Convivium Magazine

Sharing God Moments and Bidding Goodbye

Mark Warawa

May 10, 2019

Veteran Langley-Aldergrove MP Mark Warawa brought the House of Commons to tears this week with his farewell speech as he faces surgery for colon cancer that has spread to his pancreas and lung. Convivium presents his parting Parliamentary words in full.

Science has shown us that people can live longer and have a better quality of life, in some cases, if they are given palliative care People ask me why I became involved with politics in the first place, and it started with a dream back in 1990 I was in the hospital recently for 15 days and I had zer...

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The Pill-aging of Motherhood

Andrea Mrozek

May 10, 2019

In a culture that lionizes contraception and avoids pregnancy like the plague, Andrea Mrozek asks, is it any wonder mothers grow fewer and more isolated each Mother’s Day?

What kind of celebration is Mother’s Day when our culture is geared toward preventing motherhood? When I read policy analysts theorize that culture dictates fertility norms, I can only wholeheartedly agree But with dispersed families, waning religiosity and dwindling community of any kind, we have t...

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Jean Vanier’s Human Communities

Raymond J. de Souza

May 10, 2019

The late founder of L’Arche, Father Raymond de Souza writes, was so profoundly Christian that the communities he created around people with disabilities celebrated the human dimension of the mystery of Redemption.

Consider how Vanier describes the life at L’Arche, and how “assistants” – those who live with and serve the disabled – are chosen In founding L’Arche and living with the developmentally disabled, there is no doubt that Vanier was living out his vocation as a Christian disciple Even though L’Arche wa...

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Encountering Online Hatred

Andrew P.W. Bennett

May 9, 2019

Andrew Bennett, director of the Cardus Institute for Religious Freedom, told the House of Commons Standing Committee and Human Rights today legal sanctions to combat “diabolical” internet hatred must be matched by a social “climate of encounter” based on every Canadian’s inherent dignity as a child of God.

So, what then is at the root of online hate? How do we attack the source of this hate while at the same time employing sufficient measures through the criminal justice system to thwart it? In our Internet age, we are seeing the breakdown of genuine human community where we are less and less in each ...

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Minding the School-Home Gap

Rebecca Darwent

May 8, 2019

Convivium’s Rebecca Darwent reports on a recent Cardus forum exploring the differing formative impacts of school and family on children.

Pennings, the think tank’s executive vice-president, and his Cardus Education Program team gave a sneak preview of survey data involving 29 factors with specific questions about the influences that may alter a child’s development ...

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Growing

May 8, 2019

A flower isn't told when to bloom, but does so with grace, capturing the light through its vibrant colour and delicate fragility.

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Journeying Inward

May 8, 2019

We take vacations and go on trips, move quickly as days pass by.

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Nones Who Know Nuns

Hannah Marazzi with Katie Gordon

May 8, 2019

Surprised and refreshed by her first encounter with a religious sister, Katie Gordon talks to Convivium’s Hannah Marazzi about the generative possibilities that could emerge from bringing religious nuns and religious nones together across generations and affiliations.

KG: I would like your readers to wonder how inter-generational relationships or friendships are showing up in their lives? I didn't have an elder figure in my life until I had Sisters Katie Gordon: The Nuns and Nones project emerged from a curiosity of what would happen between Sisters and Millennia...

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Symmetry from Chaos

May 8, 2019

Each rock stacked, one atop the other, working as a team to produce something each individual one could not withstand.

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Running Religious Freedom Out Of Quebec

Peter Stockland

May 7, 2019

Quebec’s secularism bill is a governmental attempt to coerce the religiosity out of public workers, writes publisher Peter Stockland.

Farrow, who attended the rally to show the English Speaking Catholic Council’s support but do not address demonstrators, said ultimately Bill 21 is an attack on collective freedom to live freely in Quebec and in Canada Farrow points out the blurring of aggressiveness and absurdity in that vision by ...

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When The Flood Hits Home

Rebecca Darwent

May 6, 2019

Convivium writer Rebecca Darwent missed the last once-in-a-hundred-year inundation of her Ottawa neighbourhood. Two years later, even worse flooding has taught her the meaning of community.

I live in a community that was affected by floods only two years ago, and which found itself filling hundreds of sandbags, but there is still a certain feeling of distance from the devastation as the waters didn’t touch my own home The beauty of the waterfront home held a certain appeal, but she – l...

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Cracks in Canada’s Media Freedom

Susan Korah

May 6, 2019

The good news, Convivium contributor Susan Korah reports, is Canadian journalists aren’t murdered like their global colleagues. The bad news is subtle intimidation and harassment that lets the powerful keep their secrets.

However, Canadian journalists are not free from more subtle forms of intimidation and harassment, even though our politicians routinely sing the praises of press freedom as a cornerstone of democracy, and smugly criticize foreign countries where journalists are jailed or gunned down for doing their ...

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Alberta's Show of Hands

Raymond J. de Souza

May 3, 2019

Premier Jason Kenney’s no-frills swearing in gives Father Raymond de Souza time to turn from politics to art and find beauty in the work of human hands.

The Government House collection includes Group of Seven works which include the people of the prairies, and the roads they built, the land they cleared, the farms they tended, the churches they consecrated and yes, the refineries The Government House collection gives the visitor a fuller account of ...

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The Character of Love

Timothy deVries

May 2, 2019

Critiquing Facebook CEO Sheryl Sandberg’s self-help book Option B, Cardus grants associate Timothy deVries suggests the best response to personal criticism is to conduct ourselves with words and acts that love and honour God.

For example, if criticism is not understood in relation to character or identity, but to an action or behaviour, then what sort of actions and behaviours are we talking about? How, indeed, as adults, with ingrained habits and ways of doing things, are we to act and live, if the way we have lived and...

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When Law Makes Room for Reality

Rabbi Reuven Bulka

April 30, 2019

Horrendous violent attacks make these seem perilous times for religious believers, but as Rabbi Reuven Bulka recently told a Cardus Religious Freedom Institute conference, the intersection of Canadian and Jewish Halachic law is often an example of unbelievably good news.

It corroborated what people whom I have spoken to, especially in CIJA, and with its predecessor, the Canadian Jewish Congress, both deeply involved in Halacha-related issues, have observed: often these matters get resolved through quiet diplomacy, which works most of the time At the time this was a ...

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