Moments of Beauty Break In

Hannah Marazzi, Carolyn Weber

May 1, 2017

In literature and in physical creation, author Carolyn Weber tells Convivium’s Hannah Marazzi, are instants when the bird before our eyes becomes the miracle that God delights in making normal.

When we don’t give people faith as a viable form of living, I think we deny them even a very basic human right of being able to make a decision People of faith have an identity that lies in a story larger than their own moments CW: I have so appreciated the work of Victor Frankl who speaks to the di...

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City As Witness

Peter Stockland

May 1, 2017

In the midst of a crowd, the Cross rise high, signifying the presence of the sacred in silent prayer. 

The photo of a public worship service in downtown Montreal appeals to me  because of the way the Cross signifies the sacred, but the heads bowed in silent prayer affirm its presence ...

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Preston Manning

Lloyd Mackey

April 28, 2017

Preston Manning came by his interest naturally, in what he calls “navigating the faith-political interface.” His father, Ernest C. Manning was premier of Alberta for over two decades in the mid-twentieth century. During that time, he was the voice of Canada’s National Bible Hour (CNBH) – which attracted 600,000 listeners weekly, nationwide.

One of the consequences of such was that when western interest began to coalesce around Manning’s interest in developing the Reform Party of Canada, in the late 80s, many of those Christian political aspirants liked what they saw in the new party Much of his leadership in this process could be easil...

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What Brent McCamon Said

Janice Fiamengo, Christina Lamb, Sydney Harker, Aaron Neil

April 28, 2017

In late March, Ottawa writer and researcher Brent McCamon wrote sceptically on Convivium.ca about protestors who tried to prevent University of Toronto Professor Jordan Peterson from speaking at the National Gallery of Canada. The activists wanted Peterson “de-platformed” because of his opposition to State-mandated use of transgender positive pronouns. McCamon, in “Wherefore Art Thou Peterson,” argued the academic advent of so-called “intersectionality theory” is spreading incoherence outward from Canadian university campuses.

Jordan Peterson felt safe when protesters referred to him as a “transphobic piece of s***” during his recent attempt to lecture at McMaster University? What about social scientist Charles Murray, who was attacked by protesters after a lecture he gave at Middlebury College? The protestors were so vio...

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Emptied Out of Egypt

Raymond J. de Souza

April 27, 2017

Convivium Editor in Chief Father Raymond J. de Souza reflects on the significance of Pope Francis and Bartholomew, Patriarch of Constantinople, addressing a peace conference hosted by the Al-Azhar mosque in Egypt tomorrow. 

It is not a long way from the Nile River delta to the hills overlooking the Jordan River valley, but the empty tomb is the definitive rejection of all that is represented by the pyramids of ancient Egypt More than 15 years ago, after a visit to Egypt, I reflected on the contrast between the pyramids...

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Witness

Chris Rowe, Liana Esau

April 27, 2017

Chris Rowe's profound image serves as a visual backdrop to poet Liana Esau's reflections on prayer, death, listening, and love.

And that’s something, I suppose ...

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The Empty Daycare Dilemma

Andrea Mrozek

April 26, 2017

Data obtained by Cardus Family shows a shocking number of subsidized daycare spots sit empty even as the federal government, Ontario and Toronto promise billions of tax dollars to create even more.  

Yet data obtained by Cardus Family through Access to Information shows the city of Toronto alone had a 45 per cent increase in the average number of vacant daycare spaces between 2009 and 2017 Incidentally, another thing the City of Toronto said is that the spaces aren't being used because new dayca...

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Cardus Law: You, Me, Community

Peter Stockland and Andrew P.W. Bennett

April 25, 2017

With the release of a new research paper this week exploring relations between law, faith and government, and with planning underway for launch of a new religious freedom institute later this year, Cardus Law Program Director Andrew Bennett took time to catch up with Convivium.ca publisher Peter Stockland and discuss the critical balance between individual and institutional faith rights. 

