Peter Stockland
Peter Stockland is a Cardus Senior Fellow and Publisher of the Catholic Register.
Bio last updated April 4th, 2022.
Articles by Peter Stockland
Sacred Simplicity
By Peter Stockland
July 17, 2017
Light and shadow serve as a lens to illuminate reverent solitude.
The melding of light, colour and darkness can bring the wonder of the transcendent, the mystery of the sacred, to almost any space
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Peak Season
Peter Stockland
July 14, 2017
Convivium author Peter Stockland reflects on the mysterious collapse of motels and the spiritual significance that these places of refuge possess.
Years ago, I wrote a long short story about two former childhood friends who reconnect in mid-life and conduct an adulterous affair by breaking into a particular room of the forsaken Motel Raphael that once truly stood just off Montreal’s Highway 20 What I learned on this year’s summer vacation is t...
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The Language of Faith
Peter Stockland
July 13, 2017
For the past year, Peter Stockland has had the dream-work opportunity of gathering stories like that of Sikh artist Juss Rani Kaur, from Canadians across the country as part of the Thread of 1000 Stories project.
Rabbi Laura Duhan Kaplan, whom I met as part of my Thread of 1000 Stories gathering, says that’s why it’s important that inter-faith work be rooted in, and between, communities rather than just individuals For the past 18 months, I’ve had the dream-work opportunity of gathering stories such as Juss ...
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Acts of Good X 150 = Canada
Peter Stockland
July 13, 2017
After Canada’s July 1 bash for our 150th birthday, the Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs (CIJA) challenged every mosque, church, temple, synagogue and place of worship to commit to 150 acts of public service this year. Convivium publisher Peter Stockland asked CIJA CEO Shimon Koffler Fogel for more details.
How we can improve ourselves? How we can share certain values and principles that are inherent to what we believe as individuals and groups of faith to improve the lives beyond our own parochial communities to impact on those of all Canadians? I think that over the last few decades, and certainly in...
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The Happiest Dream
Peter Stockland
June 30, 2017
Convivium publisher Peter Stockland reflects on celebrating the dream worth having that is Canada.
What the monsters that create the need for security snake lines in the streets of the nation’s capital cannot extract from us, however, a denial of our dreams On this our 150th year, we can assert with all our honest pride that the Canadian dreams of the past 50 years have been good dreams ...
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Come and See Me
Peter Stockland
June 28, 2017
Blindness brought Father Jack Kennedy to the priesthood 52 years ago. Not blind faith. Not metaphorical inability to see. Literal legal blindness.
Blindness brought Father Jack Kennedy to the priesthood 52 years ago “When dad heard, he ran out to Loyola and said to one of the Jesuits ‘my son wants to become a priest; what do I do?’ The Jesuit said, ‘Nothing Father Kennedy sees the clear parallel between his own history and the breakdown of the...
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Simply About Freedom
Peter Stockland
June 22, 2017
In the past two weeks, Ottawa lawyer Albertos Polizogopoulos has argued the case for conscience rights of doctors, and won a major freedom of information legal battle over publicizing statistics about abortion. Convivium Publisher Peter Stockland sat down with him to discuss the cases.
In 2010, the Ontario Liberal government amended the Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act, the FIPPA, to make it more transparent by applying it to other kinds of institutions such as hospitals In the conscience case, it was all about freedom, and whether the government - the governme...
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The Politics of Print
Peter Stockland
June 19, 2017
Publisher Peter Stockland reflects on the politics of print in light of the Canada 2020 conference held in Ottawa last week.
As David Frum warned, we must see the resulting destruction of print journalism as arising from a political cause, not a technological one The nature of political power simply won’t allow it, which is why it’s a mistake to let a political problem be seen as a technological problem ...
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Media Defined Faith
Peter Stockland
June 12, 2017
Publisher Peter Stockland offers a compelling defence of how faith is inextricably tied to his identity and vocation as a journalist, thereby illuminating the public sphere and his place in it.
But if it is the case that faith is unwelcome in self-defined secular journalism, then I am one of the unwelcome faithful journalists In its own way, this strikes me as a very polite way of making exactly the point Neil Macdonald pushed more intemperately: Faith is universally welcome except in all ...
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Clarity
Peter Stockland
June 12, 2017
Photographer Peter Stockland takes Sacred Spaces viewers behind the scenes, encouraging them to view the world with the clarity of a child once again.
A reflection from photographer Peter Stockland: "It was day of bright spring morning sun, and I noticed the peculiar way the light reflected from the bare branches of the trees around a square in front of a church in Montreal ...
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Illumination and Arrival
Peter Stockland
May 30, 2017
Photographer Peter Stockland captures a shaft of light that evokes, for him, a sense of anticipation.
