Cultural Renewal

  • The Christian’s Progress

    As Advent moves us toward the promise of Christmas, Peter Copeland and Fr. Deacon Andrew Bennett chart the Christian progressive vision against its static secular form. Part one of three.

    In our heart of hearts, we know that we are not all that we can be, personally, or collectively. We cry out for more, not knowing where to go, or how to get there, but led forward by this flame that burns within.

    Christians have long thought that tho...

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  • The Hard Truth About Reconciliation

    Healing wounds inflicted on Indigenous people by Canada and its churches means facing what’s wholly true, not what’s politically appealing, Father Deacon Andrew Bennett writes.

    Let’s discuss truth and reconciliation in their fullness. How do we tell the truth, the fullness of the truth? How do we achieve true reconciliation? Both are two-way streets.

    Firstly, what is truth? Pilate’s question to Christ at his passion rings d...

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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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  • Indigenous Women Ascending

    Peter Stockland sees the appointment of Mary Simon as GG, the election of RoseAnne Archibald as AFN National Chief, and Jody Wilson-Raybould’s political courage as hope for Canada.

    Thursday’s fifth ballot win that made RoseAnne Archibald the first ever female National Chief of the Assembly of First...

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  • Yes, We Can Understand Each Other

    Restoring trust in language goes beyond improving the sad state of our political debates. It’s vital to our common humanity, Daniel Dorman writes.

    Our political discourse is a demoralizing spectacle. In most public forums, and particularly in the House of Commons, we generally listen to what can’t (in any serious sense) be called ‘debate.’ Most of it is mere partisan verbiage.

    Character assault...

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  • Grave Men Facing A Grave Faith

    Jonathon Van Maren reports on a series of leading serious intellectuals who recognize the need for Christianity’s resurrection but can’t quite bring the faith to life in themselves.

    Earlier this month, I spent some time on the phone with Niall Ferguson, the Scottish historian and Milbank Family Senior Fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution, for a ...

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  • A Rude Awokening for Justin Trudeau?

    Peter Stockland reports on the political implications of a speech the former justice minister gave this week castigating the Prime Minister’s “hypocrisy” on Indigenous issues.

    In the year before the pandemic, Jody Wilson-Raybould served as Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s worst headache.

    In a speech she gave on Wednesday, the former justice minister and attorney-general showed why she could become the PM’s worst nightmare....

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  • 10 Highlights of the Year for Cardus

    Daniel Proussalidis and Monica Ratra write that while 2020 was a forgettable year for many reasons, Cardus initiatives throughout the year provided memorable highlights for the organization and our supporters.

    It’s cliché at this point, but 2020 is surely a year most of us would like to forget. And not just because of the pandemic or the brutally polarized political rhetoric of the past year. But, as we think back on the past year at Cardus, there’s actually a lo...

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  • Baby Steps to Push Back Polarization

    Josh Nadeau reports on a study showing families becoming crucibles for toxic political contempt when they could be sources of pluralistic tolerance for divergent views.

    The word “polarized” saw major airtime through the whole U.S. election cycle, even to the point of becoming a cliche. That meme about a dress p...

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  • Trumping the Will To Power

    Leading into the 2020 US Presidential debate, Father Tim McCauley sees in the U.S. President a Nietzchean superman wanna be taking advantage of a context where truth is understood as subjective.

    The President of the United States is often touted as the most powerful person in the world. But what kind of power? Is it military might? Or the power to do good in promoting democracy and human rights throughout the world? And how does Trump himself under...

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  • The Lost Common Good of Education

    As parents send their kids back to school plagued by the new peril of COVID-19, Joe Woodard argues the real classroom risk remains an outmoded pedagogical revolution that turned education against its true nature.

    At the risk of sounding melodramatic: a revolutionary elite seized public education in the 1970s. I saw it during my time at the University of Alberta. It was not a “conspiracy.” It was an ideology – “politics masquerading as science” – the prosely...

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  • Living A Different Answer

    Father Deacon Andrew Bennett, director of Cardus Law, celebrates Christmas with hundreds of Millennials  who respond to old holiday questions with a new zeal for Truth

    “So how was your Christmas?” “What did you get up to over the holidays?”

    These seemingly quite innocent questions linger in the air at this time of year in our schools, around the proverbial water cooler at work, in the university residences, and in ...

