Vocation

  • Stockland Moving On… But Not Out

    Convivium's co-founder says goodbye to become publisher of the Catholic Register but Ray Pennings, Cardus Executive Vice-President, welcomes Peter Stockland home as a Senior Fellow.  

    It is said of Cardus that once you’ve worked here for a certain length of time, you never actually leave; you’re just not there at the moment.

    So it is that while, officially and formally, I’ll be stepping down as editor of Convivium.ca effective Dec...

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  • Journos Who Soldier On

    Peter Stockland argues that despite the legitimate criticism journalism gets for all its institutional failings, abundant first-rate reporters and writers serve Canadian democracy well.

    Honesty demands acknowledgement.

    In recent weeks I’ve written, and other Convivium.ca writers have contributed, sharp criticism of journalistic performance on a variety of issues.

    It’s true that at the institutional level, corporate providers ...

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  • A Rabbi for the Long Way Home

    Father Deacon Andrew Bennett, program director for Religious Freedom at Cardus, and Hannah Marazzi, former Cardus staff member, celebrate and mourn their dear friend, Rabbi Reuven Bulka.

    The just man will never waver: he will be remembered forever. He has no fear of evil news; with a firm heart he trusts in the Lord.

    During these past 15 months many of us have longed for community, those places, times, and even spaces in whi...

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  • The Rooted Wanderer

    The advent of digital nomadism, Josh Nadeau writes from experience, opens the door to home becoming pilgrimage, and roots becoming spirit to stretch instead of matter that restrains. 

    When one speaks of the omnipresent Millennial, a number of well-formed stereotypes come to mind. You have your vinyl-laden cultural connoisseurs, for example, or your selfie mavens (complete with seasonal latte) or experts in ‘90s nostalgia. While it’s ulti...

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  • A Love Louder Than Noise

    The New York Times and National Post recently discovered the "trend" of young women entering religious orders to become nuns. Marlena Loughheed didn't need to read the news. She listened to her heart, and shares with Convivium why she answered the call to consecrated life.

    As a child, I wanted to be famous. It wasn’t so much that I wanted to be well known or revered. Rather, I wanted my life to matter. In my limited childhood understanding, fame was the reward for a life that mattered.

    These innocent childhood longings...

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  • The Kingdom In A War Zone

    Canadian nurse Emily Way recently returned from Iraq where she worked in a Samaritan’s Purse field hospital near the besieged city of Mosul. She discussed with Convivium’s Hannah Marazzi the impact on faith of treating the wounded and fallen in one of the world’s most brutal war zones.

    Convivium: First of all, what got  you connected to Samaritan’s Purse and this opportunity in particular?

    Emily Way: I have known about Samaritan’s Purse (SP) for as long as I can remember. My elementary and junior h...

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  • Independent Image

    For nearly 30 years, Seattle-based Image journal has striven to combine the beauty of art and the mystery of faith without deferring to what founding editor Greg Wolfe calls “any single tribal group in society.” Convivium’s Hannah Marazzi asked him about the motivation and the struggles of such a venture. 

    Convivium: Founded in 1989, Image began as a work of literary and artistic love, and has endured and indeed flourished across the years to become one of America’s leading literary journals that seeks to bring the intersection of fa...

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  • The Boundless Hope Option

    John D. O’Brien, S.J. reviews Rod Dreher’s The Benedict Option citing its value in igniting conversation, observing also the ways in which Christians might at once be different from and love the world at the very same time.

    Rod Dreher’s The Benedict Option is valuable for the conversations it has ignited, reviewer John D. O’Brien, S.J. writes. But its premise is flawed history and its pessimism ignores the rich possibilities of Christian faith, he says.  

    Obser...

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  • The Canon's Answer

    Convivium’s publication of David Goa’s review of “The Slow Professor, Challenging the Culture of Speed in the Academy” by Maggie Berg and Barbara K.Seeber sparked lively debate among our readers. The most eloquent were from university students engaged in various degree levels and programs of study.

    Convivium’s publication of David Goa’s review of “The Slow Professor, Challenging the Culture of Speed in the Academy” by Maggie Berg and Barbara K.Seeber sparked lively debate among our...

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  • Full Disclosure

    Author T.W.S. Hunt reflects on the true nature of pluralism as a tool to navigate difference within both society and literature. 

    I wrote a book recently. The first question people ask is what is the book about? I wish I could tell them I wrote a novel. Novelists are like superstars. I’d also have been okay with writing a book about ornithology or moral ecology, something that would m...

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  • Workers Present

    Cardus Work and Economics Program Director Brian Dijkema reflects on the opportunity that construction season provides us to celebrate the "vast array of talents and skills that it takes to keep a country and its economy functioning." 

    Virtually no one in Canada can drive to the cottage or campsite without coming across a sign like this:

    ...

