Standing Up For "Wrong" Belief

Rabbi Chaim Strauchler

May 10, 2018

This week, as Cardus launches its Canadian Religious Freedom Institute, Convivium publishes a column by Toronto Rabbi Chaim Strauchler that stands up for freedom of belief just as Allied soldiers stood up for Jewish comrades in a 1945 prisoner of war camp.

Similarly, if Jewish organizations accept government funding for summer jobs that is granted only to those who share the government’s beliefs, they too become complicit in discrimination By becoming allies to Canadians with “wrong” beliefs, we will make clear that our government should judge all of ...

Read more...

The Triumph of the Infinite

John Weston

May 9, 2018

In the third of three-part Convivium series based on a recent workshop he led at the Christian Writers’ Guild in Ottawa, author, lawyer and former MP John Weston maps his own experience to help others overcome fear of failure and deepen our lived faith.

Don’t let the fear of failure stop you from exercising your great gift, as a person of faith and writer  But once you’ve embraced failure, worked on specific skills, and put together the two components of your secret weapon, what next?   If you can embrace failure, work on specific skills, and recog...

Read more...

Staring Down the 500 Pound Gorilla

John Weston

May 8, 2018

In the second of a three-part Convivium series drawn from a workshop he led at the Christian Writers’ Guild in Ottawa, author, lawyer and former MP John Weston maps his own experience to help others overcome fear of failure and deepen our lived faith.

Ed said, “It’s October, it’s raining, you’ve just lost your job, you’re asking your wife to head to Ottawa, and you’re going somewhere alone to write a book? You might as well just end it all right now So why should we expect our first solution to a problem in our life to be the last or perfect one?...

Read more...

Faith From Failure in Politics and Writing

John Weston

May 7, 2018

In a three-part Convivium series based on a recent workshop he led at the Christian Writers’ Guild in Ottawa, author, lawyer and former MP John Weston maps his own experience to help others overcome fear of failure and deepen our lived faith.

...

Read more...

Me Against the World

Jamil Jivani

May 4, 2018

Catastrophes such as the April 23 mass murder of 10 Toronto pedestrians deepens bafflement about those committing these heinous crimes. In Why Young Men: Rage, Race and the Crisis of Identity, Jamil Jivani draws on his own background of angry dislocation to explore the "whys" – and "why nots" – of male ultra-violence.

When I’d been out of law school for a few years and had gained some experience as a lawyer, community organizer and law professor, I felt compelled to write this book about young men who are vulnerable to being pulled in different directions, as I was At eight, I’d seen my black and Muslim father be...

Read more...

On the Wind

May 3, 2018

Can we learned from the winged creatures in our midst, attentive to the merest breeze? Do we too possess the same stillness with which to sense the movements of the Spirit?  

How is it that these winged creatures stir at the merest ruffle of the wind? How is it that their spirits respond to the merest breathe of air? Where are you Holy Spirit? Do you stir my spirit without response? Do you call me like fresh breath? Am I yet still enough to respond?   ...

Read more...

Marking Time With Meaning

Raymond J. de Souza

May 3, 2018

Against the ephemera of a “trending” time, Father Raymond de Souza contrasts the enduring calendar of holy days.

...

Read more...

Getting Education Right

Peter Stockland with Ray Pennings

May 2, 2018

In a recent talk to a group of conservatives, classical liberals, and libertarians, Cardus Executive Vice-President Ray Pennings challenged those present to re-think their approach to educating Canadian kids. Too often, he tells Convivium’s Peter Stockland, the Right offers more problems than solutions to what ails our schools.

The result is that we have a public school system operating as a monopoly with a monopoly mindset protecting their monopoly and resistant to innovation.So, we have a robust sense of public education, we have meaningful choice, not based on private/public but of different sorts that parents right acr...

Read more...

Justin's Pipe Smoke

Don Hutchinson

May 1, 2018

Prime Minister Trudeau must clear the air with Canadians about his government funding anti-pipeline activists while at the same time violating religious freedoms by denying church charities summer job funding, writes Convivium contributor Don Hutchinson.

The twinning project was approved by the Trudeau government in November 2016, following a 29 month review process.The Prime Minister will not tolerate even a hint of potential opposition from religious charities with long histories of meeting the needs of Canada’s disadvantaged, and with no history ...

Read more...

Stopping to Look at L'Arche

Peter Stockland with Randall Wright

April 30, 2018

Randall Wright’s cinematic close up of L’Arche, Jean Vanier’s community for people with mental disabilities, opens today in theatres across Canada. The British documentary maker spoke with Convivium’s Peter Stockland about the powerful change that followed acceptance of Vanier’s invitation to see humanity itself in an entirely new light.

I would have liked to have had more in the film of the one thing Jean values very highly, which is to give people back their past If we want to change the world, if we want peace, we have to be prepared to meet people who are from another group, who people unknown to us, maybe even our enemies Somet...

Read more...

Comey Chameleon

David McKernan

April 27, 2018

Convivium contributor David McKernan finds fired FBI director James Comey’s new book A Higher Loyalty scores low on articulating enduring truth.

If we are to learn from his words of wisdom, and become ethical leaders ourselves; if we are to respect our call to a higher loyalty despite whatever values may inform that loyalty, we should be open to the truth of what Comey has to say Superficially, it suggests Comey has something to say about lo...

Read more...

Good News Brewing For TWU?

Albertos Polizogopoulos

April 26, 2018

Canada’s beer drinkers are crying in their suds over last week’s Supreme Court decision on interprovincial trade barriers. But Ottawa lawyer Albertos Polizogopoulos says a legal principle at the heart of that ruling might put smiles on the mugs of Trinity Western University supporters.

In that decision, the Supreme Court chose not to reprimand the trial and appellate courts that did not follow a Supreme Court of Canada precedent that was materially on-point.In explaining why it was appropriate for the lower courts to do so, the Supreme Court stated that if “new legal issues are ra...

Read more...

Finding The Whole in Addiction

Tim McCauley

April 25, 2018

Addiction is often characterized as God-shaped hole in the heart. But as Father Tim McCauley writes, Christians can find even in overcoming such compulsion the opening to a revelation of unifying Love.

...

Read more...

Renewing End-of-Life Care

Doug Sikkema

April 24, 2018

There’s a growing need for more and better end-of-life care in Canada – especially as our population ages. But how does the national picture affect our local communities? Cardus Senior Researcher Doug Sikkema and Ottawa policy analyst Marisa Casagrande have analyzed two of Ontario’s larger communities to get a better idea of what challenges the health system will face, and what all parts of society need to bring to the table to meet them..

While hospitals might not be ideally suited for death and dying because of their focus on restoration and health, they still have an integral role to play in the palliative care of Canadians The bill calls on the minister of health and long-term care to develop a “provincial framework designed to su...

Read more...

Resplendent Sky

Anar Rajabali

April 24, 2018

Anar Rajabali marvels at the vibrant colours of the Okanagan on a summer afternoon, and how her eyes and mind are drawn up.

...

Read more...