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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

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...

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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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Culture

Old Dogs & Rising Stars

Old Dogs & Rising Stars The New York Film Festival has been running for sixty-four years now, more than long enough to build up a stable of regular collaborators. Every year, some of these auteurs bring their latest films and their presence to Lincoln Center’s Alice Tully Hall—and demonstrate how quickly, and how completely, moviemaking tastes can change. Over the past decade, the Spanish director Pedro Almodóvar has brought five features and two shorts to New York, including his late-career ...

United States
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Culture

"A Genius for Institutions"

"A Genius for Institutions" Rev. John I. Jenkins, CSC, delivered the following remarks upon receiving the 2026 Commonweal Centennial Award at the Commonweal Benefit Dinner on October 5, 2026, in New York City. I cannot adequately express my gratitude for the honor of the Commonweal Centennial Award. It means so much to me because it speaks to my life’s deepest commitments. I accept the honor on behalf of the wonderful people with whom I have worked and those who have shaped my life, especiall...

United States
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Society

Gleeful Executioners

Gleeful Executioners Steadily declining support for the death penalty in the United States is a good sign. But 68 percent of Americans still say it’s morally justifiable for murder, and the number climbs to 85 percent among Republicans. Perhaps even more troubling is the tendency of some proponents to treat executions casually and the condemned with contempt or mockery. It is a strange kind of luxury in a country that should be questioning the belief that the killing of one person truly neces...

United States
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Technology

Memory in the Digital Age

Memory in the Digital Age I first met Vinton Gray Cerf in February 2014, during a Google event titled “The Internet as God’s Gift.” At dinner, I was struck by his measured courtesy. At one point, in the calm tone of someone who knows how to weigh words, he said something about Pope Francis: “The fact that one man can so profoundly revitalize the ancient institution of the Catholic Church tells us something about his ability to channel energies that go beyond normal human capacities.” From tha...

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Culture

Other Futures, Another Past

Other Futures, Another Past When the pandemic began, Albanian philosopher Lea Ypi decided to use her time in lockdown to try something new. Instead of the big academic book about the meaning of freedom that she had been planning to write, she composed a memoir about growing up during the collapse of Communism in Albania. “Mostly written from a closet in Berlin,” as she would later put it, her book Free: Coming of Age in the End of History was her attempt “to muse about my grandmother’s words:...

Albania
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