2011‑2022, and is preserved here for archival purposes.
Father Raymond de Souza’s diverse Small Talk roundup of news, views and vice-presidential smell tests.
Last week, I noted that Prime Minister Justin Trudeau prattles on endlessly about how the Liberal Party embraces the splendid diversity of different views and exults in accommodating a breadth of opinions In any case, Biden now says that social mores are changing and he “gets” that in the MeToo era,...
Reviewer Russell Kuykendall delves into William Gairdner’s selected essays to take the author’s measure as the premier public intellectual within Canadian movement conservatism.
Gairdner qualifies as a leading Canadian public intellectual of the past 30 years, and as arguably Canadian movement conservativism’s premier public intellectual – or at least its primus inter pares (“first among equals”) As a member of “the Calgary School,” retired Professor Tom Flanagan, points ou...
Reducing the material world to what can be carried, lodging in hostels and sharing with transient strangers, Chris Konrad grasps how the ache of pilgrimage can become the beginning of spiritual practice.
While the notion of sharing a dorm room with a dozen strangers for a few nights does have limited appeal, it is the people who are staying in those bunks which form the foundation of the hostel experience These are people often deeply dissatisfied with the status quo of their own lives, and desperat...
Now that Jody Wilson-Raybould is being criticized for recording a phone conversation, Convivium Publisher Peter Stockland raises an eyebrow at the conveniently-timed pot-stirring by critics. Based on what we currently know, he writes, Wilson-Raybould did nothing wrong. What is wrong is a prime minister's mood trying to direct an attorney general's actions.
The worst of the lot was yesterday’s CBC interview in which federal Labour Minister Patty Hajdu was allowed to disparage Wilson-Raybould as “deceptive and unethical” for taping the country’s top bureaucrat during a December 18, 2018 phone conversation about SNC-Lavalin’s criminal bribery woes In the...
Constitutional lawyer and legal commentator Don Hutchinson says it’s “unthinkable” the Quebec government would override Constitutional guarantees of religious freedom to proclaim a State-sponsored doctrine of secularism.
In fact, the treatment of Jehovah’s Witnesses in Quebec was stimulus for much definition of pre-Charter understanding of rights to religious freedom, including juridical definition of the responsibility for government to adhere to the laws and freedoms of the land ...
Is it conceivable Prime Minister Trudeau doesn’t know the meaning of his own favourite D-word? Father Raymond de Souza delves into his dictionary to find out.
That came to mind this week as Prime Minister Justin Trudeau was widely denounced, from the chief of the Assembly of First Nations to the front page of the National Post, as being arrogant, rude, dismissive and smug at a Liberal Party fundraiser in Toronto on Wednesday night At this another proteste...
Often, we do not realize what we have put our trust in until those things have failed us. As Convivium contributor Dan Chook Reid navigates his cancer diagnosis, he and his family forgo fear and embrace risk, discovering how God stretches and strengthens them.
As you read, do you agree? Do we all put our faith in something? Is it wise, responsible or healthy to consciously choose to orient your life where you need the very thing that you are trusting to be true or you would end up on your face? I feel that as one who has chosen to follow Jesus, there is n...
Separate school systems across Canada aren’t relics from a long-ago time of French-English tensions. They’re the result of moral genius in Constitution making, argues Convivium contributor Brett Fawcett.
There, on the basis of the idea that separate schools were only ever meant to educate Catholic students (an odd reading of Section 17 of the Saskatchewan Act), Justice Donald Layh of the Queen’s Bench has declared that non-Catholic students are ineligible to receive public funding to attend Catholic...
Our uneasiness about artificial intelligence, Convivium contributor Timothy deVries argues, stems in large measure from forgetting that it’s only ever a proxy for the intelligence of those humans who create it.
I once overheard someone talking about whether there was an appropriate way for Christians to approach or think about things such as alien lifeforms or artificial intelligence Artificial intelligence, in this context, is simply a failure to recognize that intelligence that is represented by the pers...
The SNC-Lavalin affair isn’t just about choosing the next prime minister, noted the Opposition leader at a conservative gathering this weekend. What it's really about is protecting the very concrete, very practical division of responsibilities that comprise our legal system.
Andrew Scheer contributed significantly to Canadian political life by telling a weekend conservative gathering the SNC-Lavalin affair isn’t just about choosing between Justin Trudeau and Andrew Scheer Even factoring out partisan electoral rhetoric, Canadians have come to discuss SNC-Lavalin as very ...
The Canadian Council of Christian Charities has warned Parliament that undermining tax exemptions of religious institutions will severely hamper the country’s giving sector, Daniel Proussalidis reports.
“When a non-religious person receives assistance form a secular charity, they also benefit from the gifts of time and money made by religious people who learned to be generous in their places of worship,” Pellowe said While the tax benefits that religious organizations receive in Canada have receive...
Dr. Timothy Epp's research sheds light on the divide between sacred and secular music by exploring the spiritual content in mainstream music.
“In contrast to my own presumptions about the antagonistic approach popular musicians would take to matters of faith, I have found that the greater percentage of songs represent either a quest for spiritual fulfilment or an affirmation of spirituality,” Epp reflects Songs with spiritual content, Epp...
Erin Dunigan writes about a practice of rainwater harvesting: induced meandering. During the Lent season, practicing induced meandering spiritually offers nourishment, she writes.
Rather than rush from the celebrations of Christmas and the season of Epiphany which follows, directly to the new life, resurrection, and rebirth of Easter, Lent provides a speed bump in the path of the Christian calendar Perhaps it is a downhill dirt path that, with each rain, gets cut deeper; add ...
As the former PM becomes an octogenarian, Editor-in-Chief Father Raymond de Souza notes his years leading Canada showed courage but his after-office shenanigans were unbearably shabby.
Mulroney was never in the league of his contemporaries Ronald Reagan or Margaret Thatcher as a political leader of unshakable convictions, but his premiership was one of great ventures on major files, in which he was willing to suffer sustained unpopularity in order to advance an agenda he thought r...
In part two of Convivium’s series on homelessness, addiction and mental illness, Peter Stockland speaks with a woman who was hours away from being out on the streets and homeless. Now, Christina is on her way to recovery from a lifetime of alcoholism.
Christina makes the point that what is “saving my life” since she was brought into the Oxford House program is not just being spared sleeping on the floor of a detox centre This is part two of Convivium's series on homelessness, addiction, and mental illness Those who met her as she was being releas...