2011‑2022, and is preserved here for archival purposes.
Quebec’s secularism bill is a governmental attempt to coerce the religiosity out of public workers, writes publisher Peter Stockland.
Today’s legislative hearings on outlawing the wearing of religious clothing or symbols by specific Quebec public servants could easily be dismissed as proverbial lipstick on a pig.
In fact, they’re worse, much worse, than a skin-deep brush with porci...
There are many great pretenders to the title of greatest athlete of all time. But Father Raymond de Souza acknowledges New England Patriots’ quarterback Tom Brady has a commanding claim to being better than all the rest.
A few weeks back, LeBron James allowed as how his 2016 NBA championship with the Cleveland Cavaliers made him the “greatest of all time.” In sports circles, the “GOAT.” Given that sports talk – radio and cable TV – exists to inflate trivialities into three-...
In the last seven years, Convivium contributor Haley Welch has moved many times: to new neighbourhoods, new provinces, and new countries. To move on (or away) is not equivalent to editing out the reality of that place from her story, she writes.
When I moved into my first apartment that I would not share with roommates, I was elated. It was a bit by accident, and not entirely financially feasible, but it was the best option at the time. I had secured a full-time, permanent position at an great orga...
Father Raymond de Souza sees in the kerfuffle around U.S. Senator Elizabeth Warren’s claim to Native heritage an example of truth being an act of faith for which we should be thankful.
On this American Thanksgiving, as our neighbours reflect upon the blessings of their bountiful land, and their debt to those who went before them, it is a fitting occasion to ask what we know about our own ancestors. What we know is an act of faith, and tea...
Father Raymond de Souza was at a speech given by Jordan Peterson, perusing the foreword to the best-selling author’s latest book, when the mob erupted outside the hall at Queen’s University in Kingston.
It’s sometimes hard to distinguish the show from the sideshow. Both came to Queen’s University last Monday, in the person of Jordan Peterson and those who profess outrage at the professor.
The show was the inaugural installment in a new law school l...
Drawing on Angus Reid polling, Cardus Executive Vice-President Ray Pennings tells Convivium’s Peter Stockland why young Canadians are far more faith driven than the current secular narrative leads us to believe.
Convivium: In a recent symposium hosted by the Centre for Research on Religion at McGill University in Montreal, you made the argument that Angus Reid polling data shows young people are much more engaged in faith than we think. What does t...
Veteran Canadian journalist Lloyd Mackey, a senior editorial advisor to Faith in Canada 150’s Thread of 1000 Stories, recounts meeting Billy Graham while still a school boy in 1951, an encounter that helped shape Mackey’s life and faith.
A few days ago, I was quietly wondering how Billy Graham was doing and hoping that he would still be around in November, when he would turn 100.
He did not make it, but passed away Wednesday, February 21, 2018, almost halfway through his 100th...
Martin McDonagh’s latest film brilliantly blends the Bible and pitch black comedy, writes Convivium reviewer Erik DeLange.
There is a brutal and haunting scene in the middle of Martin McDonagh’s latest film Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri in which the young racist cop named Dixon (played by Sam Rockwell with Oscar-worthy depth and simplicity) comes unhinged b...
As the Convivium Team reflects on the launch of the Sacred Spaces Gallery, Hannah Marazzi sits down with Makoto Fujimura, artist, writer, and catalyst to understand the role of beauty, belonging, and art as signs of the New Creation.
This past year, Convivium launched the Sacred Spaces Gallery, a unique online space devoted to contemplating the intersection of the sacred and divine within ordinary life. Photographers from across the n...
Photographer Hayley Lockrem captures men in prayer, a posture common to those across time, space, and tradition.
I was honoured to be invited to a large Sikh festival by a dear friend. Besides being unconditionally welcomed and over-fed, I was struck by the physical posture during their prayers and ceremonies. I was amazed to find the scene so familiar to experiences ...
Montreal's Museum of Fine Arts features a summer exhibition, Revolution, paying tribute to the 1960s. Convivium Publisher Peter Stockland drops by and finds the only thing missing is the whole truth about that often dangerously demented decade. Did they forget how to spell Charlie Manson's name?
“And all the lousy little poets coming ‘round/tryin’ to sound like Charlie Manson/see the white man dancin’….” Leonard Cohen The Future
Montreal’s Museum of Fine Arts is a major institution in Canada’s only real city, which is w...
Editor in Chief Father Raymond J de Souza delivers a moving reflection on the mosque murder that occurred earlier this week in Quebec City and examines the corresponding themes of solidarity and identity this tragedy asks us to consider.
