Siobhan Heekin-Canedy, OLY

Olympian. Catholic. Freelance writer & Contributing Editor @ProvMagazine. Wife of one man, mama of two girls. 🇺🇸🇺🇦🇻🇦

[Siobhan Heekin-Canedy, OLY @SiobhanHC_OLY]

People keep asking me where they can find my writing. So I finally corralled all the links into one Substack post.

https://t.co/vfbtU1Pwbc

[Siobhan Heekin-Canedy, OLY @SiobhanHC_OLY]

My latest article looks at the spiritual dimension of recent events in France.

[Providence Magazine @ProvMagazine]

The contrast between Pope Leo’s visit to France and the often violent protests that escalated shortly thereafter illustrates the spiritual battles that all nations must fight @SiobhanHC_OLY

[Siobhan Heekin-Canedy, OLY @SiobhanHC_OLY]

My latest for @ProvMagazine explores the spiritual stakes of the unrest in France.
https://t.co/qXYHEZtXmu

[Siobhan Heekin-Canedy, OLY @SiobhanHC_OLY]

Grateful to @FairerSexFD for featuring my article for @ProvMagazine in their weekly newsletter!

https://t.co/JVWECsIaVq

[Siobhan Heekin-Canedy, OLY @SiobhanHC_OLY]

With all this talk of Putin’s escalation in Europe, seems like a good time to revisit my review of If Putin Wins: A Scenario for @ProvMagazine. Highly relevant to recent developments.

https://t.co/wUKQ7x7KPi

[Nadya Williams @NadyaWilliams81]

Grateful for @SiobhanHC_OLY's reflections @ProvMagazine on the @FairerSexFD convention a couple of weeks ago! https://t.co/7KQU9SqNbI

[Siobhan Heekin-Canedy, OLY @SiobhanHC_OLY]

From September 17-19, the 2026 Women’s Convention convened in Rochester, NY. The Convention’s Declaration beautifully articulates an understanding of women that recognizes both their equal dignity with men & their unique physiology & social contributions.
https://t.co/VtKMmTKDeW

[Siobhan Heekin-Canedy, OLY @SiobhanHC_OLY]

In my latest for @ProvMagazine, I argue that the recent 2026 Women’s Convention and the movement it launched offer a better way forward for women and for America.

https://t.co/VtKMmTLb4u

[Siobhan Heekin-Canedy, OLY @SiobhanHC_OLY]

Really exited to share my latest for @ProvMagazine. And grateful to be part of a publication that understands the important downstream effects of culture & identity on foreign policy.
@FairerSexFD @erikabachiochi

[Providence Magazine @ProvMagazine]

From September 17-19, the 2026 Women’s Convention convened in Rochester, for the purpose of articulating an understanding of women that recognizes both their equal dignity with men and their unique physiology and social contributions. @SiobhanHC_OLY

[ThomasAquinasCollege @TACollege]

A common theme in these comments is that Thomas Aquinas College is deficient in natural science and lacks sufficient rigor in the STEM disciplines. What’s ironic is that our students study more math and science than most undergraduates anywhere, outside of math and science concentrations. Our students take eight semester-long courses in mathematics (28 credit hours) and eight semester-long courses in natural science (another 28 credit hours). The number of credit hours is equivalent to a minor in mathematics and a minor in natural science. Apart from STEM majors, that’s more than any other undergraduate program in the country.

Students at the College don’t just read essays about math or natural science, they demonstrate proofs or theorems from Euclid, Galileo, and Newton. We don’t shy away from reading difficult books such as Newton’s “Principia” or Maxwell’s theory of electromagnetism. We not only read Darwin’s “Origin of Species” but later proponents and critics of evolutionary theory, such as Jacques Monod and Stephen Jay Gould; we read Einstein’s “General Theory of Relativity”; we read Mendeleev’s original scientific papers proposing the periodic table.

One might object that we don’t use modern textbooks, study the latest scientific theories, or have sophisticated laboratories. That’s intentional. We want our students to understand the progress of the natural sciences in the context of the full range of academic disciplines, such as philosophy and theology. They examine the foundations of modern science and develop the habit of mind that seeks first principles.

Our graduates pursue a wide variety of STEM professions: physics, engineering, medicine, and tech. They excel in these fields because our program fosters intellectual rigor, first-principles thinking, and the ability to tackle real world problems creatively.

[JD Flynn @jdflynn]

The TAC debate presumes college is for a career.

"Fine if you want to be a classicist, but otherwise..."

"This won't cut it if you want to be a biologist right after college..."

But what if the idea of college is becoming a certain kind of person, not getting a certain kind of job?

[Siobhan Heekin-Canedy, OLY @SiobhanHC_OLY]

Sure, for some fields you’ll need an addtl degree or specialized training. But the foundation you get is 100% worth it - you learn how to think and how to be an excellent human person. And def not my experience that all grads go on to be tweedy theologians.