The sense of presence in the photograph is nearly palpable ...
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Appropriate for You
Peter Stockland
May 29, 2017
Senior Editor Peter Stockland shares about the Mitchell Prize for Faith and Writing and the Golden Thread Contest – and how they matter as ways to "bring together stories that vividly recount the role of religious faith in Canada’s past and present, and nourish active spiritual life for the future."
It’s why even those who are older than 30 are being asked to spread the word about the Golden Thread contest to their families, their friends, their colleagues, anyone around them that they think might have a story to tell in text or video If you’re not a fiction writer/poet, or if you just want to ...
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Appropriate For You
Peter Stockland
May 25, 2017
Senior Editor Peter Stockland shares about the Mitchell Prize for Faith and Writing and the Golden Thread Contest – and how they matter as ways to "bring together stories that vividly recount the role of religious faith in Canada’s past and present, and nourish active spiritual life for the future."
If you’re not a fiction writer/poet, or if you just want to tell a compelling account of faith working in the common life of Canada, there’s also the Golden Thread contest running under the auspices of the Thread of 1000 stories It’s why even those who are older than 30 are being asked to spread the...
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God In The Trunk
Peter Stockland
May 23, 2017
Convivium Publisher Peter Stockland interviews Cardus co-founder and Executive Vice President Ray Pennings on the findings revealed in last week's Angus Reid poll. Learn more about what Canadians think about sin, faith, and prayer. Convivium Publisher Peter Stockland also took the time to speak with Ray Pennings on the findings revealed in last week's Angus Reid Poll.
Pennings said while it’s encouraging for people of faith to see that religious belief informs how more than half of Canadians engage with the world, it’s unsettling to see how tenuously they connect to the transcendent Amid data amassed by the Angus Reid Institute in conjunction with Cardus’ Faith i...
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Under Siege Is Essential Reading
Peter Stockland
May 16, 2017
Publisher Peter Stockland reports from the launch of Don Hutchinson's Under Siege, an examination of the evolution of religious freedom in Canada from 1867 up to our 150th birthday this year.
In fact, he told me recently at the Ottawa launch of Under Siege, before laying plans to build that inescapable structure, religious believers would do well to survey the landscape of Canadian law to make sure they know where they stand As a former board chair for the Christian Legal Fellowship in t...
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How Faith Fosters Civility
Peter Stockland
May 10, 2017
Convivium Publisher Peter Stockland reflects on the recent Our Whole Society conference held at St. Paul University and the need for faith communities to ensure secular society respects both spiritual and civil religion.
Absent the prospect of rich interplay between robust religious institutions and the secular world, obviously including the political sphere, how will they find their way to Canadian civil religion, to Canada’s primacy of emphasis on civility, compassion, and dignified diversity? Here is where the co...
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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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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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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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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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Spiritual Grass Fire
Peter Stockland
April 12, 2017
Publisher Peter Stockland reflects on the legalization of marijuana and the spiritual significance that undergirds the debate set to unfold in Parliament.
But the questions that truly need asking are these: What is the need we have as a culture for the inescapable effect of ingesting marijuana? What is the hole in our social hearts that it fills? What void of human charity are we seeking to overcome by making it legal? Maybe it was our collective sens...
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Political Potter’s Field
Peter Stockland
March 27, 2017
Publisher Peter Stockland contrasts the abrupt resignation of Andrew Potter, head of McGill University’s Institute for the Study of Canada and the lack of political consequences as connected to Montreal's latest snowstorm.
Even Andrew Potter, I know would acknowledge this wrong is hardly confined to Quebec It’s within a media class so distracted by its own timelines, so pulled by the grand sweep of history and high level abstraction, that if forgets its true value is to school the political class when it grossly abuse...
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New Shoes. Old Leather.
Peter Stockland
March 23, 2017
A bold first step towards falling behind. Cardus Family Program Directors Andrea Mrozek and Brian Dijkema reflect on Budget 2017 and the impact that it will have on the Canadian public.
“The most interesting thing about the budget is the way government tries to bring employment, labour and training programs into the 21st century to deal with its realities – the realities of flexible work and precarious work brought about by things such as automation,” Dijkema told Convivium Work an...
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Nobody Babies
Peter Stockland
March 15, 2017
In an interview with Convivium, Andrea Mrozek, program director for Cardus Family, says Ottawa’s recent pledge of $650 million to make abortion more widely available overseas as part of a reproductive health initiative is another marker of Canadian society’s generalized disdain for having babies.
Andrea Mrozek: A lot of women will comment that once they have children, particularly if they choose to stay home with those children, then they disappear from the public The other part of Cardinal Collins' letter that really resonated with me is his criticism of the strong undertone Prime Minister ...