Professor Scharffs tries to anchor the whole understanding of religious freedom within the Western tradition, within the legal tradition, looking both at how do we understand freedom of religion as a core human right historically and also, given a lot of the present questions around jurisdictions, a...

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The Politics of Apocalypse

Robert Joustra, Alissa Wilkinson

April 24, 2017

Debate rages on whether it’s possible to engage a militantly secular age, or if retreat is, in Leonard Cohen’s words, “the only engine of survival.” Robert Joustra and Alissa Wilkinson in their book How to Survive the Apocalypse: Zombies, Cylons, Faith & Politics at the End of the World, find the answer in Daniel, a prophet who profited from an apocalypse by his strategic sense of loyalty.

Daniel is our patron saint because religious people, and especially evangelicals, often feel unsettled or out of place in this Secular age Often, we religious types take a hard look at this modern culture, its crisis of individualist authenticity, its slide to subjectivism, its double loss of freedo...

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Debating Rod Dreher

John Zucchi, Jason Zuidema, Anna Farrow

April 21, 2017

Earlier this month, Convivium featured a review by John O’Brien, S.J. of Rod Dreher’s disputatious new book The Benedict Option. Today, readers respond both to O'Brien's piece and the conversation that Dreher has opened within the contemporary faith community. 

But O’Brien, she says, gets it right when he corrects Dreher’s error in relying on only one saint – Saint Benedict – rather than on the communion of saints that is essential to the faith of all Creedal Christians O'Brien helpfully reminds us that Benedictine monasticism itself had varying relationsh...

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Time To End The Weekend

Raymond J. de Souza

April 20, 2017

Even the French are now confortable saying le weekend, but for Convivium’s editor-in-chief the “w” word itself is the beginning of the end.

The disciples of Christ, however, are asked to avoid any confusion between the celebration of Sunday, which should truly be a way of keeping the Lord’s Day holy, and the “weekend,” understood as a time of simple rest and relaxation Easter above all should remind us that Saturday (the Jewish Sabbath)...

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Edwin C. Phillips

Lloyd Mackey

April 19, 2017

During Edwin Phillips' formative years, he was increasingly attracted to the business world – and a life of faith. And his location within the Hollywood orb led to crowd bit parts – with payment in free popcorn – in such biblical epic films as King of Kings and Ben Hur.

Phillips became imbued with the congregational concepts that shaped that movement and, during his early years, was a lay leader in what became Westway Christian Church in the western suburbs of Toronto Phillips also became part of a weekly downtown Vancouver prayer breakfast group whose major annual...

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Art and the Divine

Peter Stockland

April 19, 2017

This weekend our Convivium team is hosting artist Juss Rani Kaur, transforming our office into a showcase for her “Reflective Mantra Art Series" as part of Sikh Heritage Month. Publisher Peter Stockland reports on Kaur's story and her connection to the Divine. 

It was evident when I met with Kaur earlier this year in her office at McGill, and later at her home in suburban Brossard, that the exhibition represents a full blossoming not just of her artistic gifts, but of the way her deep religious faith infuses and is inseparable from the work she creates As ...

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Proper Property Rights

Brian Dijkema

April 18, 2017

Cardus Work and Economics Program Director Brian Dijkema reflects on John Robson's latest National Post Column and the link between property, our work, and our humanity.

An account of the link between property, our work, and our humanity is incomplete without a conception of the obligations that come with property rights (and other rights, of course) and a moral case for the social nature of our humanity But to leave it there ends up silently suggesting that the sha...

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Utterly Transformed

Peter Stockland

April 17, 2017

Publisher Peter Stockland reflects on the "why" behind the annual Stations of the Cross tradition he participates in each year in downtown Montreal, Quebec. He asks readers to consider the value of a community and the depth of our belief in the one who gave us His all on the cross. 

There is something simultaneously curious and rigorous about walking in community through mostly empty city streets as a gesture of deepest Christian faith And yet….To lean out, camera in hand, to focus my lens on the details of a face turned rigorously toward its heart, to see faith in the shape of...

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