Daniel Bezalel Richardsen

Daniel Bezalel Richardsen is a public servant at the Department of Finance Canada and a reservist with the Royal Canadian Navy at HMCS Carleton. He is the founder and former editor of Foment, the literary journal of the Ottawa International Writers Festival, as well as the festival's Reviews blog.

Bio last updated June 30th, 2022.

Daniel Bezalel Richardsen

Articles by Daniel Bezalel Richardsen

  • Pope Francis in Fast Forward

    Filmmaker Wim Wenders’ new documentary is an admiring, albeit necessarily incomplete, portrait of a Pontiff determined to push the Roman Catholic Church away from its past, writes Convivium contributor Daniel Bezalel Richardsen.

    There are Catholics who have felt that opportunities for true reform were missed following the Second Vatican Council, and that Pope Francis represents an opportunity for radical and revolutionary change within the Catholic Church Wenders might be a curious choice to be handpicked by the Vatican to ...

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  • Shadowlands

    Christians often rush through the sombre moments of the texts and liturgies of the Christian faith, seeking the lesson from each negative experience. Allowing ourselves to dwell in the shadowed liturgical spaces, writes Daniel Bezalel Richardsen, leads us to hope that has been sharpened by grit.

    According to the Book of Occasional Services, in the ancient and medieval tradition of the Western Church, the word Tenebrae was used to describe the early morning and late night prayers of monks, with the interplay of the shadows of dawn and dusk, during the last three days of Holy Week While it ma...

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  • A Song of Ascents: A Report from the Faith in Canada 150 Millennial Summit

    Convivium contributor Daniel Bezalel Richardsen reflects on the recently convened Faith in Canada 150 Millennial Summit and the hope he derived from this historic gathering. 

    A consensus that emerged during our conversation was that while we willed the good of our own faith communities, and desired fraternal bonds with others who did not share our faith, we also emphasized that we sought the good of those of no faith at all, which would include many of our fellow citizen...

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  • Religious Hatred's Blood Borders

    In reading Rabbi Jonathan’s Sacks’ Not in God’s Name, Daniel Bezalel Richardsen discovers that the only way out of the cycle of global religious violence is through textual understanding tempered by lived reality.

    "These are deeply troubled times,” writes Rabbi Jonathan Sacks in Not in God’s Name: Confronting Religious Violence, after he lists the sad state of religiously motivated violence and hatred in our already aged young century Is the only thing compelling assent superior study? Is it knowledge of reli...

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  • Something Beautiful for God

    In Randy Boyagoda's new biography of First Things founder Father Richard John Neuhaus, reviewer Daniel Bezalel Richardsen finds a fitting tribute to one who spent his days pondering the follies of the world and the Church while turning out 10,000 words for his monthly magazine

    How an "Ottawa Valley Lutheran boy," who was baptized over the family kitchen sink, would become one of the most influential religious figures in American public life is a story told with thoroughgoing gusto in Randy Boyagoda's recently released biography Richard John Neuhaus: A Life in the Public S...

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  • What Manner of Man is the Prophet?

    Furthermore, Catholics engaged in ecumenical dialogue and seeking to affirm a common religious culture, as Douthat does, do have to contend with the notion that the Protestant Reformation is an unavoidable accommodation at best, and an essential member of the Bellocian Great Heresies De Souza and af...

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