Abstract A forceful recent opinion on law and religion by Lord Justice Laws in a religious discrimination case has drawn renewed attention to two principles often supposed by liberal legal and political theorists to be essential foundations of liberal democracy: the principle of state ‘neutrality’ towards religion; and the principle that public reasoning must be ‘secular’. This article argues that, while the first principle is defensible, the second principle is invalid and illiberal, and proposes a conception of public reasoning that permits, indeed positively encourages, the invocation of religiously based reasoning in ‘representative’ political speech. The first part of the article briefly states the central argument advanced in favour the principle of secular public reasoning, and its corollary, the ‘principle of restraint’ on religious reasons. In the second part, three widely invoked critiques of the principle of restraint are reviewed. The third part proposes that religiously based public reasoning is entirely compatible with, indeed enjoined by, the type of representative public speech that should characterize a confident liberal democracy. It also argues, however, that the first principle, state ‘neutrality’ towards religion (rightly understood), rules out explicit public appeal, by state officials, to religious reasons in justifying laws. Read the entire article online here.

When my mother, a youthful 88, poured her last cup of tea as president of her local Anglican Church women’s organization last year after 19 years at the helm, the group also went into retirement. Many of its former members had died or were in nursing homes by then, and there was no one able or willing to take on the rigours of making sandwiches for funerals and organizing fundraising bazaars. After more than a century, the organization that had been home to generations of volunteers, was no more. Read the entire article.

Guy Nicholson: Thanks for joining us today, panelists. Which of these words with religious connotations comes closest to the secular New Year’s resolution: atonement, forgiveness, confession, reincarnation? Peter Stockland: Well, I would say they are all part of the same process, so it is hard to pick one out. Before we are genuinely renewed (reincarnated?), we have to seek genuine recognition (atonement) of what we’ve done (or are doing) in error and in both Catholic tradition and, I think, standard behaviour-change theory, we have to admit the error out loud to seek forgiveness and so let past patterns go. We begin with recognition, move to expression and get to renewal or resolution. My resolution this year, by the way, is to answer questions more directly. Sheema Khan: I think forgiveness is the closest, in the sense that one seeks forgiveness from God (for past transgressions), and one also forgives oneself. Of course, if the resolution involves changing one’s behaviour toward others (e.g., renewing family relationships), then a good way to start is to seek forgiveness of those whom one has hurt. Forgiveness is mentioned often in the Koran, and Muslims are reminded: “Forgive, do you not want God to forgive you?” Sincere forgiveness implies a change of behaviour as well. Lorna Dueck: What a great way to start us off, Guy. I think the word “confession” best suits the New Year’s resolution. In Christianity, confession can mean letting go of our sin, and it also means stating a belief we want to own. Confession is a new beginning! Peter Stockland: With perhaps the qualifier, Lorna, that Christian confession, like a New Year’s resolution, requires a concrete act (penance) to stick. We can't just have to say, “Oops, sorry about that.” We have to own it and take steps to change it. Read the entire exchange.

Pennings quoted in the Toronto Sun, "Let’s let religion out of the closet" Ray Pennings of Cardus, an independent policy institute, says religion generates: “A civic oxygen on which Canadian social ecology relies. “The Canadian Centre for Philanthropy calculates that the 32% of Canadians who are religiously active contribute 65% of direct charitable donations.” He addressed the danger of excluding religion in a way people concerned with human rights and empowerment of the individual should understand. “If public, political language can only exclude God, we are not just preventing believers from speaking about their faith. We are denying them the right to speak for themselves.” Read the entire article.

Peter Stockland January 3, 2012 The launch of the office of religious freedom is being met with criticism because of a seeming lack of diversity. Michael Coren and guest Peter Stockland take a closer look.

