Convivium Explorations

True Progress Moves Us To God

Peter Copeland and Andrew P.W. Bennett

December 3, 2021

As Advent foreshadows the Christmas narrative, Peter Copeland and Father Deacon Andrew Bennett write that our end is not in restless secularism but the peace of union with the Father.

For, Christianity is not an empty philosophy, but a way of life – truth, goodness and beauty are not meant merely to be articulated, but to be shown in a life lived in love of God All the more reason, then, to live an integrated life, where the distinction between love of God, neighbour, and one’s f...

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The Secular Servants of Abstraction

Peter Copeland and Andrew P.W. Bennett

December 2, 2021

As Advent leads us to Christmas, Peter Copeland and Fr. Deacon Andrew Bennett map Christian clarity of the common good against secular confusions of equity and equality. Part two of three.

If equity were instead recognized as it ought to be, as the flourishing of the person in all their beautiful uniqueness and difference; and if equality were conceived as equal inherent dignity, not in wealth, possessions, talents, abilities, or interests, then a hierarchically differentiated society...

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The Christian’s Progress

Peter Copeland and Andrew P.W. Bennett

December 1, 2021

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.

How can one become courageous, loving, kind, and merciful without practice? Instead, we sacrifice the fruits that come from the long pursuit of virtue for fleeting ‘authentic feeling’? How can anyone cultivate the disciplines that make actions into habits, and habits into the virtuous life? How can ...

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Follow the Political Science

Travis D. Smith

November 22, 2021

In the second of two parts, Travis Smith argues that our responses to the pandemic reveal a Canada progressively squeezing out its commitment to liberty.

According to Hobbes in particular, people have no moral obligations to anybody in the state of nature; it’s indistinguishable from a state of war and individuals there may be treated accordingly Whereas modern political theory asserts the natural freedom of all human beings everywhere, classical pol...

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The COVID Golden Calf

Travis D. Smith

November 19, 2021

In this first of a two-part essay, Travis Smith teases out the new ersatz religiosity of our political, clinical and social pandemic responses.

We are now seeing heterodox health care professionals threatened and sanctioned, placed on leave or their licences suspended—defrocked, as it were—for refusing to comply with mandates, for expressing concern about adverse events, for granting exemptions, or otherwise hesitating to swear by the vacci...

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The Complex Web of Indigenous Diversity

Peter Stockland

July 2, 2021

The Assembly of First Nations is a national voice on issues like reconciliation and residential schools, but its July 7 leadership vote tests the strands that link Indigenous people, Peter Stockland reports.

For example, on an issue as critical to First Nations as passage of legislation to make the United Nations Declaration of the Rights of Indigenous People (UNDRIP) part of Canadian law, Mbarki was surprised to discover how little consultation the AFN conducted with chiefs across the country before th...

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Shadows and Light on Palliative Care

Peter Stockland

April 26, 2021

Rapid expansion of Medical Aid in Dying and forced closure of a Vancouver-area hospice have raised alarm among palliative care providers. But Peter Stockland finds vital positive signs, too.

Out in British Columbia, Angelina Ireland says the Delta Hospice Society, too, will be steadfast in continuing bereavement and grief counselling as well as supportive therapies that were its core work before it fundraised $9 million to open the Irene Thomas palliative care centre a decade ago “We’ve...

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Belfast, Brexit and Boris Johnson

Peter Stockland

August 2, 2019

Think of it this way: for the last 30 years of the 20th century, citizens of Belfast, Derry, and other Northern Ireland cities, negotiated various aspects of their lives around police and military checkpoints, demands for ID cards, and flashlights shone in their eyes at night Why? Because beyond the...

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The Vocabulary of Who We Are

Peter Stockland

July 16, 2019

Watching the Château Laurier fiasco from a comfortable distance, Peter Stockland sees parallels between Ottawa’s architectural debacle and the history of Belfast’s city hall.

Belfast, Northern Ireland – It’s intriguing to watch across an ocean as turbulence continues to cycle in Ottawa over the state and fate of the national capital’s Château Laurier Hotel In September that year, tens of thousands of so-called unionists, implacably opposed to Home Rule, signed a “Solemn ...

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Ireland's Accidental History

Peter Stockland

July 8, 2019

In this week's essay from Northern Ireland, Convivium's Peter Stockland encounters a young man whose grandfather was murdered on Bloody Sunday 1972 and waits to hear loyalist-unionist drums beat again in Belfast this Friday, July 12.

Fast forward with a bullet to a bloody Sunday in 1972, and two men named Paddy being shot in the streets of Derry, Northern Ireland, because British soldiers present to ensure peace lost control and opened fire They, in turn, would assassinate our own father of Confederation, Thomas d’Arcy McGee and...

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