[Siobhan Heekin-Canedy, OLY @SiobhanHC_OLY]

Crazy to me that there is a brouhaha to begin with. Most of the voices opining on X have not attended, let alone visited, @TACollege. My husband and I both attended, and we’d send our kids w/out hesitation. No institution is perfect or right for everyone, but… (cont. below)

[Sohrab Ahmari 🇺🇸 @SohrabAhmari]

Three thoughts on the latest brouhaha re: Thomas Aquinas College:

1. I visited in 2019, and observed a stunningly healthy campus culture, ordered to developing young men and women who “put away childish things.”

That doesn’t mean they don’t drink or smoke or etc., — they do. But nothing like the manic, ultimately alienating way I remember from my own big-college days. The feasting is situated within human domesticity and sociality and ultimately presented as an echo of the Banquet of the Lord. That itself is a HUGE win and has lessons for other institutions (*cough-cough* see today’s major college-related story).

2. The humanities curriculum is rich and rigorous and deep in a way that the pamphlet making the rounds doesn’t capture. Students come out with a sense of how ideas unfold in history, rather than (again) the haphazard curricula characteristic of most other schools (“a little existentialism, now back to Descartes, now a little analytic mind-and-body problem, now neoclassical econ — congrats here’s your diploma!”).

3. However, I do worry the science curriculum is deficient, and have said so. Aristotle on biology or “Goethe’s scientific notebooks” may be valuable in a history-of-science component, but you can’t teach that stuff earnestly in a science course.

To be well-rounded and competitive, students need to have some encounter with what’s happening in evolutionary biology, physical cosmology, computational science, etc. TODAY. And then to test what they’ve learned in the classically oriented philosophy and theology courses against the immense achievements of modernity — fearlessly, in the way the post-conciliar church urges, and not in the manner of cornpone evangelicalism.

American Catholicism needs this. And I’ve said before that I worry about a certain type of classical education producing ONLY tweedy assistant professors of theology or people who might go to law and policy, but not STEM and adjacent fields.

Thus, at the risk of scandalizing some, if today I had the choice for my kids to pick between Georgetown or TAC, I’d still pick Georgetown. But that can change!

FIN.

[Siobhan Heekin-Canedy, OLY @SiobhanHC_OLY]

I believe choosing TAC over Columbia (where I was accepted) was one of my best life decisions. I grew in faith, made lifelong friends, and received stellar preparation for grad school/work in intl affairs. My husband and many others have gone on to success in STEM fields (cont.)

[Siobhan Heekin-Canedy, OLY @SiobhanHC_OLY]

Total coincidence, but delighted that my review of Religious Communities Under Pressure coincided with the release of the second edition. Highly recommend to anyone trying to better understand the Russia Ukraine conflict.

https://t.co/mQF0CXrQ5r

[Sergei Chapnin @SergeiChapnin]

📖 2nd edition just dropped: Religious Communities Under Pressure. Documenting religious persecution in Russia, 2022–2026. By Sergei Chapnin, foreword by Rowan Williams.
New in Ch. 6: sharpened focus on Buddhists — persecution that cuts across faith communities.

[Siobhan Heekin-Canedy, OLY @SiobhanHC_OLY]

@ProvMagazine

[Siobhan Heekin-Canedy, OLY @SiobhanHC_OLY]

My review of Sergei Chapnin’s book.
“Of course…Zelensky and Putin aren’t on amicable terms, but anyone who hopes to advance the cause of peace in Ukraine must first understand that ideology, not personal antipathy, is the root cause of the war.”

https://t.co/mQF0CXrQ5r

[Siobhan Heekin-Canedy, OLY @SiobhanHC_OLY]

Excited to share my review of @SergeiChapnin’s recent book on religious persecution in Russia.

[Providence Magazine @ProvMagazine]

Sergei Chapnin’s recently published book on religious persecution in Russia shines a light on the ways in which Putin has and has not been able to co-opt the Russian Orthodox Church to support his war against Ukraine @SiobhanHC_OLY https://t.co/zPuM9dKdu4

[Siobhan Heekin-Canedy, OLY @SiobhanHC_OLY]

@LeahLibresco @rclu Love this description. And love how “feminism” was probably the last thing to which Aristotle imagined his name would be appended. 😂

[Erika Bachiochi @erikabachiochi]

In preparation for the Rochester convention last week, I interviewed @Ayaan Hirsi Ali who was not able to be with us in person. We premiered our recorded exchange at the convention.

Ayaan and I had a wide-ranging discussion of the historic cause of women's rights: first, from her perspective as a Muslim who grew up under harrowing conditions in Somalia, then after her escape as a liberal atheist in Holland, and finally, as a believing Christian.

Link to YouTube below.

[Siobhan Heekin-Canedy, OLY @SiobhanHC_OLY]

It was an honor to participate in the 2026 Women’s Convention in Rochester last weekend and to help proclaim the convention’s Declaration of Interdependence at Seneca Falls. You can read and sign the Declaration at https://t.co/uZeMJ0c3LZ
#prolife #feminism