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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

Education

Bonaventure’s Blind Spot

Bonaventure’s Blind Spot As I sat fidgeting in front of my laptop on Shrove Tuesday, I could feel my anxiety rising. I had done all the usual things to calm myself before teaching online: I had stilled myself and sat in silence for a little bit. Normally, being silent reduces my anxiety. This time, however, it did not work so well. The reason was that what I was about to do was not, strictly speaking, teaching. Nor was the group of people I was about to meet the tired-looking (and occasionall...

United States
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Politics

Beyond Transactional

Beyond Transactional Recent data from the Pew Research Center reveals that Donald Trump is losing a small amount of support among white Evangelicals. Anecdotally, I do know plenty of Evangelicals disgusted with the president’s handling of foreign affairs, his immigration policy, and his general authoritarianism. But the voices of these Trump skeptics are often drowned out by fellow Evangelicals who traffic in a MAGA-informed politics of outrage and grievance. These are the Evangelicals that P...

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Society

A Passport and a Baptismal Candle

A Passport and a Baptismal Candle The Sunday after Renée Good was killed in Minnesota, I was in Chicago, visiting a friend. We sat around her kitchen table and spoke aloud about the horrors unfolding across the nation, confessing our fears and anxieties as two young Latina women. For decades now, we have watched the language of “U.S. citizen” become entangled with arguments about who is entitled to the legal protection of basic human rights. Good’s death (and later Alex Pretti’s) laid bare th...

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Culture

Ash Wednesday Asks Nothing

Ash Wednesday Asks Nothing The first Ash Wednesday that ever felt true to me was not in my native South but in New England, where winter presses into your bones and dusk seems to fall in midafternoon. I remember walking up Commonwealth Avenue as the last hues of daylight turned to dark gray over the Mass Pike. The cold thinned the breath inside my scarf. Marsh Chapel, Boston University’s neo-Gothic sentinel, glowed from within. The air inside was cool, smelling of wax and old wood. I had shed...

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Politics

Don’t Leave It to the Experts

Don’t Leave It to the Experts After many months of publicly disparaging U.S. Federal Reserve chair Jerome Powell as a “jerk,” a “numbskull,” and both an “average mentally person” and “a very stupid person,” President Donald Trump formally announced in late January that he was taking the completely expected step of declining to reappoint Powell for another four-year term as head of the nation’s central bank. In his place, Trump has selected attorney and financier Kevin Warsh, a former member o...

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Education

A Shrine and a School

A Shrine and a School On his way out of town, the eminent sociologist Christian Smith nailed his ninety-five theses to the doors of the Basilica of the Sacred Heart, resigned his longtime professorship, and raged against the dying of the light in an essay in First Things: “I am done with Notre Dame.” Presumably, it’s mutual. As Catholic scholars who also taught for years at Notre Dame, we recognize—and reject—Smith’s dyspepsia. He has failed to understand the unique place of the university in...

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Geopolitics

Leo’s Transatlantic Task

Leo’s Transatlantic Task There were rumors that Leo XIV would travel to his home country this year, perhaps for a stop at the UN, among other places. But the U.S.-born pope will not be visiting the United States anytime soon, the Vatican recently confirmed. John Paul II and Benedict XVI visited their own native countries within a year of their elections (though Francis never went to Argentina). So far Leo has yet to travel in Europe, or even to other Italian cities, while his relationship wit...

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Culture

The Priesthood’s Ritual Logic

The Priesthood’s Ritual Logic There was a lot of disappointment, even irritation, over last year’s decision by a Vatican commission to shelve further discussion by the Synod on Synodality of the possibility of ordaining women to the diaconate. I do not doubt the sincerity of those who advocate for what they argue is a restoration of an office that existed in the early Church and that, tellingly, continues to exist in some Eastern Churches. Nor am I a scholar who can parse the exact meaning of...

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Politics

A Multiracial Right?

A Multiracial Right? I grew up in a God-and-country Evangelical family in the very conservative panhandle of Florida. I later attended a Pentecostal Bible college and a Baptist seminary. I left the world of conservative Evangelicalism nearly two decades ago and am now a progressive, to the left of most Democrats. Whenever I talk to my old conservative friends and family members about politics, it feels like I spend most of my time correcting the distorted views they have about the left. The D...

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Culture

Dialogues for the Common Good

Dialogues for the Common Good Why pay attention? In the digital era, when information is treated like a commodity, distraction abounds, but attention is scarce. What does it mean to pay attention today? How is the simple—but radical act—of attending essential to our humanity and our intellectual, moral, creative, and social well-being? Join us Thursday, February 12, for an evening of reflection and discussion with author and ethicist Jennifer Herdt, and poet and author Shane McRae. Moderated ...

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Geopolitics

The Politics of Empty Chairs

The Politics of Empty Chairs There is a way to read foreign policy that does not run through solemn speeches or spectacular crises, but through the spaces that are left empty. In recent weeks, the United States has announced its withdrawal from an impressive number of international bodies: technical forums, UN agencies, scientific platforms, cooperation programs. Taken one by one, many of these announcements mean little to the public. Considered together, however, they tell a coherent story—a...

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