Griffin Oleynick's profile photo

Griffin Oleynick

New York

Associate Editor at Commonweal Magazine

Articles

  • 2 weeks ago | commonwealmagazine.org | Griffin Oleynick

    Two thousand years of history have produced no shortage of metaphors and images for the Catholic Church, some more resonant than others. For liberal Catholics like me, brought up and catechized according to the Second Vatican Council’s conception of the Church as the pilgrim People of God and wary of conservative nostalgia for the medieval ecclesia militans or post-Reformation societas perfecta, Francis’s understanding of the Church as a “field hospital” struck a deep chord.

  • 1 month ago | commonwealmagazine.org | Griffin Oleynick |Stephen Pope |George Scialabba |Helen Rouner

    Whatever your opinion of New Jersey senator Cory Booker—I confess I’ve often dismissed him in the past as histrionic, a little too thirsty for attention—it’s hard to deny that his marathon speech on the Senate floor was impressive. Sen. Booker’s “vigil,” which lasted for more than twenty-five hours, set a new record for the longest speech ever recorded in the chamber.

  • Feb 13, 2025 | catholicoutlook.org | Griffin Oleynick

    Somehow amidst his presumably demanding duties as vice president, J. D. Vance also found time to spark an intra-Catholic debate over the meaning of ordo amoris, or “rightly ordered love,” a phrase that appears in Augustine’s City of God as well as Thomas Aquinas’s Summa Theologica.

  • Feb 12, 2025 | commonwealmagazine.org | Griffin Oleynick |Matt McManus |Todd Shy |Vincent Lloyd

    Somehow amidst his presumably demanding duties as vice president, J. D. Vance also found time to spark an intra-Catholic debate over the meaning of ordo amoris, or “rightly ordered love,” a phrase that appears in Augustine’s City of God as well as Thomas Aquinas’s Summa Theologica.

  • Dec 25, 2024 | commonwealmagazine.org | Griffin Oleynick

    There’s a scene in Amarcord, Federico Fellini’s semi-autobiographical 1973 film based on his upbringing in Fascist-era Rimini, in which the director’s plucky adolescent alter-ego, Titta, and his prankster companions find themselves enduring a tedious series of lessons delivered by a set of hapless schoolteachers.