The burials began yesterday, and it was likely the first time most Canadians had ever seen Islamic funeral rites. It was an impressive witness of prayer from the Muslim congregation gathered at Montreal’s Maurice Richard hockey arena.
Canada’s politi...
Milton Friesen, Program Director for Social Cities at Cardus, shares the importance of strong social fabric and the contribution that religious communities make to the health of their cities.
The day after mass murder claimed six lives at a mosque in Quebec City, Canadians are understandably horrified at the reality of worshippers being gunned down while at prayer, and simultaneously frightened by the prospect of religious violence raising i...
Father Raymond J de Souza takes a look at empathy in the broader context of today's entertainment industry and socio-political sphere.
On Friday the curtain lifts on the greatest reality show of them all, Celebrity White House. Courtesy of social media, the whole world is invited to the spectacle of Donald Trump as president. For the past two months, his election victory has brought – as t...
Publisher Peter Stockland reviews recently released film Hidden Figures and examines the nature of a forgiveness that continues to honour pain and hard truths.
Visiting Atlanta’s Martin Luther King Jr. Center for Nonviolent Social Change once, I overheard a black boy ask his mother: “Why were white people so bad to us?”
It was neither a surprising nor unreasonable question. The King Centre’s detailing of ra...
Peter Stockland examines the art of obituary authorship's demise and our ever growing mis-relation with death.
It’s probably never diplomatic to speak of funerals as good news. Still, a silver lining in last weekend’s return of Debby Reynolds to the dust from which she came is that it should put an end to the necrotic cataloguing of celebrities who kicked it in 2016...
This book is about the war between science and religion: about how science has won this war so thoroughly that it can explain why religion will not go away, why there are people who choose God over science.If this sounds absurd, that's because it is. Really, a "religious" person could make the same case on the same grounds simply by inverting the key terms.
[This review was originally published in Convivium Magazine and in Books and Culture.] It's a curious irony that the champions of scientism are some of the most vocal advocates of change and progress yet they so rarely change or progres...
This article first appeared on providencemag.com, the website of Providence: A Journal of Christianity & American Foreign Policy. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
According to recent polls, more than a third of self-identified white evangelical voters currently support a presidential candidate, Donald Trump, who ...
Convivium Publisher Peter Stockland examines the link between current U.S. President Donald Trump and WWE.
On April Fool’s Day in 2...
Even minus the inspiration of Trudeau père in spiritus, however, Canadians who care at all about our constitutional democracy, and about the rule of law, should be deeply alarmed by what was done to push forward physician assisted suicide in this country. Whatever side of the assisted suicide debate you might be on, the abuse of process that occurred has foundational implications for our continuity as a Confederation as envisaged by the British North America Act and by the Constitution Act of 1982.
An early surprise of 2016 has to be the failure of Pierre Elliott Trudeau's ghost to streak across the sky ululating at the damage done last week to his beloved Canadian constitution.
Even minus the inspiration of Trudeau père in spiritus, how...
Leaving aside the question of whether it’s possible to have a fair double standard, it seems to me there is a more compelling question for Catholics—and all Christians. It’s this: should we care about the double standard we face? Why? Gerson’s text typified the phenomenon. It centred on a flap that arose at a Calgary school board meeting when a Catholic trustee challenged the newly invented writ of transgenderism.
The headline on a recent column by National Post editor Jen Gerson asked whether Catholics face an unfair double standard.
Leaving aside the...
Regular downpours in the morning and afternoon were responsible for dampening much of the fun both on the Hill and in what is known as the parliamentary precinct along Wellington Street. Those who did turn out in Canada-loving red and white gave it their best to look, sometimes a little frantically, as though they were having a good time.
If Canada Day on Parliament Hill was a dry run for the nation’s 2017 birthday party, we might be in for some soggy cake icing and spluttering candles.
Regular downpours in the morning and afternoon were responsible for dampening much of the fun both ...
Believing it to be gold, Captain John Smith sent an entire shipload of pyrite to London in the early 1600s. Known as “fool’s gold,” pyrite is actually an iron sulfide, a mineral of limited value. Like Smith and his shipment, we tend to think that all our ideas are pure gold, when in fact they may often be more like pyrite.
This blog by Cardus senior fellow John Seel was originally published at the Evangelicals for Social Action Spiritual Life blog.
Believing ...
The document, funded by a Social Sciences Research and Humanities Council grant, explored the political preferences of Canadians under 35 years of age. Political scientist David McGrane, of the University of Saskatchewan, led a team that mined a dataset of responses from more than 8,000 "young" Canadians. .
At its annual Progress Summit this past weekend, the Broadbent Institute released a study that was interesting for its data—and fascinating for the way data serves political ends.
The document, funded by a Social Sciences Research and Humanities Coun...