Skip to main content
Commonweal

Commonweal

Magazine | United States | Centre-Left
www.commonwealmagazine.org/

Liberal Catholic magazine offering independent commentary on religion, politics, and culture.

Engagement Insights

109
Discussions
0
Participants
0
Total Votes
129
Articles

Discussions from Commonweal

Culture

Released from Countdowns

Released from Countdowns Marilynne Robinson’s Housekeeping is the best American debut novel of the past fifty years, maybe the best American novel of the past fifty years, period. It’s a bold move, then, for Harriet Clark to put her own debut, The Hill (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, $28, 273 pp.), in such explicit conversation with Robinson’s masterpiece. Clark borrows character names, Helen and Sylvie, from Housekeeping, and she channels the cadences of Robinson’s prose: “Say that this resurrec...

United States
Join Discussion
Education

St. John’s Turns Its Back

St. John’s Turns Its Back St. John’s University faculty are currently embroiled in a bruising labor battle with university leaders. The administration fired the opening salvo on the afternoon of February 19, when it informed its faculty, in the midst of contract negotiations, that it would be unilaterally derecognizing their two unions: the local chapter of the American Association of University Professors and an independent, standalone Faculty Association. The announcement has triggered one ...

United States
Join Discussion
Politics

Too Radical for Michigan?

Too Radical for Michigan? Infighting in the Democratic Party has spiked to levels not seen since Bernie Sanders’s 2016 insurgent presidential campaign. A series of uncomfortable revelations culminating in an accusation of sexual assault forced Graham Platner to end his populist, antiwar Senate campaign in Maine, mere weeks after trouncing Gov. Janet Mills, the establishment favorite, in the June Democratic primary. Stunned supporters and left-wing organizers from afar had barely come to terms...

United States
Join Discussion
Culture

The Culture-War Factory

The Culture-War Factory In June 1988, James Dobson, radio host and founder of Focus on the Family, rallied his listeners to protest a film he declared “the most blasphemous, evil attack on the church and the cause of Christ in the history of entertainment.” Never mind that he and the rest of a self-declared group of “offended brethren” had not actually seen the film in question, Martin Scorsese’s as-yet-unreleased The Last Temptation of Christ. All they’d experienced of the film was an outdat...

United States
Join Discussion
Politics

‘They Don’t Want to Say Yes’

The article explores the complexities and hesitations surrounding commitment in relationships, highlighting the emotional barriers that prevent individuals from fully embracing their feelings.

United States
Join Discussion
Culture

Loved but Not Wanted

Loved but Not Wanted In the third episode of the recent HBO show DTF: St Louis, a side-character makes a remark that becomes one of the show’s defining lines: “No one’s normal. It just looks that way from across the street.” This is an oddly sweet line for a show that positions itself as an erotic thriller. But DTF: ST Louis is neither particularly erotic nor thrilling. Its sex scenes range from cringe-inducing to unwatchable, and its thrills lead to surprisingly sober revelations. Told in a ...

United States
Join Discussion
Politics

Hunger Is a Cry to Heaven

Hunger Is a Cry to Heaven “Hunger…is a cry that rises to heaven and requires a swift response from every nation, every international organization, every regional, local or private body. No one can remain on the sidelines in the fight against hunger.” The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops included these words from Pope Leo XIV in a letter to the Senate on July 9 about the priorities of the Farm Bill. The bill sets agricultural policies and funds programs that address hunger in the United Sta...

Global
Join Discussion
Society

The Commonweal Fund for Moral & Civic Renewal

The Commonweal Fund for Moral & Civic Renewal Thomas and Allison Franco have made a founding gift of $1,000,000. We invite you to join them. Introduction In an era of deep polarization and widespread distrust of institutions, Commonweal’s independent voice is more urgently needed than ever. The Commonweal Fund for Moral & Civic Renewal is a permanent endowment designed to ensure that voice endures—free, fearless, and faithful—for generations to come. The challenges facing American civic and r...

United States
Join Discussion
Culture

Why We Love to Hate Tradwives

Why We Love to Hate Tradwives The summer’s most talked-about novel, the debut Yesteryear by Caro Claire Burke, has a tantalizing premise: a tradwife influencer wakes up one day to find that her modern kitchen, two nannies, and the other behind-the-scenes creature comforts that prop up her “traditional” lifestyle brand have disappeared. Instead, she is now living in 1855, where she has to bake her signature sourdough over a fickle fire and bloody her hands while scrubbing clothes with a washbo...

United States
Join Discussion
Healthcare

The Church’s Acid Test

The Church’s Acid Test “This is your priest on drugs,” proclaimed the headline of a New Yorker article by Michael Pollan last year. Pollan’s 2018 book How to Change Your Mind both chronicled and turbocharged the so-called “psychedelic renaissance.” Proliferating clinical trials had already demonstrated psychedelics’ ability to mitigate psychiatric conditions like PTSD and treatment-resistant depression, and over the following years, psilocybin treatments were legalized, under some conditions,...

United States
Join Discussion
Culture

Is Tech Destroying the Beautiful Game?

Is Tech Destroying the Beautiful Game? Despite the open corruption and commercialism of FIFA, this year’s World Cup has been a hit. The soccer has, by and large, outshone the many distractions and intrusions. And the atmosphere of the tournament may even have given exhausted liberals reason to hope that—despite the nativism and witless imperial ambition of the country’s present leadership—American patriotism can coexist with a welcoming internationalism. But a series of infuriating controvers...

Global
Join Discussion