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  • Happy are those

    Fr. de Souza and Dr. Weigel at the March 17 eventIt took the future Polish pope much of his youth even to decide to become a priest, Weigel told an audience at Toronto's Tyndale University College and Seminary. Interviewed on stage by Convivium's editor-in-chief, Father Raymond J. de Souza, Weigel pointed out that once young Karol Wojtyla did undertake his priestly mission, he harboured no desire to ascend through the hierarchy of the Catholic Church.

    At Tuesday's Cardus-Convivium event, author George Weigel described Pope John Paul II's life as the "finger of Providence pushing him along a path" of discernment.

    [caption id="attachment_3825" ...

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  • Thinking With Your Hands

    Crawford, who wrote the New York Times bestseller Shop Class as Soulcraft: An Inquiry Into the Value of Work, was the featured guest speaker at Cardus's latest Hill Family Lecture Series, which took place as a component of the Building Meaning Project. Following his lecture, he was joined by Ray Pennings of Cardus, Bob Blakely of Canada's Building Trades, and Sarah Watts-Rynard of the Canadian Apprenticeship Forum.

    "It is a kind of progress when you no longer have to mess around with dipsticks and dirty rags," Matthew Crawford stated at the Museum of Nature in Ottawa, Ontario, last month, "but I also want to just notice that there is a kind of moral education that is ...

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  • The Value of Skilled Trades in Canada

    Yet it feels like a curiously controversial thing when the minister offers his related belief that employers, trade unions and other non-government actors actually have a responsibility to open doors to work for Canadians. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

    It's an uncontroversial thing when Employment Minister Jason Kenney says he believes work is a good thing.

    Yet it feels like a curiously controversial thing when the minister offers his related belief...

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  • No Shame in Dirty Hands

    There was a certain look students had when they would come to my office a few days into a new semester to confess that they were "dropping down" from University Prep English. Rather than soaring on to academia after their senior year, they were now trundlin...

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  • Sages and Saints

    If you're planning to enter university or college in a month or so, or maybe even just graduated this past spring and are on the hunt for gainful employment, you've probably heard a form of this question at least a dozen times from well-intentioned parents and friends. Now if you're going into the sciences, any of the tech fields, or engineering, the question is usually accompanied with a look slyly acknowledging the oyster-ness of your world.

    "So just what are you going to do with that degree?" 

    If you're planning to enter university or college in a month or so, or maybe even just graduated this past spring and are on the hunt for gainful employment, you've probably heard a form ...

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  • In the Absence of Virtuous Leaders

    Before his public appearance, I sat down with Havard and asked about how employees can respond when their leaders are not virtuous. He responded with his thoughts on the spiritual needs of human beings, and how they play out in the workplace. Havard had some specific advice for those of us who may find ourselves lacking exemplary leadership.

    Last week, I had the privilege of interviewing Alexandre Havard, the Moscow-based author and founder of the Havard Virtuous Leadership Institute. Havard appeared in Ottawa for a lecture and book signing, du...

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  • What makes a Christian Organization?

    But legal definitions should not overly influence our perception of Christian (or other religiously-based) institutions. There are more basic things to keep in mind.

    Supreme Court cases on both sides of the 49th parallel last week focused on what ...

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  • We Work in Beauty

    It's a rather bizarre question, to be sure, probably even more bizarre in a world that doesn't quite take the arts—those disciplines we might see as most concerned with beauty—seriously in terms of doing useful things like solving hunger or poverty, creating infrastructure or renewable sources of energy, or, of course, bettering the national GDP.

    This week I had the chance to talk about Wendell Berry in a course in International Political Economy taught by former Cardusian Robert Joustra. One aspect of the discussion that arrested my attenti...

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  • Part of the Problem with Politics is You

    The past 48 hours have seen the resignation of two significant Canadian figures—federal Finance Minister Jim Flaherty and Alberta Premier Alison Redford. My social media feeds are dominated by others with similar interests and so are quickly filled with the...

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  • Can We Have Subsidiarity Without the Regulation?

    Yet how does this all work? What prevents confusion from reigning? Two things: government regulation and the power of culture. The mirror of the devolution of responsibilities to business, government, educational, and social partners is a huge and rather onerous system of regulations. . . . . . . .

    Germany is a skilled-trades producing machine. But behind this machine is a web of institutions executing different, and distributed, responsibilities so smoothly that it's easy to imagine why the Germans produce Porsches. Their success is fuelled by their ...

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  • An Enabling Economy

    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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  • Sacrifice: A Measure of Success

    One of the best stories of the women's gold medal victory last week was Meaghan Mikkelson, who despite playing with a broken hand, played almost 22 minutes of the final, spent two minutes in the box for roughing, and registered an assist on the goal that st...

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