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  • The Clintons’ End Times

    As the Clintons become the face of a critical moment of cultural change "reckoning, recriminations, even revenge, is in the air," says Convivium editor in chief Fr. Raymond J. de Souza. Now, more than ever, he urges, should the virtues of repentance and reconciliation serve as the hallmarks of the age to come. 

    Last Saturday in Little Rock, Arkansas, at the President William J. Clinton Presidential Library, Bill and Hillary held a soiree with several hundred of their friends and admirers to celebrate the 25th anniversary of Bill’s 1992 election victory....

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  • Signposts of the New Creation

    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...

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  • A New and Beautiful Encounter

    In a new collection of essays by Father Julián Carrón, reviewer Daniel Freeman finds an enriching approach to evangelization, one born of humility and bearing great hope.

    “The encounter with the beauty of Christ that shines through the face of a human being can become an arrow that wounds the soul, and so opens our eyes, allowing us to recognize him. This is what each of us is longing for, and our contemporaries with us....

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  • Physically Metaphysical

    What ideology underpins our modern ways of thinking? What impact does that have in human flourishing? Fr. Joe Mroz examines the relationship between the way we think and the philosophy that brought us here.

    As startling as the idea of transgenderism is to many, even more startling is the totalitarian nature of its claims. 

    The nature of these claims, though, make sense against the background of modern philosophy, roughly from Descartes to Marx, which re...

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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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  • Dear Canada

    Today Convivium publishes an open letter, authored and affirmed at the Faith in Canada 150 Millennial Summit at the Ottawa Offices of Cardus, Canada’s faith based think tank, June 30, 2017. 

    Dear Canada,

    We write to you on the eve of the 150th anniversary of Confederation to affirm the role of faith in the formation of Canada in its past, today, and in future generations to come.

    We, delegates of the Faith in Canada 150 Millennial...

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  • Anniversary Afterthoughts

    Convivium Editor in Chief Father Raymond J. de Souza reflects on the Canada Day celebrations that unfolded in early July. 

    I had the blessing of spending Canada’s 150th anniversary in Ottawa with my Cardus colleagues for various events that were most inspiring.

    It capped off six weeks in which I found myself for unrelated – but Providential? – reasons on Canad...

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  • City On A Hill

    The Cardus Ottawa office stands juxtaposed between the political temples of Parliament Hill and the soup kitchens of Lower Town. In this place where two sides of the city meet, Andrew Bennett sees signs of human dignity in the message of a homeless man.

    In two months I will be 45-years-old. I am told, or perhaps I have gleaned from others, that this is the age at which reminiscence becomes a confirmed pastime rather than something seen to be quaintly practiced by aging parents and grandparents.

    In a...

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  • New Life

    New life often serves as the moment when the veil between heaven and earth appears to be lifted, hope made possible in the form of an immeasurable gift - a child. 

    The hint of a yawn, the curve of smooth new skin - new life. Few things serve as quite so tangible a reminder of the sacred present in our midst than a newborn. In capturing a shot of this new spirit, fresh from the womb photographer Jaydene Freund reminds ...

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  • God In The Trunk

    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.

    Amid data amassed by the Angus Reid Institute in conjunction with Cardus’ Faith in Canada 150 initiative is the comforting statistic that about 75 per cent of Canadians pray at least sometimes.

    ...

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  • Renewing Faith in News

    Practicing what Tony Carnes calls “sympathetic objectivity,” reporters with the Journey through NYC Religions project find stories in every church, synagogue, mosque and place of worship in New York City. His article below is part of Cardus’ Religion and the Good of the City publication released this week.

    Practicing what Tony Carnes calls “sympathetic objectivity,” reporters with the Journey through NYC Religions project find stories in every church, synagogue, mosque and place of worship in New York City. His article below is part of Cardus’ ...

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  • The Politics of Apocalypse

    Debate rages on whether it’s possible to engage a militantly secular age, or if retreat is, in Leonard Cohen’s words, “the only engine of survival.” Robert Joustra and Alissa Wilkinson in their book How to Survive the Apocalypse: Zombies, Cylons, Faith & Politics at the End of the World, find the answer in Daniel, a prophet who profited from an apocalypse by his strategic sense of loyalty.

    The Hebrew prophet Daniel is an apocalyptic guy, so of course we’ve adopted him as our patron saint of the Apocalypse. We meet him first in the sack of Jerusalem by the Babylon King Nebuchadnezzar. It turns out he’s a total stud (Daniel 1:4 says he...

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