Ideas – TWC Interactive

An Alternative Path of Positive Cultural Change

Joe Mancini March 1, 2025

The Jesuit Disruptor offers a guide to embracing the animating spirit of the Gospels. Michael Higgins does this by documenting the changes percolating below the surface of Catholicism, rethinking democracy and reciprocity. Of course, the changes Francis has developed could all fall apart. Yet, Higgins produces evidence that the reforms themselves are the learning process. This book is about an alternative path of positive cultural change. A model in utter contrast to the one presently playing out in Washington. Francis is disrupting patterns, expectations, and the standard way of doing things, but not as a negative-malignant way of overturning old structures, rather with a focus on constructive goals through useful actions.

Books for Sustainable Living

Joe Mancini December 1, 2024

This issue’s collection of books point in new directions. The Working Centre is bridging two gaps between a homelessness crisis and climate change. The depth of homelessness was made real by The Working Centre naming over 900 people who are homeless. Each day we see in the news scathing hot temperatures, swaths of forests burning and villages washed away by surging water.

Searching for Wholeness

Joe Mancini September 20, 2024

All around us, we have seen higher levels of anger expressed in political and social environments. You see this in relation to politics, you see it in the eyes of enraged drivers, and we have seen it in our community as people reconcile the realities of more and more people experiencing homelessness and drug addiction, especially around shelters and spaces that support people most at risk.

Determined Hope

Rebecca Mancini March 1, 2024

This year, the Mayors’ Dinner helps us to reflect on the importance of determined hopefulness in the face of despair. Determined hopefulness is not a gentle wish for the future, it is an intentional act to choose the kind of world that we want to live in. It will take courage and it will take care. Looking at the world around us, the need for courage is clear.

The Age of Insecurity: Coming Together As Things Fall Apart

Joe Mancini March 1, 2024

The main message of Astra Taylor’s The Age of Insecurity is How Can We Come Together. When CBC IDEAS asked Astra Taylor to give the Massey Lecture, they were inviting a Canadian who has been acting on the insecurity that has provoked the Occupy generation. Since her Occupy days, Taylor’s projects include the Debt Collective, a US based operation which supports those who have taken on overwhelming debt to pay for education, rent or bail. Taylor is very familiar with the causes of the insecurity she writes about.

175 Years of Canadian Democracy

John Ralston Saul June 1, 2023

When a group of Canadian citizens brought the national capital to a halt for three weeks in January and February, 2022, the atmosphere on all sides was one of confusion. Nothing like this had ever happened in Canada’s capital – at least, not since anti-democratic forces besieged Parliament, which was then based in Montreal, and burned it to the ground. That was a little while ago: April 25, 1849.

The Catholic Worker: 90 Years of Community Hospitality

Isaiah Ritzmann June 1, 2023

At the beginning of May the Catholic Worker movement turned 90 years old. The newspaper Dorothy Day and her collaborator Peter Maurin launched still sells for a penny a copy. The hospitality houses they began still exist on the lower east side of Manhattan, feeding over a hundred people a day and housing some thirty-odd people. Meanwhile across the United States and around the world roughly two hundred hospitality houses and farming communes persist in the daily practice of the works of mercy and with the slow work of building a “new society in the shell of the old, where it is easier for people to be good”

Canadians with Disabilities Deserve Better

Mike Morrice March 1, 2023

The Federal legislation for a Canada Disability Benefit is exceptionally important news. This is a targeted benefit focused on improving income support for those with disabilities. Benefits delivered through the tax system are efficient and can be directed where they are needed most. We have seen the difference for families that receive the Canada Child Benefit which Ala Abdulkarem describes in the article, Helping New Canadians Access Income Supports. Ala leads our Money Matters project providing support to over 3000 individuals last year.

The Climate Emergency is Here

Isaiah Ritzmann September 30, 2022

We are living through a climate emergency. But are we acting like it? Imagine you are in a crowded building – a school, a mall, maybe an office. The fire alarm starts to sound. But nobody does anything. They just keep doing what they were doing before: the students sit in class, shoppers keep shopping, and the office workers go about their business. It’s an emergency. But nobody is acting like it. To keep doing what we were doing before is not what we need to do now. Is this a parable for an age where we declare climate emergencies and go on acting like we always have?

Ivan Illich: An Intellectual Journey

Joe Mancini December 2, 2021

It is encouraging to see a resurgence in awareness and understanding of the ideas of Ivan Illich. Much credit for this revitalization goes to David Cayley and his staunch determination to keep the flame alive. Earlier this year, Penn State University Press published Cayley’s latest work, Ivan Illich: An Intellectual Journey. This book is a masterpiece of storytelling that unpacks the insight behind Illich’s writings while intertwining his influential work on the ground as a priest, activist, itinerant scholar and founder of an alternative education culture in Cuernavaca, Mexico. This book is truly Cayley’s gift to the reader, providing a key to help decode our tumultuous world.

Tag: Ideas