John Zucchi
John Zucchi is a professor in the Department of History and Classical Studies at McGill University. He is a Senior Editor with McGill-Queen's University Press and General Editor of McGill-Queen's Studies in Ethnic History. Zucchi is the National Coordinator in Canada of the international Catholic movement, Communion and Liberation.
Bio last updated April 30th, 2018.
Articles by John Zucchi
Debating Rod Dreher
By John Zucchi, Jason Zuidema, Anna Farrow
April 21, 2017
Earlier this month, Convivium featured a review by John O’Brien, S.J. of Rod Dreher’s disputatious new book The Benedict Option. Today, readers respond both to O'Brien's piece and the conversation that Dreher has opened within the contemporary faith community.
But O’Brien, she says, gets it right when he corrects Dreher’s error in relying on only one saint – Saint Benedict – rather than on the communion of saints that is essential to the faith of all Creedal Christians O'Brien helpfully reminds us that Benedictine monasticism itself had varying relationships to society: Benedict seems quite different from subsequent Benedictine monks, let alone the opinions of the whole variety of other monastic and religious communities But does the perilous, cultural and spiritual landscape in which we find ourselves fatally compromise our ability to nurture faith in our children? Could it not be that the more hostile society is towards the eternal truths, the greater our capacity to demonstrate to our children the value in a life dedicated to good, the beautiful and the true? And has there been a time when Christians were not confronted with the profound challenges of living with families, Church and society in crisis?
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Something Always Eludes Us
John Zucchi
October 1, 2014
John Zucchi on Father Luigi Guissani's discernment of Christ and Utopia
Our being "modern" (but deep down "modernity" is a temptation of the soul of each person in every time) is documented in this shift of the centre of gravity towards our religious, cultural and operative performance: the Presence, the Fact of Christ, becomes a theoretic a priori, an a priori that doe...
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A Swift Kick of Christ
John Zucchi
February 1, 2014
John Zucchi hears Pope Francis calling us from spiritual slumber
In one of the last sections of his apostolic exhortation, Evangelii Gaudium (The Joy of the Gospel), Pope Francis poses what would appear to be a rhetorical question: "The primary reason for evangelizing is the love of Jesus which we have received, the experience of salvation which urges us to ever ...
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A Canadian Home in Rome
John Zucchi
December 1, 2013
The Canadian Pontifical College in Rome celebrates its 125th anniversary. McGill historian John Zucchi delves into the details of its daily life.
All the students in the College were expected to maintain silence from after night prayer until the end of lauds, or morning prayer, throughout the College, even during mealtimes, when one of the priests, according to his rank, would read a passage In the early years of the College, there was a plan...
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The Light of Faith: Faith and Friendship
John Zucchi
October 1, 2013
What did Cathy help me to understand? The Holy Father says, "Faith transforms the whole person precisely to the extent that he or she becomes open to love "Faith is born of an encounter with the living God who calls us and reveals His love, a love that precedes us and upon which we can lean for secu...
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My Friends the Papal Contenders
John Zucchi
April 1, 2013
John Zucchi reflects on his personal friendships with two of the cardinals who might have become pope
It was seeing the Church come alive in the souls of Marc Ouellet and Angelo Scola that drew me to them and allowed me to enter these friendships, which have lasted as a great gift even though I rarely get the chance to see them now Frustrated, I once turned to Père Marc for an explanation of why peo...
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On the Table
John Zucchi
January 1, 2013
An important letter from a friend.
If we spared ourselves this, which is the work of life, then we would fail in our task of witnessing, for which the Lord gave rise to the charism of the Movement in the Church, and which continues to arouse curiosity and interest, as I was able to verify at the Synod Hearing the call to conversion t...
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Teach Your Children Well
John Zucchi
September 1, 2012
It is not enough to teach our children about faith, says John Zucchi. We need to teach them to search for meaning in every action.
We have the great gift of freedom, for "what kind of salvation would a salvation be that was not free?" We can either recognize that the Mystery dominates our lives or we can draw back from our freedom and pretend that we can tackle all of our challenges in life, including the immense challenge of e...
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Standing Up To Power
John Zucchi
March 1, 2012
When Quebec politicians are assaulting religious freedom in private schools, daycares and even private assemblies it's time to get off our knees.
The Minister of Education, Leisure and Sport decided on her own, with no apparent reason, that a Catholic high school following a Jesuit teaching philosophy was unable to deliver the equivalent of an Ethics and Religious Culture program according to ministry norms The implementation of the Ethics an...