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Commonweal

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

A Crisis of Belonging

A Crisis of Belonging Commentary on politics today is concerned with size—the size of superpowers and client states, GDPs and deficits, armies and arsenals. But what’s often forgotten is that the issue of scale in modernity was first about inclusion. For Enlightenment philosophers, this is what separated the moderns from the ancients. From the eighteenth century onwards, albeit slowly, ever more people came to regard government as something they should have a say in—and a right to. It was not...

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Culture

‘Against Your Better Judgment’

‘Against Your Better Judgment’ Robert Lowell wrote in 1975 that Seamus Heaney was “the best Irish poet since Yeats”—a claim that some thought hyperbolic, or at least premature. But now, on the arrival of The Poems of Seamus Heaney, Lowell’s view has become consensus. Heaney, who died in 2013 at age seventy-four, produced a breadth and quality of work rivaling that of the first Irish Nobel laureate. Just as Yeats explored the “terrible beauty” of Ireland’s 1916 Easter Rebellion, Heaney weighed...

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Culture

Dancing on a Volcano

Dancing on a Volcano In December 1944, amid the bombs and wartime wreckage of Berlin, acclaimed conductor Wilhelm Furtwängler led the Berlin Philharmonic in a performance of Brahms and Beethoven in a frigid variety theater—since Royal Air Force bombing raids had already wrecked most of the city’s grand concert halls and opera houses. Among those shivering under overcoats in the audience was Leo Buruma, a young Dutch law student who’d been coerced into work at a Berlin munitions factory. The m...

Germany
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Politics

Pope and President, at Odds Again?

Pope and President, at Odds Again? The subject was the same, but the timing was purely coincidental. Last Friday afternoon, the U.S. Justice Department announced an expansion of the federal death penalty, just hours before Pope Leo delivered a video statement urging U.S. Catholics to work for the abolition of capital punishment. Nevertheless, the dueling messages were inevitably seen in light of the ongoing contretemps between the Trump administration and the pope, underscored by the stark di...

United States
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Culture

'Commonweal' Informs Panel on Democracy and the Culture of Encounter

'Commonweal' Informs Panel on Democracy and the Culture of Encounter Commonweal was well-represented at a recent panel discussion of Pope Francis’s call for a culture of encounter at Georgetown University. “Many scholars and commentators have emphasized the importance of civil dialogue and mutual respect if we are to move beyond our deep ideological and political divisions,” organizers noted. “Pope Francis, drawing on his theological training and experience as archbishop of Buenos Aires, deve...

United States
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Society

A Discussion of Pope Leo’s First Year

A Discussion of Pope Leo’s First Year On April 15, to mark the one-year anniversary of Pope Leo’s historic election, Commonweal editor Dominic Preziosi moderated a conversation with religion reporters and columnists about the new pope and his early pontificate at the Hank Center for the Catholic Intellectual Heritage at Loyola University Chicago. “Pope Leo has focused on the obligation to care for the poor and vulnerable,” Preziosi noted in his introductory remarks, “and on the need for the C...

United States
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Culture

Humanity on the Page

The article explores the profound impact of literature on understanding the human experience, emphasizing how storytelling fosters empathy and connection in a fragmented world.

United States
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Culture

Manufactured Matriarch

The article explores the complexities of motherhood in contemporary society, examining how societal expectations shape the roles and identities of women as caregivers and leaders.

United States
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Culture

Tennyson’s Honest Doubt

Tennyson’s Honest Doubt Remnants of the poems of Alfred Tennyson still make an occasional appearance outside the college survey course. Judi Dench’s character read from “Ulysses” in a James Bond movie. Helen Mirren read the same poem on The Late Show to a visibly moved Stephen Colbert. Colum McCann borrowed a Tennyson line for the title of his novel Let the Great World Spin. And in the Dustin Hoffman movie Marathon Man, a gruff professor scolded his graduate students for not recognizing a quo...

United States
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Geopolitics

On Dubious Analogies

On Dubious Analogies President Trump’s supporters have offered some implausible scenarios on the likely outcome of his war of choice with Iran, as well as some wild justifications for it. But the most bizarre justification I’ve come across appears in Francis X. Maier’s essay “On Doing the Right Thing,” published by The Catholic Thing. Trump’s determination to destroy Iran’s supposed nuclear threat and its theocratic tyranny is justified, Maier believes, for the same reason that Lutheran theol...

United States
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Politics

In Praise of a Political Church

In Praise of a Political Church In the war of words between Pope Leo and President Donald Trump last week, the two U.S.-born world leaders seemed to agree on only one thing: that the pope is not a politician. In the rambling Truth Social post that started the ruckus, Trump accused Leo of supporting crime, a nuclear Iran, and Venezuelan drug dealers, while also taking credit for the pope’s election and getting in a dig that he prefers Leo’s MAGA brother. But he concluded the rant by advising L...

United States
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Geopolitics

Slouching Toward Beirut

Slouching Toward Beirut On November 30, 2025, Pope Leo began a three-day visit to Lebanon. A papal visit had been long in the planning. Pope Francis had wanted to go to Lebanon but was prevented from doing so—first for security concerns and then because of failing health. When Pope Leo arrived in Beirut, he was greeted like a rock star. Jubilant crowds braved torrential rains to welcome him. It was exceptional, even by Lebanese standards. After meeting with government officials and Christian ...

Lebanon
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