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Oct 1, 2024 | 
magazine.nd.edu | Ian Corbin
Photo illustration by Kerry Prugh Disagreement is not, as a general rule, a problem that needs to be solved — it is more often a sign of societal health. Reality is a large and shifting thing and is always difficult to interpret. Disagreement indicates that more than one person is paying attention, trying to understand what they see and publicly arguing on behalf of their interpretation to the rest of the group.
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Sep 23, 2024 | 
commonwealmagazine.org | Massimo Faggioli |John Fea |Brandon Ambrosino |Ian Corbin
Liberal Catholics have lately been lamenting the preponderance of conservative and traditionalist voices in mainstream op-ed sections, especially that of the New York Times. The attention given to the Catholicism of vice presidential candidate JD Vance also seems to have struck a nerve. But this reaction may speak to a bigger issue: the paucity of public Catholic theological voices in the general political and societal discourse. Back in 1960, following the election of John F.
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Sep 20, 2024 | 
commonwealmagazine.org | Dominic Preziosi |John Fea |Brandon Ambrosino |Ian Corbin
Six months ago, Benjamin Netanyahu said the war in Gaza was on the verge of ending. Yet one year after the Hamas attacks of October 7, Israel’s bombardment continues. Among the latest atrocities was the mid-September airstrike on a school in Central Gaza that was being used as a shelter. Given the reported carnage at the scene, it’s likely that a two-thousand-pound bomb provided by the United States was used—hardly the precision weapon Israel claims to deploy so as to avoid civilian casualties.
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Sep 19, 2024 | 
commonwealmagazine.org | Zach Czaia |John Fea |Brandon Ambrosino |Ian Corbin
In his 2001 lecture, “The Public Role of Writers and Intellectuals,” Edward Said expressed what he saw as a central dilemma for any artist or intellectual trying to talk back to empire: you are constrained by having to use the same words and phrases that the empire manipulates to oppress you. And yet you have to find a way to use those words to speak truth to the oppressive power. How to deal with this conundrum?
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Aug 29, 2024 | 
commonwealmagazine.org | Griffin Oleynick |John Fea |Brandon Ambrosino |Ian Corbin
As the fall semester begins, colleges and universities are bracing for fresh controversies over free speech, affordability, and the disruptive potential of artificial intelligence. On this episode, Tania Tetlow, the first layperson and first woman to serve as the president of Fordham University, joins editor Dominic Preziosi to weigh in on what Catholic colleges and universities can do differently.
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Aug 28, 2024 | 
commonwealmagazine.org | Massimo Faggioli |John Fea |Brandon Ambrosino |Ian Corbin
Expectations ahead of the second assembly of the Synod on Synodality in October aren’t as high as they were for the first assembly last year. But even if there seems to be less enthusiasm, a close reading of the preparatory document (Instrumentum laboris) yields a more hopeful picture. And though the Synod itself will conclude on October 27, the “synodal process” that Pope Francis called for in 2021 will carry on.
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Aug 27, 2024 | 
commonwealmagazine.org | Lucia Preziosi |John Fea |Brandon Ambrosino |Ian Corbin
In 2016, the Democratic National Convention took place in Philadelphia. I still have faint memories of watching it on television in my grandparents’ living room, where I laid on the floor doodling “I’m With Her” motifs in my sketchbook. This year was much different for me: I was actually inside Chicago’s United Center as Democrats gathered, covering the convention as a student journalist and armed with greater political consciousness through my studies as a political-science major.
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Aug 26, 2024 | 
commonwealmagazine.org | Cathleen Kaveny |John Fea |Brandon Ambrosino |Ian Corbin
According to our Constitution, Congress makes the law, the president enforces the law, and judges interpret the law. But in the United States today, administrative agencies run the law. Legal scholar Susan Dudley has done the calculations: she points out that the Code of Federal Regulations, largely drafted by these agencies, consumes more than 185,000 pages. The regulations are more than four times as long as the U.S. legal code upon which they are based.
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Aug 26, 2024 | 
commonwealmagazine.org | Miles Doyle |John Fea |Brandon Ambrosino |Ian Corbin
Clayton G. Trivett Jr., a trial attorney and a lieutenant commander in the Navy Reserve, started prosecuting cases at Guantánamo Bay as a Navy lieutenant a few years after Congress established military commissions on the island. He was one of eight prosecutors assigned to the U.S. government’s case against Khalid Shaikh Mohammed and four other defendants charged with 2,976 counts of murder for their involvement in the attacks of September 11.
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Aug 26, 2024 | 
commonwealmagazine.org | Philip Graubart |John Fea |Brandon Ambrosino |Ian Corbin
Interested in discussing this article in your classroom, parish, reading group, or Commonweal Local Community? Click here for a free discussion guide. Near the beginning of the Book of Jeremiah, the prophet waxes nostalgic over God’s love for Israel. “I remember the love of your youth,” he has God say. “Your love as a bride—How you followed Me in the wilderness, in a land not sown.” For Jeremiah, the wilderness is a honeymoon setting, a paradise of distilled spirituality and uncomplicated love.