2.8%: That is the difference between the rate of union membership and the rate of unemployment in the US. Union membership in the US is so low that many Americans aren't even familiar with unions. What are they? What do they actually do?  Unions are institutions in which workers organize together to bargain collectively with their employers. Instead of employees being bound by individual employment contracts, unions bargain on behalf of all the workers in a workplace. These contracts are typically called collective bargaining agreements, and they set wage levels, working conditions, and provide structures for workplace discipline, how workers are promoted, fired or laid off, as well as structures for resolving workplace grievances. Typically unions take two forms. They will organize workers within a given craft (for instance, electricians, teachers or basketball players), or they will organize workers in an entire workplace of different trades (for instance, all employees, of all trades, in a factory). Unions traditionally bargain on behalf of their own membership, but they also work to establish minimum labor requirements for all workers through law.  Minimum wage laws, overtime provisions, parental leaves, mandatory workplace insurance schemes are just a few examples of things unions have won through their lobbying efforts over time.  While unions have a long and storied history in the United States, today, as the numbers show, unions are in deep trouble.  You wouldn't know that unions were in such trouble by following the news, though. This year is an especially active news year for unions—first the death match between public service unions in Wisconsin and now the high-stakes drama of the NBA lockout. This coverage, combined with the regular, and massive, contributions of unions to political campaigns suggest that unions are fit and healthy. But don't be deceived. The news coverage and political contributions are nothing more than rouge on the cheeks of a very sick union movement. Unions today are a sallow and pale reflection their past selves.   Why is this so, and why should we care? And, if we should care, what is to be done?  You typically hear two diagnoses. The narrative you'll hear from the union movements typically involves a marriage of big-business, conservative politicians, free-trade and trade and labor policies which emphasize movement of capital, and a business mindset which views workers as equivalent to coffee beans—a commodity to be bought at market prices.  On the other side you'll hear stories about how business developed in such a way as to meet the needs of workers while unions focused on protecting their own institutional interests while costing jobs, their members' money and, often, their members' freedom.  Each side will point to symptoms which confirm their diagnosis.  Unions point to labor policies which undermine trade union rights, or trade policies which have seen American jobs bleed to places like Mexico, China or anywhere else where labor is cheap and unprotected as cause for their decline.  Business will point to corruption of union officials, an unwillingness to consider productivity in bargaining and progressive HR policies within business as proof that the need for unions is over. Sadly, this is about as far as the discussion goes. People who support unions—and I should note at this point that I am very much one of them—and those who are opposed to them, spend more time disagreeing with one another, and more effort and money attempting to trump the other side through politics, than they do in earnestly, and in good faith, wrestling with three profound questions which lie at the heart of the great divide between the pro and anti-union side. This failure has led to both a decline of trade unionism and a bastardization of business. These questions are as follows:  What is work, and how does it relate to what it means to be human? What is the nature and proper function of the business corporation, and what is its relationship to individuals and society?  What is the nature and proper function of the trade union? In my work as a trade unionist—at the local, national and international levels—I found that the answers given by both business and trade union advocates to the first question were eerily similar. Too often the discussion began and ended with economic answers. Too often, business doesn't spend the time asking itself those questions. Sadly, trade unions—whose role it should be to ensure that business is mindful of these questions—spend very little time on a dialog between those with capital, and those who grow capital through their labor, about the deep, even religious, questions behind the daily grind of work. Instead, they limit themselves almost entirely to the fight over dollars and cents.  There was a time when these questions were discussed, and were highly influential in shaping world history for the better.  Christian trade unionists such as Bill Doherty, organizations such as the World Confederation of Labor (a global, Christian, trade union body) and great people such as Abraham Kuyper, Leo XIII, Martin Luther King Jr., Dorothy Day, John Paul II and Lech Walesa have all provided both intellectual and practical responses to these questions.  Each was able to afford a proper place to business while challenging the underlying and harmful assumptions that work is simply an economic activity and that workers exist as individual cogs in a morally neutral economy. They recognized, in their words and in their actions, the fundamentally human and social nature of work.   Today's labor movement would do well to revisit some of these thinkers and actors and to sift through their work to find innovations which would reorient and reinvigorate the union movement. It might be a smaller movement, but it would be better. 

You will never win by fighting city hall, or so the saying goes. Sometimes, you don't have to. The city is not only listening regarding the Cardus Calgary City Soul report and recommendations released in October—it is acting on them and we anticipate a public process early in 2012 that will fully engage and recognize the vital role that faith communities play in the formation of our civic esthetic. To recap, Calgary approved its new Centre City Plan in 2007. It envisions a city centre in which 40,000 or more additional residents will contribute to a vertical, high density, vibrant core of the city. Yet, in spite of the reality that every week enough Calgarians attend places of worship to fill the Saddledome 20 times over; that a significant proportion of the core services in our city rely on faith communities, and that places of worship continue to perform essential roles in the lives of so many of us at the defining moments of our lives ("hatch 'em, match 'em and dispatch 'em"), the document was silent on institutions that sustain and cultivate people's most deeply held beliefs. The oversight in the city plan was not part of some grand anti-religious conspiracy. The public consultation notices went out and representatives of faith institutions had the opportunity to participate. Some did. Others were intimidated about municipal planning processes and the technical jargon that so often accompanies it. Some were not sure that stepping out into the public arena wearing a faith label was the wisest thing to do; religion had become unfashionable. On the city side, the faith dimension is easily overlooked. It tends to be considered something private rather than an integral part of the cultural conversation. Fifty years ago—even 30—when Calgary had a more homogeneous religious profile, it was easier to know who to talk to and how to frame your language. Today's multicultural and multi-faith makeup challenges us all, in that we realize how little we know and understand about each other. Throw in the increasing number oblivious to the idea that there is something more to the world beyond that which we can see, and the whole discussion is easy to avoid, particularly if you are the city staffer tasked with trying to find appropriate legal language. Cardus, a think-tank engaged in the study of social architecture, and our senior fellow, Peter Menzies, found the vocabulary to bridge this gap and the social significance of this conversation. Our recent report, Calgary City Soul—Phase II, released in October, included concrete recommendations for amending the city plan to recognize the ongoing importance of faith and faith institutions. Beyond strategic statements of intent, this needs to translate into interpretation of bylaws, parking regulations and other practical planning tools so that churches, temples, mosques and synagogues can thrive where people live and not be forced to live in sterile environments on the city's physical and metaphorical margins. Since the release of our report, we have heard from several faith groups with municipal issues that go beyond the Centre City Plan. The particulars are not the point: but it is clear the discussion is expanding and we will continue to follow it and facilitate as needed. And we have also heard from and met with city officials who have embraced the issue. The issue has clearly been acknowledged as real—vital, even—and our sense is that there is a genuine desire to engage in ongoing dialogue with faith communities. We understand a public process will be initiated as early as February 2012 that will get faith communities engage in the hard grind of how best to amend bylaws and regulations to meet their needs. The days of a monolithic religious culture, if it ever existed, are certainly over. Recognition needs to be made that we live in a pluralistic city where people of many different faith traditions need to live in harmony. That will not be achieved by being silent about faith and its contribution in terms of architecture, the arts, social services and as incubators of social virtue. It was never our intent to "fight" city hall. But the city we live in and that shapes our shared public spirit 20 years from now, is the city you plan for today—no matter how hard the grinding of bureaucratic language can be. Faith has always been a part of Calgary's civic history and esthetic. The path appears clear for it to continue that tradition into the future.

