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Commonweal

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

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

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Discussions from Commonweal

Politics

Fear and Twitch-Streaming in Michigan

Fear and Twitch-Streaming in Michigan “Abdul wants to let criminals out of jail early,” says my TV every time I turn it on. You’d think that such a policy might endear Abdul El-Sayed—who won a bitter primary to become this year’s Michigan Democratic Senate candidate and the target of millions of dollars’ worth of reactionary ad spending—to MAGA Republicans. After all, Trump’s is the most lawless and corrupt administration in memory. Perhaps they don’t find El-Sayed soft enough on crime. He ha...

United States
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Politics

Turning Against the State

Turning Against the State Extraordinary scenes of social unrest and urban violence in France have been interpreted in ways that are exasperatingly predictable. Progressives denounce the repressive tactics employed by the French state and police brutality, including the use of foam-round launchers and sound grenades. Conservatives express outrage at attacks on private and public property, which they blame on mass immigration, elite wokeness, and leftist nihilism. Yet underlying the partisan co...

France
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Culture

Is Hollywood to Blame for Trump?

Is Hollywood to Blame for Trump? From the confines of our culturally diminished present—in which UFC cage matches are held on the White House South Lawn while the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts sits shuttered and shrouded—it can be difficult to recall better times. Once, federal funding for such public goods as the arts and the humanities was robust, for example, and artists, scholars, and students were supported rather than surveilled or sued. Pedagogical programs promoting c...

United States
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Politics

Havel, Trump, and the Church

Havel, Trump, and the Church In his speech at the World Economic Forum in Davos in January 2026, Canadian prime minister Mark Carney referenced Czech dissident and former president Václav Havel and his 1978 essay The Power of the Powerless. Carney cited Havel’s story about a greengrocer who puts up a communist slogan (“Workers of the world, unite!”) in his shop window every day—not out of belief, but to avoid any trouble with the Party. Carney argued that the rules-based international order h...

Global
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Politics

Trump Is Undermining the Military

Trump Is Undermining the Military President Trump is playing Russian roulette with the world—waging hot war on Iran, legal and bureaucratic war on a free press, and generally treating allies as if they were enemies and enemies as if they were allies. At the same time, he has been playing a deadly game with the one institution that, he boasts, gives him the ability to act as he pleases: the American military. Since retaking office, he and Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth have repeatedly jolte...

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Culture

A Rare but Growing Courage

A Rare but Growing Courage The first-ever Catholic Military Conference will provide three days of “formation, fellowship, and prayer centered in the Catholic Church’s Just War tradition” for Catholic service members and their families—even as the U.S. military conducts a war that Pope Leo XIV has labeled as unjust. But this inaugural event, held November 9-11 and The conference’s plenary speaker is critical of the war in Iran, and Archbishop Timothy Broglio, who heads the military archdiocese...

United States
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Geopolitics

Document of an Atrocity

Document of an Atrocity On one level, NAZA is an inquiry into proportionality. Or, more accurately, disproportionality—and thus injustice, immorality, war crimes, and where to set the line that marks genocide, a question all the more pressing because the nation accused of genocide in Gaza was built out of the ashes of the Holocaust. Those are vital issues, but they are also in some ways abstractions. On another, more human level, the new documentary from Israeli journalists Yuval Abraham and ...

Global
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Society

Falling to the Occasion

The article explores the complexities of human resilience and vulnerability, examining how individuals confront challenges and the profound impact of falling short in difficult situations.

United States
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Culture

102 Years of Commonweal

102 Years of Commonweal On October 5, 2026, hundreds of Commonweal friends, contributors and staff gathered for the Commonweal Benefit Dinner, celebrating the magazine’s 102 consecutive years of publication. The room featured a sizable contingent from the University of Notre Dame, as this year’s Centennial awardee was none other than Rev. John I. Jenkins, CSC, distinguished president emeritus of Notre Dame. Notre Dame vice president Ann Firth offered an invocation, which you can read here, an...

United States
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Culture

"What We Seek is What We Are"

"What We Seek is What We Are" Given that yesterday was the Feast of St. Francis, I’d like to start with a short reflection about St. Francis taken from the writings of Fr. Richard Rohr: God cannot be found “out there” until God is first found “in here,” within ourselves. Then we can almost naturally see God in others and in all creation too. What we seek is what we are. The search for God and the search for our true self are finally the same search. Francis’s all-night prayer, “Who are you, O...

United States
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Culture

Foucault at a Hundred

Foucault at a Hundred This year marks the hundredth anniversary of the birth of Michel Foucault, one of the most influential French philosophers of the past fifty years. He is probably best known for his studies of madness, prisons, and sexuality (Madness and Civilization, Discipline and Punish, and The History of Sexuality), which all elaborated in different ways on his basic claim that power and knowledge are inseparable. During his lifetime, he was often vilified by the right as deviant an...

Global
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Politics

Putting Florida Back in Play

Putting Florida Back in Play Democratic challengers are putting Republicans on defense in reliably red territory. In a remarkable shift from election forecasts over the summer, traditional Republican strongholds now seem to be in play. Key contests in Texas, Ohio, Iowa, Alaska, Montana, and even Kansas have stoked hopes for a Democratic comeback in states that Republicans have easily dominated for a decade or more. The most coveted prize is a Senate seat in Texas, where Democratic candidate J...

United States
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