Cultural Renewal

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.

Earlier this month, Convivium featured a review by John O’Brien, S.J. of Rod Dreher’s disputatious new book The Benedict Option.

Dreher’s work has become a conversation kick-starter by proposing Western Christians seek communities that are m...

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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.

As part of a think tank dedicated to renewing North American social architecture, the Ottawa office of Cardus is not everyone’s idea of a show place for religious art.

But then as a mother of three adult children, teacher, Oxford PhD, and volunteer l...

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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.

The curiosity is the way the almost unnoticed public act propels intensely rigorous private i...

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City of Sparks

Hannah Marazzi, Tim Day

April 10, 2017

Convivium's Hannah Marazzi sits down with Tim Day of City Movement to discuss listening postures, the digital age, and Canada's transforming faith landscape.

I first encountered Tim Day in the back of the Jacob Javits Centre in New York City. Three football fields in length and constructed largely of glass and steel beams, the Javits Centre was being prepared to welcome...

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Who Is My Neighbour?

Gideon Strauss

March 31, 2017

In the final installment of his Outremont series, Convivium correspondent Gideon Strauss reflects on the truth he has learned from journeying alongside his neighbours and the true nature of belonging.

“My anger and irritability are the flip side of my frustrated desire to connect, my desire to feel a part of my street, to feel I belong to this place.” ~ Joseph Rosen

With great...

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Re-seeing Religious Resentment

Gideon Strauss

March 24, 2017

Today, Gideon Strauss introduces us to his beloved Outremont through the eyes of Valérie Amiraux, author, scholar, professor, and Outremont resident.

“When people address religion, they address religion for what they see of religion…and what they see is people who do not behave as they would.” ~ Valérie Amiraux

Salomé et les hommes en noir is ...

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Building the Social City

Milton Friesen

March 21, 2017

The networks of relationships needed to make a community not only liveable but also sociable can be vast and complex. But as Milton Friesen writes, they can also be entered into, appreciated and drawn upon by something as simple and convivial as shared conversation over grits and fried catfish.

Chief among the privileges of leading the Cardus Social Cities program are the many opportunities to meet people who are doing significant work in communities and cities across Canada, the United States and around the world. These conversations, email excha...

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Fitting Faith In Common Life

Daniel Proussalidis

February 13, 2017

Following the Convivium Launch Party in the Cardus Ottawa office, Daniel Proussalidis shares how, throughout the evening, the four panelists with different perspectives and backgrounds concluded that faith does indeed have a place in the common life of Canadians.

Tell me if you’ve heard this one before:

“A politician, an art gallery curator, a newspaper publisher, and a Jewish activist walk into a think tank office ...”

What sounds like the start of a formulaic joke is actually the beginning of a power...

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Which NDP will introduce the "Act to End Predatory Lending"?

Brian Dijkema

March 23, 2016

The idea is sound. As noted in a recent report by Cardus, Banking on the Margins, payday lenders and the loans themselves are structured in such a way as to encourage their customers to become dependent. The loans, while quick and easy, do not build credit, and they require customers to pay back the original amount borrowed plus substantial interest in one lump sum. Too often this results in adding a significant deluge of spending for people who are already struggling to maintain a responsible cash-flow. An unemployed construction worker from Fort McMurray who has trouble making ends meet one week can be crippled by the automatic withdrawal of his previous week’s shortage plus interest rates that, in Alberta at an annual rate of 839% on a ten-day term, are the second highest in the country. And, as our research suggests, the struggle doesn’t stay with the individual. The lack of funds and the increase in debt are linked to mounting costs to families, significant physical and mental health problems, increased criminal activity, and a host of other problems which ultimately strain society – and often the government.

In the throne speech this month, Lieutenant Governor Lois Mitchell announced the Notley government’s intention to “protect Albertans who are experiencing economic d...

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Changing Politics for a Changed Country

Michael Van Pelt

March 7, 2016

Saying “government should not” is as simplistic as saying “government should” if there is nothing else that follows. Yes, conservatives believe in limited government. But this requires more than arithmetic requiring the size of government. What government should do, it should do well and enough resources need to be dedicated to those tasks.

Co-authored by Michael Van Pelt (President), and Ray Pennings (Executive Vice-President) of Cardus, a Canadian think ta...

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Stolen Sisters

Naomi Biesheuvel

June 9, 2015

I’ve been climbing up 500 stairs that lead from downtown Hamilton to the top of the Niagara escarpment for the last year. This, the longest climb along the mountain brow, has become familiar routine. But one day in May, as I reached the bottom of the stairs...

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Law, Design, and the Human Habitat: Part II

Milton Friesen

May 13, 2015

This article is the second half of Social Cities director Milton Friesen's report from a recent trip to Dallas for the Congress for the New Urbanism. For part I, wh...

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2014 in Review: A Call for Civic Courage

Doug Sikkema

December 31, 2014

What keeps our money safe in banks? Trust. What allows us to live in homes without large concrete walls and barbed wire? Trust. Why can I can drop my child off at school so easily? Trust. Trust means I drive safely in to work each day. It lets me worship in my church, mosque, or synagogue without fear of persecution.

If you ask people what the most important virtue needed for a civil society to flourish is, I'd wager that the majority would say it's trust.

What keeps our money safe in banks? Trust. What allows us to live in homes without large concrete walls and...

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Relatable Art and Invitational Work

Janice Tolkamp

October 24, 2014

In contemporary art, I find some of the most highly technical paintings or perfectly exhibited pieces can put up a blockade between the viewer and the artist. These pieces can encourage the view that art is inaccessible and unapproachable to the everyday viewer, rather than engaging and relatable. This causes me to wonder if, instead of fostering the idea that art can only be appreciated by well-seasoned critics, artists could be more generous by intentionally revealing some of the process within their pieces.

