Nations is a national voice on issues like reconciliation and residential schools, but its July 7 leadership vote tests the strands that link Indigenous people, Peter Stockland reports.
For example, on an issue as critical to First Nations as passage of legislation to make the United Nations Declaration of the Rights of Indigenous People (UNDRIP) part of Canadian law, Mbarki was surprised to discover how little consultation the AFN conducted with chiefs across the country before th...
Deliberately ambiguous bills such as Ottawa’s C-10 and C-6 are the political deceiver’s plaything, Daniel Dorman argues.
Likewise, the intention of Bill C-6, to ban the harmful practice of conversion therapy, was uncontroversial but the Liberal’s failure to articulate a clear definition of ‘conversion therapy’ would have opened doors for infringement on Canadian’s fundamental freedoms If I were to level a single criti...
Peter Stockland reports on how the pandemic’s overshadowing of legislation radically expanding medical assistance in dying might reconfigure Canada’s future.
But the thing is, in the pandemic year just past, with Parliament shut down, Canadians locked down, and our most vulnerable population ravaged by COVID in care homes, we rushed through legislation expanding MAiD availability That fundamental conception endured for 133 years until the Supreme Court r...
Alan Hustak reports on the removal of a statue honouring the 19th-century priest who suffered a nervous breakdown battling Ottawa over its abusive residential school system.
The Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Regina has agreed to relocate the statue of the 19th century Oblate missionary Father Joseph Hugonard following complaints from the Chief of the Federation of Sovereign Indians that it is a “distasteful” emblem of the residential school era When the Dominion governm...
In this homily, Father Cristino Bouvette says the enduring faith of his Indigenous grandmother shows the real peace of Christ heals even the torments of residential schools.
While interviewing Cardinal Collins last weekend, Rosemary Barton of the CBC suggested that the failure of the Catholic Church to turn over unnamed and unspecified “documents” that are allegedly missing prevents truth from being known and thereby halting efforts at reconciliation Perhaps it could be ...
Convivium contributor, journalist, and former CRTC commissioner Peter Menzies has been centre stage fighting off the federal Internet control bill. Fortunately, he says, fame is fleeting.
All was going swimmingly for Guilbeault and in mid-April, having caught wind of his next act – an online harms bill creating a new Guardians of the Public Good speech regulator – I wrote what I considered to be a last chance warning The next week I co-authored a commentary with former CRTC chair Kon...
Despite the intractability of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Susan Korah reports, undaunted groups seek just solutions that benefit both sides.
A just and lasting peace between Israel and Palestine seems as illusory as a mirage in the desert, particularly since the recent outbreak of violence following expulsion of 40 Palestinian families from Sheik Jarrah in East Jerusalem to make room for Israeli settlements ...
The killing of a Muslim family in the southwestern Ontario city demands empathy for the victims, but also renewed commitment to freedom of faith, Father Deacon Andrew Bennett writes.
Motivated by their faith, Ismaili Civic has corralled the efforts of its volunteers to create partnerships with seventy organizations, including Habitat for Humanity, Kids Help Phone, the United Way, and the Terry Fox Foundation How much room do we make in our hearts and minds for public expressions...
Theologian James Bryson surveys the historical landscape of Munich and finds troubling harbingers vis-a-vis his home province of Nova Scotia’s authoritarian response to the pandemic.
To offer a striking example of the kind of culture this new form of authoritarian government encourages, consider a piece published in the Chronicle Herald, our local paper, last year, written by a student of Citadel High School, in which he all but names teachers who, in his view, were in violation...
Peter Stockland brings a journalist’s mindset and hometown origins to his analysis of media coverage around the finding of Indigenous children’s bodies in Kamloops, B.C.
In an interview with Montreal’s Le Devoir newspaper yesterday, Mollen-Dupuis was sharply critical of media response to last week’s shocking news that ground-penetrating radar has revealed the bones of up to 215 of those children at the site of the former Indian Residential School near the south-cent...
After last week’s online National Prayer Breakfast, Cardus Executive Vice President Ray Pennings reflected in his weekly Insights newsletter on how to pray in public – and pluralistic – spaces. Convivium reprints his text.
What sort of prayer should be offered on such an occasion? Similarly, when invited to speak in the context of worship of a faith tradition other than your own, how do you address the audience? I’ve spoken both in a synagogue and a gurdwara during official Jewish and Sikh services, and felt challenge...
Peter Stockland reports on the week’s political signs that the past might be coming back to haunt Canada’s future much sooner than we dreamed.
That said, incorporation of the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, combined with the specifics provision of Bill C-15 itself, opens the door to a very different Canada than even the Meech Lake Accord envisioned, or that the crisis-stasis-crisis dynamic of the past 30 yea...
Restoring trust in language goes beyond improving the sad state of our political debates. It’s vital to our common humanity, Daniel Dorman writes.
I propose that there are three evident necessary conditions for productive (truth-seeking) debate: (1) trust in reason, (2) trust that language is a plausible (if often imperfect) vehicle for truth, (3) trust that our opponents, by nature of their humanity, are capable of sympathy and reason Is it a...
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