2011‑2022, and is preserved here for archival purposes.
Convivium reviewer Lloyd Mackey finds David Kitz brings a dramatist’s gifts to his novel which re-tells the Passion story in The Soldier Who Killed a King.
In reading The Soldier Who Killed a King: A True Retelling of the Passion, by Ottawa’s David Kitz, I was aware of a certain déjà vu. The reason for that awareness became clear upon noting the bits of legalese on the requisite copyright pag...
Father Deacon Andrew Bennett, director of the Cardus law program, argues Canadians of religious faith must be left free to choose what procedures their healthcare institutions provide.
For 18 months, Canadian governments have legally permitted assisted suicide on demand for patients suffering terminal illness whose condition is “grievous and irremediable.” It’s considered a choice people now have available to them.
For Catholics, O...
This December Convivium's editor in chief, Father Raymond J. de Souza delivered this inspiring address to over 900 faithful young people of faith gathered in Ottawa to ring in the new year together at CCO's Rise Up.
You are a great sight! I wish that you could all see yourselves as I see you, or as I saw you last night. I said to Andre during Adoration – we were up at the front – “Turn around and look!” And he said, “I don’t allow myself to look as it is too overwhelmi...
Today Convivium sits down with Beth Davis and Nell O'Leary of Blessed Is She, a Catholic women’s community committed to deepening a life of prayer, daily Scripture devotionals, and creating a supportive sisterhood that stretches across North America.
Convivium: If you were to describe the vision and mission of Blessed Is She for someone who had never encountered your community, what would you say?
Beth Davis & N...
In helping young women grasp the fashion industry’s power to shape social attitudes, Shannon A. Joseph discovers an adolescent meme with almost magical potency to impair judgement. What do you think? Are you, your friends and family concerned about the effects of fashion on female high school students?
I've been on the board of a charity called TREnDS for the past 5 years. Its mission is to equip teens girls to be come smart fashion consumers and to avoid the hypersexual, highly revealing fashions, currently marketed to teens and tweens (10-13 year olds)....
John Weston finds a new book on leadership to be a crowning moment in the faithful and sagacious public life of the Reform Party founder
No one has tried harder in leadership to move the dial away from glitz and towards good character than Preston Manning. It’s fitting that he’s sought a crowning moment in his career by writing a scholarly and practical book on pursuing good character in le...
Convivium editor in chief Father Raymond J. de Souza reports on the cross Canada pilgrimage of the relic of St. Francis Xavier. Learn more about the legacy of faith and friendship that St. Francis Xavier imparts to us all.
There is a large religious news story unfolding across the land, and it is being covered well by the regular mainstream news. A miracle? Not really, but it is about a miraculous relic.
The forearm and hand of St. Francis Xavier, the 16th-c...
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 ...
In her continuing series for Convivium seeking to put into daily life the lessons of the Rule of Saint Benedict, writer Breanne Valerie learns from stillness why God is a Person of few words
I recently attended a workshop where the facilitator began with saying something along the lines of “with words people can open your spirit or close your spirit, and if there is anything I say or do today that closes your spirit in any wa...
Changing the way we apologize, Cardus executive president Ray Pennings writes, can change the way we live our whole lives
It’s traditional to head into a new year full of resolve fuelled by last year’s regret.
Our commitment to renewed discipline, diets, and dream achieving over the coming 12 months are all too often driven by short-term over indulgence during Christmas...
With the very advent of Christmas upon us, Brittany Beacham gives Convivium readers this irresistible reflection written from the pure-hearted beauty that is the full meaning of Christian faith.
O come, O come, Emmanuel, and ransom captive Israel that mourns in lonely exile here until the Son of God appear.
Through quiet towns, spoken words and silent thoughts, a single prayer moved through the heart of a nation. Come, Emmanuel. Ran...
One of the most controversial books of 2017 was Rod Dreher’s The Benedict Option, which was criticized by many as advocating Christian retreat from the secular world. Convivium has asked writer Breanne Valerie to live out the monastic Rule of St. Benedict in her daily life as a busy social worker and Vancouverite.
Obedience. These days it’s a dirty word.
Society has baggage with this word. I have baggage with this word. And not a small carry-on that doesn’t take up much space. A large checked bag that is out of sight, out of mind.
I am a woman who grew ...
Fear, that chronic illness of the human condition, is best overcome by trust in God, Brittany Beacham writes. But, she counsels, keep an extra Winnie the Pooh nightlight handy just in case.
I distinctly remember as a very young child curling up in my pink Disney “Aristocats” pajamas while my mom read me the story of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. I loved the story and I loved Snow White. I imagined living in a tiny cottage in...
