Raymond J. de Souza
Father Raymond J. de Souza is a Cardus Senior Fellow, the founding Editor of Convivium, chaplain at Newman House (the Roman Catholic centre at Queen's University), and a parish priest, in addition to writing for the National Post and The Catholic Register.
Bio last updated January 12th, 2022.
Articles by Raymond J. de Souza
No Cheers For Pope’s Abu Dhabi Do
By Raymond J. de Souza
February 7, 2019
Convivium Editor-in-Chief Father Raymond de Souza finds precious little to praise in the recent papal visit to the “socially appalling” United Arab Emirates.
The entire UAE project – petroleum-fuelled excess built upon the exploitation of foreign workers who have few civil rights – is morally dubious, at least according to how Pope Francis generally speaks Given that the Arabian peninsula is one of the worst places on the planet to be a Christian, the UAE got lavish praise this week for being a place where Christians are neither imprisoned nor killed Climate change, which the Vatican under Pope Francis has elevated to civilizational emergency? The UAE is a petro-state
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Let’s Really Talk
Raymond J. de Souza
January 31, 2019
Reviving his popular “Small Talk” feature from the print version of Convivium, Editor-in-Chief Father Raymond de Souza bemoans the death of local news, critiques the pornographication of the Super Bowl, and argues for setting down our iPhones to speak face-to-face again.
Now it is part of a chain with emaciated budgets and little capacity to cover Kingston, let alone the world abroad There are not a few voices – more anecdotal than backed by the comprehensive academic studies that take many years to produce – that think our screen time may be contributing to a deter...
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Hollywood’s Guilt of Many Colours
Raymond J. de Souza
January 25, 2019
Father Raymond de Souza notes Tinseltown has nominated the mediocre Black Panther for Best Picture because it’s green with racial guilt.
Now Black Panther has its turn, given what Hollywood could never quite give to Star Wars, an Oscar nomination Black Panther got the nomination because Hollywood wishes to congratulate itself for being clever enough to do a little progressive preening while executing the prime directive of making mon...
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The One True GOAT
Raymond J. de Souza
January 17, 2019
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.
Which is noteworthy, because LeBron’s self-promotion, like the president’s, has the same roots, namely in Muhammad Ali, who took it from professional wrestling, where there is precious little humility but a lot of selling oneself From Ali to professional wrestling to reality television to Donald Tru...
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Of First and Lasting Things
Raymond J. de Souza
January 10, 2019
Convivium Editor-in-Chief Father Raymond de Souza marks the 10th anniversary of the death of his mentor and inspiration, Father Richard John Neuhaus.
Convivium is what Father Richard created over his whole life, delighting in the company of others and the delightful things the Lord had made This past Tuesday, for the 10th anniversary Mass, the homily was preached by Father Vincent Druding, a young man from Indiana who came to New York to work at ...
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Advent's Moment of Meaning
Raymond J. de Souza
December 20, 2018
Today is a time, Father Raymond de Souza writes, not just for counting down the days to Christmas but also an opportunity to more fully understand Christ’s birth.
And so Luke introduces John the Baptist first by chronos and then by kairos In applying to the Baptist the fulfillment of Isaiah’s prophecy, Luke reveals to us that God is powerfully at work in this John, son of Zechariah ...
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Solidarity Blessed by Blood
Raymond J. de Souza
December 13, 2018
Canadian Muslims stood in solidarity last month with Jews shattered by slaughter in a U.S. synagogue. Now, Father Raymond de Souza writes, Islamic Algeria has welcomed beatification of Catholic martyrs killed by murderous fanatics claiming to act for Islam. The past, Father Raymond reminds, does not define the future.
If it should happen one day—and it could be today—that I become a victim of the terrorism which now seems ready to engulf all the foreigners living in Algeria, I would like my community, my Church and my family to remember that my life was GIVEN to God and to this country The murder of the French mo...
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George Bush - Death of a Patriarch
Raymond J. de Souza
December 6, 2018
The funeral of President George Herbert Walker Bush moves Convivium Editor in Chief Father Raymond de Souza to meditate on the nature of rightful fatherhood.
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Our Country, Our Gospel
Raymond J. de Souza
November 30, 2018
At a prayer breakfast today in Markham, Ontario, Convivium’s Father Raymond de Souza serves a reminder that Canadian Christians should be as proud to share the Christian Gospel as they are to be Canadians. The reason, de Souza says, isn’t triumphalism but the pure joy of speaking God’s Word.
Paul writes to the Romans: I am not ashamed of the Gospel! The young Catholics at the chaplaincy, like so many other religious believers on campuses around the country, know well that others want to push religion out of our common life The key role that faith plays in our common life is the sign tha...
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Giving Thanks, Living Faith
Raymond J. de Souza
November 22, 2018
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.
It is likely true that when Harvard Law School was casting about to boost its diversity figures, Warren was happy to reference her Native American ancestry, which she likely genuinely believed He would give a million dollars to her chosen charity if Warren would take a DNA test and prove that she wa...
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Bringing the Great War Home
Raymond J. de Souza
November 16, 2018
A 1917 speech at Queen’s university disparaging Pope Benedict XV as a puppet of the Kaiser angered Catholic students so much it led to creation of the Newman House on campus, writes Father Raymond de Souza.
A few months later, on October 26 1917, the “Newman Club at Queen’s” was established, named in honour of the great 19th-century Catholic convert and man of the university, Cardinal John Henry Newman This did not sit well with the Catholic students, who thought that a) Benedict XV was not the Kaiser’...
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The Great War’s Great Failure
Raymond J. de Souza
November 8, 2018
This Sunday will mark, Father Raymond de Souza writes, 100 years since the guns fell silent to stop the catastrophe of mud and futility that was the First World War. It was the end, too, of Europe’s game of thrones and the fall of Christendom’s altars.