My fellow Catholic Register columnist Peter Stockland and I may just be crazy. After writing thousands of columns between us, we certainly know that some readers think so! But this craziness is somewhat different. We have decided to start a magazine. It's called Convivium (www.cardus.ca/convivium), and a special preview issue was launched in October. We start bimonthly publishing next February. Convivium literally means life together, though the word is often translated to mean banquet or festive meal; hence the “convivial” person is one who would enliven such an occasion. Our subject is just that—our common life together as Canadians. Specifically, we claim to be about faith in our common life. You can judge for yourselves at www.cardus.ca/convivium. A glimpse into our preview issue is there, as well as an opportunity to join our new project. You will also see that Peter and I are working with Cardus, a Christian think tank devoted to the role of faith in strengthening our social architecture. Cardus is Protestant, while Peter and I are Catholics, so this project is ecumenical in nature. Indeed, it's for all Canadians who take seriously the role of faith in our common life together. We know that Canadian common life—culture, economics, politics, sports, music, education, business, history—needs the contribution of religious faith, and of faithful Canadians. We think our new magazine is necessary too, as a service to that larger project. We intend that the magazine be the flagship of a larger Convivium project, a new intellectual venture in service of the evangelization of culture. Launching a new magazine is almost by definition a crazy project, but then there are always a dozen reasons why it's a bad idea to try anything new. God gives us evangelists and entrepreneurs to encourage us to try anyway. Every evangelist hopes to be a fool for Christ, and every entrepreneur thinks he is crazy like a fox. Readers will determine if we are either. In our preview issue, I write about our launch in the year marking the centenary of Marshall McLuhan's birth. He was both a great communications theorist and a devout Catholic. Early in the electronic age, McLuhan noticed that the human spirit is uneasy with ever more powerful communications that leave the desire for authentic communion unfulfilled. All of which is rather sobering for those launching the venture of a new magazine, dedicated to and animated by faith in our common life. We have been asked frequently: Why bother printing a magazine? Why not just do the whole thing online? We'll have a web presence to be sure, but we are convinced that magazines do something more than just convey information, which the Internet does much faster and for far less cost. Magazines retain something of that tangible contact between readers and writers. The magazine enters a home, office or classroom and remains, signifying a community to which the reader belongs, or at least takes an interest in. We are aiming here not just at conveying ideas, but building a community of those who take the role of faith seriously. Our common life can benefit from electronic communications, but cannot be conducted entirely through it. A magazine does not replace an actual conversation, but it encourages participation in it, and at its best, is a tangible meeting between persons. Hundreds of thousands of words can flitter across our laptops and smartphones in a day. Our hope is the words published in this new magazine might hang around a while. And for that, it is useful to employ a medium that might just do that, namely hang around your home or office, inviting you to join a conversation that may build up something of that communion that we all seek. Marshall McLuhan died in his sleep. A beautiful documentary by Canadian filmmaker Deiran Masterson—McLuhan Way: In Search of Truth—reveals the details of the final hours. In the evening a priest offered Mass in his home. McLuhan received Holy Communion, and then enjoyed a glass of champagne and a cigar. All three were media with a message: God is here, present in the good things He gives us, the greatest of which is communion with God Himself in Jesus Christ. McLuhan died having participated in what St. Thomas Aquinas called the sacrum convivium—Holy Communion. His final evening was marked too by authentic human convivium, for which champagne and cigars are not necessary, but highly advantageous. We would like to think he would look kindly on a magazine dedicated to just that: Convivium.