Full House Religious Freedom

Peter Stockland

September 28, 2018

Convivium Publisher Peter Stockland says next week’s Parliamentary Forum on Religious Freedom might be just the ticket for bringing newly arrived and long-standing Canadians of faith together to safeguard religious freedom

In the words of Cardus Executive Vice-President Ray Pennings, who will speak at the Religious Freedom Forum next week: “That’s significant about new immigrants, but it’s also significant for all Canadians, however long they’ve been here, to understand the place of religious faith in public life Yet ...

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Missing the Mark on Clean Prosperity

Raymond J. de Souza

September 27, 2018

Editor-in-chief Father Raymond de Souza amicably disagrees with his friend Mark Cameron’s recent study showing the government is here to help with its carbon tax.  

Note that Mark Cameron, on the board of Cardus, makes a thoughtful case for a broad-based, revenue-neutral carbon tax, while earlier in the summer, Cardus hosted Jason Kenney – a friend of Cardus and a friend of Mark’s However, next door in Alberta, the carbon tax’s “neutrality” means that the reven...

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Beauty Beyond the Reach of Shadow

Amy Baik Lee

September 25, 2018

How did Betsie ten Boom, sister of Corrie ten Boom, manage to meet suffering without giving way to fear and despair? wonders Amy Baik Lee. Today we share this wonderful reflection on how we follow the thread of yearning that whispers through our living moments and tugs us forward with a mighty force.

What I’ve come to see is that Betsie’s home years, and her intentional cultivation of beauty within them, prepared her for her time in the Dutch prison and the Nazi concentration camps Betsie made home a place where the eye was drawn to beauty in various textures and colors More astounding still, Be...

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City of a Suffering God

Josh Valley

September 24, 2018

Facing the astonishing violence that has rocked Canada’s largest city this year, chaplain Josh Valley turns to Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s evocation of the God who not only loves us but suffers with us.

So, when we see God and our calling as Christians through the lens of what’s called “Bonhoeffer’s theology from below,” we will be able to respond with a sense of deep compassion (albeit despair and outrage must sometimes come first) to the woundedness and loneliness that lurks beneath the surface o...

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Suicide by Media

Timothy Lau and Natasha Fernandes

September 21, 2018

On Tuesday, Convivium.ca published Peter Menzies’ plea for journalists to stop hurting journalism with reckless opinion-mongering. Today, Dr. Natasha Fernandes and Dr. Timothy Lau cite even more grievous media malfeasance: romanticized reporting of euthanasia spreading the contagion of suicide.

For example, media guidelines for suicide reporting ask that suicides not be romanticized Grounded in social learning theory, it is thought that fragile individuals who read stories romanticizing suicide are led to believe it’s a viable way to end suffering ...

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Just Imperfect Justice

Raymond J. de Souza

September 20, 2018

Recent sexual scandals have ensnared those who might be legally innocent but they are just desserts of a time when too many guilty walked free, Father Raymond de Souza writes.

Also last week, the New York Review of Books ran an essay by Jian Ghomeshi, who was fired from his popular CBC radio show four years ago after some 20 women accused him of sexual assault How should allegations for sexual abuse, harassment or assault be handled outside the criminal justice system? Th...

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Coming Anew to Religious Faith

Ray Pennings

September 19, 2018

With fresh polling data from the Cardus-Angus Reid Institute in hand, Cardus Executive Vice-President Ray Pennings tells Convivium newly arrived Canadians hold the key to renewing our public understanding of faith.

That’s significant about new immigrants, but it’s also significant for the all Canadians however long they’ve been here to understand the place of religious faith in public life But we did ask when they compare the situation here to their home country when it comes to religious freedom, 43 per cent ...

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Yom Kippur and the Tale of Two Goats

Rabbi Moishele Fogel

September 19, 2018

On this day of fasting and Atonement for Jews, Yom Kippur, Convivium publishes a text written earlier in the week by Rabbi Moshe Fogel exploring the path by which we come home to God.

On Yom Kippur a person can choose which goat she or he wants to be – the Azazel goat who walks alone in the desert or the Temple goat who is welcomed home The goats were just part of the Temple’s many rituals and I never really considered the underlying symbolism or inherent link between the Azazel ...

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Journalists Hurting Journalism

Peter Menzies

September 18, 2018

Those who moil in the media have always been privately infatuated with their own opinions, but the current cohort seems obsessed with telling the public what to think, admonishes former Calgary Herald Publisher Peter Menzies.

In response, many reporters have heightened their professional conduct online - posting their work on social media and letting it speak for itself Just this past week, David Akin, Chief Political Correspondent for Global News, commented on a tweet from Ontario Premier Doug Ford regarding his governm...

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When Christians Fall Short

Brittany Beacham

September 17, 2018

Convivium writer Brittany Beacham reminds us that to give our failures to Christ is to live out the Gospel’s saving grace that all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.

Failure puts us face to face with the glory of Christ Failure gives us the opportunity to realign ourselves with the face of Christ, and to kneel before His glory Though not recorded in Scripture, church history holds that at the end of his life, Peter was crucified for his faith in Jesus Christ, hi...

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On Opening Christian School Doors

Matthew Beimers

September 14, 2018

In this second segment of his two-part essay, Matthew Beimers ponders whether the wider community would better know Christians by their love if greater diversity were fostered in Christian schools.

 Perhaps one way the Christian school can contribute to the common good is by rethinking an enrolment policy that would lead to a more diverse student body with a variety of belief structures which would help all students understand that we have much more in common with those we think are different,...

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Schools Leaning Out

Matthew Beimers

September 14, 2018

In part one of this two-part essay appearing on Convivium.ca today and tomorrow, school principal Matthew Beimers makes the case that opening doors to strangers might make Christian education even more Christian, not less.

 For example, in most Christian schools, regardless of enrolment policy, every aspect of the school day—whether that be the daily formational practices, the curriculum and pedagogy, the chapel services, the extracurricular offerings—all point students towards Christ and help them understand how the ...

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New Canadians Keep the Faith

Ray Pennings

September 13, 2018

Canadian society must come to grips with new Angus Reid polling data showing a strong majority of newly arrived Canadians want faith vigorously present in the public square, writes Cardus Executive Vice-President Ray Pennings.

Meanwhile, the latest polling by the Angus Reid Institute (ARI) finds that Canada’s faith communities get a big boost from immigration, which both sculpts and sustains Canada’s diversity Cardus has long argued that true commitment to diversity must acknowledge that communities and individuals of fai...

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Mourning Black America

Raymond J. de Souza

September 13, 2018

The Queen of Soul’s funeral proved a last battle ground for the legacy of Martin Luther King, Father Raymond de Souza writes.

To celebrate Aretha’s life and music is to celebrate the black Church which, from slavery to the civil rights movement, was the essential vehicle for the preservation and flourishing of black culture Williams took the minority view, what one might call the “Abernathy view” – that of Reverend Ralph A...

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The Sharing of Water and Worship

Josh Nadeau

September 12, 2018

On today’s 10th anniversary of literary lion David Foster Wallace’s death, Convivium regular contributor Josh Nadeau reflects on the way his works made “fear of religion irrelevant because, in the end, we’re all worshippers.”

The point he’s making is that these are the kinds of worship that demand attention, that resist the easy, default-mode of ignoring the "water" we’re all living in together Think the kind of attention that drove him to create swarming, pedantic, literary mosaics of people whose commonplace lives, und...

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