Why the pointless fighting in those last hours? There were more casualties on Armistice Day 1918 than there were on D-Day 1944 The war to end all wars did not even end after the armistice was signed that dark French morning Armistice Day 1918, so earnestly awaited and so ardently desired, was yet an...
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Forgiveness and Evil
Raymond J. de Souza
November 1, 2018
Confronted by mass murder that is also sacrilege, our faith is both tested and reconciled, Father Raymond de Souza writes.
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Marijuana Legality and Morality
Raymond J. de Souza
October 17, 2018
Father Raymond de Souza explains how marijuana use remains immoral even if governments across the country have made it legal today.
Alcohol consumption becomes immoral when it compromises our reason, that rational faculty which makes us distinctively human “With the exception of cannabis use for medicinal purposes, consuming marijuana violates the virtue of temperance and should be avoided,” said Monsignor Frank Leo, general sec...
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Papal Holiness
Raymond J. de Souza
October 12, 2018
Father Raymond de Souza travels to Rome for the canonization of Pope Paul VI, which he notes is part of a 21st century uptick in papal sainthoods.
In time, he was canonized as a sort of rebuke in the flesh to the corrupt Renaissance papacy, the first pope in nearly three hundred years to be declared a saint October 11th is, in fact, the liturgical feast day of Pope John XXIII, canonized in 2014 along with Pope John Paul II ...
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Sick of Work
Raymond J. de Souza
October 4, 2018
Father Raymond de Souza finds recent concerns about people working themselves into mental illness, on Parliament Hill and elsewhere, have an ancient, Gospel solution.
This week’s Hill Times, the parish bulletin for those who work, lobby, or lounge about Parliament Hill, includes a nine-page special report on mental health I recall about a decade ago being at a dinner in a restaurant near Parliament Hill, about eight or 10 of us, several MPs and Hill staff One of ...
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Missing the Mark on Clean Prosperity
Raymond J. de Souza
September 27, 2018
Editor-in-chief Father Raymond de Souza amicably disagrees with his friend Mark Cameron’s recent study showing the government is here to help with its carbon tax.
Note that Mark Cameron, on the board of Cardus, makes a thoughtful case for a broad-based, revenue-neutral carbon tax, while earlier in the summer, Cardus hosted Jason Kenney – a friend of Cardus and a friend of Mark’s However, next door in Alberta, the carbon tax’s “neutrality” means that the reven...
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Just Imperfect Justice
Raymond J. de Souza
September 20, 2018
Recent sexual scandals have ensnared those who might be legally innocent but they are just desserts of a time when too many guilty walked free, Father Raymond de Souza writes.
Also last week, the New York Review of Books ran an essay by Jian Ghomeshi, who was fired from his popular CBC radio show four years ago after some 20 women accused him of sexual assault How should allegations for sexual abuse, harassment or assault be handled outside the criminal justice system? Th...
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Mourning Black America
Raymond J. de Souza
September 13, 2018
The Queen of Soul’s funeral proved a last battle ground for the legacy of Martin Luther King, Father Raymond de Souza writes.
To celebrate Aretha’s life and music is to celebrate the black Church which, from slavery to the civil rights movement, was the essential vehicle for the preservation and flourishing of black culture Williams took the minority view, what one might call the “Abernathy view” – that of Reverend Ralph A...
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The Catholic Crisis So Far
Raymond J. de Souza
September 6, 2018
Convivium’s Editor in Chief Father Raymond J. de Souza provides a compendium of columns to help readers understand the newest iteration of the sexual abuse scandals rocking Rome.
It’s true that major reforms were made in Canada by the Catholic Church in the early 1990s, and in the United States in 2002, and that in many ways today the Catholic Church is a model of what to do in confronting the sexual abuse of minors But the Catholic Church was for a long time a model of what...
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Division in the Church
Raymond J. de Souza
August 30, 2018
In a week that saw Pope Francis accused of covering up squalid sexual scandal, Father Raymond de Souza fears for the unity of the Catholic Church but takes counsel in Ezekiel’s warning of God’s judgement on bad shepherds.
The “testimony” of the former papal ambassador to the United States, Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò, which accuses Pope Francis and others of looking the other way on the predatory behaviour of (now former) Cardinal Theodore McCarrick, has created outrage throughout the Church – and great division In...
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Huddle Up For Diversity
Raymond J. de Souza
August 27, 2018
With the Canadian Football League busily promoting the goal of diversity, Father Raymond de Souza notes the distinct absence of height-challenged 140-pound players on the field.
[The 2018] initiative builds on the strength of the campaign we launched a year ago, when CFL coaches, players and fans rallied around this positive message by donning Diversity Is Strength T-shirts But why does “ability” appear in the list of “our strength comes from diversity?” Can it be honestly ...
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Writing With Righteous Wrath
Raymond J. de Souza
August 9, 2018
Convivium’s Editor in Chief, Father Raymond de Souza, reflects on moments when anger is the justified response.
I hold myself to the well-known maxim that a letter written in anger should not be sent until at least the next day – and at least two days for email! By the morrow a cooler head prevails, and the angry response is not sent When we fall from righteous anger to plain old anger, or vindictive anger, o...
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Caught In Cottage Culture
Raymond J. de Souza
August 2, 2018
Father Raymond de Souza confesses to wonderment that so many Canadians irrepressibly set out along traffic clogged roads for distant summer cottages when they could far more comfortably stay home.
So why the urge to head out to the cottage, when a more relaxing weekend might be had at home? Why do those who employ all sorts of people to make life easier at home, assume all those tasks at the cottage? Why hit the road, instead of the local pub, or park, or even couch? The priority of cottage c...