This summer I had the privilege to admire some very famous works of art in person. Michelangelo's David was definitely one of the more iconic. Turning the corner into the gallery, it was pretty hard to miss the 14-foot, shiny marble human figure, e...

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Inside the Islamic State

Doug Sikkema

August 14, 2014

Since ISIS is presumably allowing the filming to take place, you can be sure there are some tight controls over just what gets projected beyond the tenuous borders (a.k.a. fronts) of the newly resurrected Islamic Caliphate. So it's even more shocking that with such filters, there is almost no attempt to hide beheadings and crucifixions and gun-wielding children threatening death to all infidels outside Islam and apostates within it. Of course, ISIS is not likely going to cater to what they see as our "soft sensibilities," yet one still gets the distinct feeling that there's something not being said, something lurking between the lines.

If you haven't been following the five-part series The Islamic State put out by VICE News, you might consider it if you're interested in the shocking parade of stories coming out of Iraq and Syria. (You can get caught up ...

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Welcome home, Quebec

Peter Stockland

April 15, 2014

For the first time since the mid-1960s, for the first time in a half-century that is, the central political question at the heart of our Confederation has been definitively answered. The answer to whether Quebecers want to leave the federation and establish sovereign relations with what remains of Canada is unequivocally: "No." A former post office at the Musee du Fort, Quebec CityThe combined popular vote for the two parties that campaigned against the whole idea of sovereignty and staging another referendum was almost exactly the same percentage as pre-campaign polls that showed two-thirds of Quebecers rejected the option.

While the rest of Canada must still watch its Ps and Qs vis-à-vis Quebec, this week's provincial election is much more than a sigh of relief for the country.

For the first time since the mid-1960s, for the first time in a half-century that is, the ce...

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Ukraine: Does it Matter Where you Stand?

Doug Sikkema

March 7, 2014

Parallax was one of the ordering principles informing Joyce's Ulysses. The story shifts from Leopold Bloom to Molly to Stephen Daedalus and to a whole host of other minor characters' viewpoints, constantly destabilizing what we thought we knew about transpired and transpiring events. Eliot's journey through The Waste Land is similarly a kaleidoscope of ever-shifting viewpoints and voices, reflecting upon the secularizing Western world between the wars. Really, it's the same narrative principle that guided television series like LOST and films like Crash or Babel. The fixed viewpoint, that seemingly authoritative center of interpretation, becomes dislocated, making these stories more interesting, but also more unsettling: we don't like it when the ground shifts beneath our feet.

I don't remember much from high school physics, but—for whatever reason—the idea of parallax stuck. Oddly enough, parallax, the idea that what we see is often affected by where we stand, is also an import...

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Conversation Changes for Social Conservatives

Ray Pennings

March 5, 2014

"The terms of our surrender" is how Ross Douthat describes what's left for Americans who hold a traditional definition of marriage. As with abortion and other hot-button moral issues that preceded it, social conservatives have lost the cultu...

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An Enabling Economy

Brian Dijkema

March 4, 2014

Last week, Cardus's program director for Work and Economics, Brian Dijkema, sat down with the CEO of Christian Horizons, Janet Nolan, to talk about labour shortages, productivity, and the surprising economic and community benefits that come when disable...

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Cardus Daily's Greatest Hits of 2013 - Part 2

Naomi Biesheuvel

December 31, 2013

5. In August, Cardus senior fellow John Seel took a look at beauty and the arts. Opportunity … requires the foundation of a home and family that provide security, support, and an education in virtue, which in turn enable children to achieve success in school. - Families, Flourishing, and Upward Mobility

We've put together a list of the blog posts we published this year that we wouldn't want anyone to miss. For part one, click here.

...

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Cardus Daily's Greatest Hits of 2013 - Part 1

Naomi Biesheuvel

December 30, 2013

10. In February, Peter Stockland interviewed Anne Leahy, Canada's former ambassador to the Holy See, about Pope Benedict XVI's resignation. To say you know what is good for people is pretty much the very definition of paternalism. So why not be honest about that and sign up for it? - 'You'll Thank Me Later': Paternalism and the Common Good 8. And our friend Kyle Bennett considered artists as images of the Creator:

As a holiday treat, we've put together a list of some of our most popular blog posts from this year. Enjoy!

...

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Advent Hope

Ray Pennings

December 18, 2013

Corporately, we try to apply justice, responsibility, freedom, dignity, and community to the issues of today.

A think tank that works from 2,000 years of Christian social thought spends most of its time on theoretical concepts. Corporately, we try to apply justice, responsibility, freedom, dignity, and community to the issues of today.

The good news is, we s...

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The Continued Work of Restoration

Kathryn de Ruijter

December 6, 2013

The park is a popular place for residents of the neighbourhood and visitors alike. For me, walking the High Line while the sun peaked over the buildings around us was a highlight of our time in the city. It is a unique place that offers both beauty and recreational space to those who use it, while at the same time preserving a piece of the neighbourhood's history.

One very early morning a few years ago, while my husband and I were visiting New York City, we made our way to the High Line at sunrise. After a ...

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Championing a Cause the Countercultural Way

Peter Stockland

October 30, 2013

Since last Thursday, Michael Van Pelt, Ray Sawatsky, and I have accompanied Paul Donovan, the principal of Montreal's Loyola High School, on a six-city tour. We've met with small groups and with members of the media to inform them of Loyola's upcoming Supreme Court case against the Quebec government.

Crossing Canada on a Cardus mission during the past week has brought home what it means to be countercultural.

Since last Thursday, Michael Van Pelt, Ray Sawatsky, and I have accompanied Paul Donovan, the principal of Montreal's Loyola High School, ...

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