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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

Geopolitics

Toward a Rooted Universalism

Toward a Rooted Universalism In the early 1920s, Jerusalem was a city charged with possibility and conflict in equal measure. The British Mandate had replaced four centuries of Ottoman rule. Jewish immigrants were arriving from Eastern Europe in increasing numbers, driven by persecution and by a dream: to rebuild a Jewish national home in the ancient land of Israel. Zionism was not merely a political program; it was an act of civilizational imagination—the attempt to create, from the fragment...

Israel
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Politics

Rising Above the Slop

Rising Above the Slop Americans are not hopeful about their democracy. Imagining a future more free and equal than the past feels difficult; imagining twenty-first-century Americans authoring such a future feels nearly impossible. The atrophied democratic imagination is, of course, connected to broader trends in our culture. It’s obvious that some cultural practices can sustain democratic hope, while others—scrolling, posting, mindless shopping, disappearing into virtual worlds—leave it to de...

United States
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Culture

A Good Place to Lose Your Mind

A Good Place to Lose Your Mind One of our monks, let’s call him Fr. Stan, wasn’t an eloquent preacher at the best of times. He had been married—he returned home one day to find his wife had taken the kids and left without warning or explanation—and came to the monastery later in life. As he developed Alzheimer’s disease, his homilies became even more rambling and disconnected. Once, after an especially disjointed homily that ran on and on, some of the brothers complained to the abbot, who tho...

United States
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Technology

Reading ‘Magnifica Humanitas’

Reading ‘Magnifica Humanitas’ As recent advances in artificial intelligence have radically altered the way we learn, teach, work, and even wage war, and as they begin to challenge our assumptions about what sets us apart from our machines, Pope Leo XIV has emerged as an eloquent critic of the way this new technology is being employed, and of the pretensions of the Silicon Valley technologists who control it. As expected, his much-anticipated first encyclical, Magnifica humanitas, offers a com...

Global
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Culture

Following the Football

The article explores the cultural significance of football, examining how the sport reflects societal values, community identity, and the complexities of fandom in contemporary life.

United States
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Politics

Book Tour or Campaign Stump?

Book Tour or Campaign Stump? The reviews of Vice President J. D. Vance’s new book Communion are starting to roll in, and the consensus is that this sequel to his bestselling Hillbilly Elegy is as much a political accounting as it is a spiritual memoir. Still, the subtitle—“Finding My Way Back to Faith”—promises that the book will discuss Vance’s conversion story to Catholicism, so it’s not surprising that much of the chatter on the book-tour circuit has focused on questions of religion and mo...

United States
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Politics

Searching for Something to Celebrate

Searching for Something to Celebrate For several days in late June, a black Ford F-250 pickup with Wyoming plates took over multiple parking spaces on a street in my Brooklyn neighborhood. An outsized exhibit of compensatory masculine menace—knobby tires, raised suspension, bulging fenders—it was for good measure bristling with aggressively pro-Trump bumper stickers, decals, and banners. There were warnings and wisecracks about immigrants and trans people, the “Biden crime family” and “stolen...

United States
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Culture

No, but I Skimmed It

No, but I Skimmed It It should come as no surprise that the pontiff who penned the first papal encyclical on artificial intelligence prefers print to screens. When Pope Leo praised reading in his May address to the Vatican Publishing House, he specifically highlighted the material aspect of printed books: “In the digital age, the physicality of the book reminds us of the role of thought, reflection and study.” The pope did not elaborate further, but had he wanted, he could have bolstered his ...

Global
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Culture

Can the Church Reconnect With Europe?

Can the Church Reconnect With Europe? If the schedule imposed by the 2025 Jubilee made Pope Leo something of a “prisoner of the Vatican,” the first half of 2026 has provided much greater opportunity to travel. The summer promises more—namely, travel to key locations for the Church on the old continent. After returning from Spain, his first multiday European trip as pope, Leo headed for Sant’Angelo Lodigiano, Italy, the birthplace of St. Frances Cabrini, to be followed by Pavia, Italy, where t...

Global
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Society

Whatever Happened to Synodality?

Whatever Happened to Synodality? At their meeting last week, the U.S. bishops debated proposed revisions to the U.S. church’s guidelines for dealing with sex abuse, the so-called “Dallas Charter.” First promulgated in 2002, the document has been periodically updated, and the bishops were ready to vote on further revisions, including adding language to emphasize the right of accused priests to “the presumption of innocence.” The committee chair insisted there had been sufficient consultation, ...

United States
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Geopolitics

Innocence & Impotence

Innocence & Impotence A few years ago, I overheard a conversation among some of my colleagues at the CIA, many of whom were military veterans. They were discussing drone operations on the Ukrainian frontlines, and the conversation turned to whether drone operators qualify as aces. Ace is a title that suggests courage, evoking the image of daring airmen of the world wars. Calling drone operators aces, my colleagues concluded, felt cheap; their kills were too remote, their position too safe. Th...

United States
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Education

Beyond Couch and Clinic

Beyond Couch and Clinic As Robert Coles and I were walking around Harvard’s campus a half century ago, searching for a suitable place to photograph him for Newsweek, he suddenly stopped and pointed to William James Hall. “You want to know what’s the matter with psychology and the social sciences?” Coles asked me rhetorically. “That’s what’s the matter with psychology and the social sciences.” At the time, William James Hall was home to the department of Social Relations (psychology, sociology...

United States
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