Do you have liturgy at the ready for ordinary life? Today, Convivium contributor Anthony Diehl reviews Doug Mckelvey's Every Moment Holy, a liturgical companion that baptizes the everyday in prayer.
A good liturgy gives us words to pray together in key formative moments of our discipleship: gathering to worship, confessing our sin, lamenting our suffering, confessing our faith, celebrating the Eucharist, baptism, marriage, and burying the dead. These p...
Tomorrow, Prime Minister Trudeau offers an unprecedented apology to persecuted members of sexual minorities. On Thursday, Trinity Western University is before the Supreme Court of Canada arguing for its religious freedom. Having previously presented TWU's perspective, Convivium asks lawyers Mark Berlin and Douglas Judson about sexual politics and the law.
Mark Berlin wishes Trinity Western University well in its bid to establish a law school at the evangelical Christian institution in B.C.’s Fraser Valley.
He also wishes TWU’s Community Covenant didn’t bar him f...
On Monday night during a panel discussion at McGill University’s Newman Centre in Montreal, Cardus Executive Vice-President Ray Pennings set out five points that he, as a Reformed believer, considers vital if Christians are to re-form a divided Church into unified faith.
The 500th anniversary of the catalyzing events for the Reformation prompts appropriate reflection within various church communities, undoubtedly with very different assessments from our various perspectives. However, discussing these matters wit...
Elizabeth Osgood has gone from being an engineering contractor for NASA to a novice nun with the Congregation of Notre Dame. Not such a giant leap, she tells Convivium’s Hannah Marazzi: just bringing together the strands that make God’s tapestry whole
Convivium: You’ve been described as “the NASA Nun,” your story having garnered national interest and attention as Canadians learned about your unique transition from engineer to an engineer also entering into consecrated life. Did ...
Adrienne Dengerink Chaplin brought two artists to church on Remembrance Weekend: muralists from Northern Ireland’s Bogside neighbourhood who have memorialized that city’s bloody sectarian sorrows in order to create space for remembering, truth-telling and reconciliation.
The two minutes silence were finished; the trumpet had blown The Last Post; and we had all sung the hymn ‘Abide with Me,’ as we had faithfully done every year in our local Anglican church in Cambridge in the U.K. Many people in the congreg...
Convivium's editor in chief Father Raymond J. de Souza marks the anniversary of both the Sacred Heart of Mary parish and Queen's University's "Newman Club."
The Year of Our Lord 2017 has been rather full of notable anniversaries. Five hundred years since the Reformation, something that reminds us that our work across confessional lines at Cardus, Catholics and Protestants together in a common mission, is a bles...
Katharine Hayhoe, one of TIME Magazine’s 100 most influential people in 2014, appreciates both science and faith. Hayhoe states: "I don’t accept global warming on faith: I crunch the data, I analyze the models, I help engineers and city managers and ecologists quantify the impacts."
Katharine Hayhoe, one of TIME Magazine’s 100 most influential people in 2014, delivered three lectures relating to her field, climate science, three years ago this month, at Trinit...
Convivum editor in chief, Father Raymond J. de Souza shares his testimony to The House of Commons Committee on Canadian Heritage on M-103.
OTTAWA – Islamophobia is certainly a bad thing. There are no good phobias, are there?
In March, the House of Commons passed M-103, known as the “Islamophobia” motion, which called for the government to “condemn Islamophobia and all forms of systemic...
Last week’s death of a multi-talented young Christian apologist underscores the necessity of following the truth no matter the cost, Convivium contributor Scott Ventureyra writes in this obituary for Nabeel Qureshi.
Last week, we lost one of the great ambassadors for Christ of our times. Nabeel Qureshi was only 33 when he was diagnosed with stomach cancer over a year ago. He suffered tremendously over the past year but was always thankful and faithful to God for his m...
Convivium contributor Katie Maryschuk reflects on the shifting of seasons. As she prepares to head into her final year of university, Katie examines the way in which God has shaped her path forward.
I officially ended work on Friday August 25th. It was a glorious yet bittersweet day. Work’s end marked for me a moment of overcoming, a full circle space in time. Almost exactly a year ago to a day, I attended a Bethel worship concert with one of my closes...
To follow in the footsteps of the faithful who have come before shapes our path to glory.
The chapel of the Grande Séminaire de Montréal is not a place you walk through. Like faith, you enter into it, drawn inexorably forward by the its unusual shape that has the pews flanking the nave in parallel rows rather than branching off it at horizontall...