2011‑2022, and is preserved here for archival purposes.
Expansion of medically assisted dying risks an explosive moral crisis when shortages already endemic in health care make Canadians choose death over delay, Ruth Dick writes.
One day, before the pandemic arrived and wreaked its depredations on our health care system, I was driving with the radio on and heard, within a single, five minute, top-of-the-hour news recap, both a story about the federal government’s Medical Assistance ...
The Cardus Religious Freedom Institute’s Diakonia Project moved its two researchers to faith-based service themselves, Peter Stockland reports.
When Father Deacon Andrew Bennett and researcher Johanna Lewis began planning the Cardus Religious Freedom Institute’s Diakonia project last year, their aim was to tell the stories of Canadi...
Bill C-7’s expansion of medical aid in dying encodes into law discrimination against disabled Canadians by treating them as less worthy of life than the able-bodied, Keith Dow writes.
Complex networks of roots stretch several times beyond the radius of each tree’s canopy, drawing nutrients and water far from its origin. While we may quickly observe the location of a trunk, or the reach of extended branches, these roots are often invisibl...
A former veteran Mountie and local coroner has a sure-fire way to protect health care workers from being made to administer MAiD. So why won’t anyone answer Sean Murphy’s call? Peter Stockland reports.
Sean Murphy has what he considers a clear way through the tangle between the House of Commons and Senate over Liberal government legislation to expand Medical Assistance in Dying (MAiD).
The former veteran Mountie and coroner says the bill’s status w...
As the Senate studies Bill C-7’s dramatic expansion of medical assistance in dying, Anna Nienhuis and André Schutten warn of a MAiD copycat effect on those tempted to suicide.
Action inspires action. This is often positive, as people’s activities motivate others to engage in positive service too. But there are times when action inspires deadly action. As the Senate continues its review of Bill C-7’s dramatic expansion of medical ...
Susan Korah reports on a Canadian family that helped solve the mystery of a teenage girl’s life and death at Auschwitz.
Hana Brady could be another Anne Frank except she did not leave a diary.
But the suitcase that 13-year-old left behind when she died in a gas chamber at Auschwitz concentration camp continues to teach millions of children around the world the import...
Jonathon Van Maren reports on the teamwork of a socially conservative Alberta MP and liberal feminist senator from Montreal to combat the Canadian-controlled smut giant Pornhub.
For months, the porn industry has received wave after wave of bad news. An Ontario judge decided that Internet companies can be held liable if child porn is hosted on their servers. The New York Times ran an article by Nicholas Kristoff titled “The...
Staff layoffs and eviction of B.C.’s Delta Hospice Society from its facility outside Vancouver show MAiD advocates’ power to impose their will on those who don’t want it, Peter Stockland writes.
You might think the middle of a global pandemic is less than an ideal time to disrupt the operations of a hospice where palliative care patients receive comfort as they approach death.
If so, you would not share the apparent thinking of the B.C. gove...
Along with COVID-19 and a sanity-challenging American election, 2020 made rampant the demolishing of monuments. Gavin Miller warns iconoclasm is more than vandalism: it threatens civil life.
About a year ago, I saw a statue of the Pieta that someone had donated to my friend’s parish. It was placed in a relatively inconspicuous part of the church campus and was frankly hideous, with distorted limbs and blunt facial features. As pastor of the par...
Canadian churches turned red recently hoping to open Canada’s eyes to violence against believers, Susan Korah reports.
The red-lit facades of Mary Queen of the World Cathedral in Montreal, St. Michael’s Cathedral in Toronto, and the Embassy of Hungary in Ottawa stood silhouetted against the dark November sky, in silent tribute to the 260 million Christians around the world ...
Canada’s political amnesia leaves Prime Minister John Diefenbaker almost forgotten. Jonathon Van Maren discovers lost letters that affirm how fiercely Dief fought for human rights from womb to tomb.
“I am Canadian,” John G. Diefenbaker famously declared, “free to speak without fear, free to worship in my own way, free to stand for what I think right, free to oppose what I believe wrong, or free to choose those who shall govern my country. This heritage...
Sacha Baron Cohen’s sequel satirizing America’s cultural moment is at once crude and convincing yet suffers from a cruel refusal to see those it mocks as human, Josh Nadeau writes.
Like many other North Americans trying to make the best of the pandemic’s second wave, I sat down last week and watched Amazon Prime’s latest sensation: Borat Subsequent Moviefilm. It’s a sequel to 2006’s Borat, which saw comedian Sacha Ba...
Through the painful season of his wife’s death, Timothy deVries saw past caricatures of faceless health systems to recognize the rich culture of care surrounding patients, families and medical professionals.
One day in May, 2017, a doctor at St. Joseph’s hospital in Hamilton had the awful task of delivering an incurable cancer diagnosis to a pregnant, 40 year-old, mother. It was an appointment she had been dreading, since very few people are subject to a biopsy...
Agree or disagree with Michael Sandel’s new book, reviewer Robert Joustra writes, it makes an eloquent case that Western society is in desperate need for grace.
Among my faults that my wife has brought to my attention over the years are that I really – really – love it when “people get theirs.” What can I say? I have a passion for justice. But truth be told it is a petty justice. And I am hardly alone. Most of our ...
Afflicted by the ideology of the right to die movement, Christina Lamb writes, Canadians are losing the sense of human dignity that unites us in bearing each other’s suffering.
The ongoing pandemic continues to generate great uncertainty and suffering for people in Canada and around the world. Much of the global response to COVID-19 shows that the goodwill of people to join together and overcome these challenges is altruistic and ...
Convivium Editor Peter Stockland talks with Rev. Deacon Andrew Bennett, director of the Cardus Religious Freedom Institute, about regaining the light of shared humanity in this time of pandemic and racial protest.
Peter Stockland: You talk about human dignity being something that radiates from inside us. What do you mean by that?
Andrew Bennett: Christians and other tra...