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3 weeks ago | 
commonwealmagazine.org | Paul Baumann |Stephen Pope |George Scialabba |Helen Rouner
A lot of ink has been spilled trying to make sense of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s calamitous Oval Office meeting with President Donald Trump and Vice President JD Vance. The meeting was supposed to finalize a deal giving the United States rights to Ukraine’s rare minerals in return for more military aid. The deal fell through, at least temporarily, when Vance determined that Zelensky had disrespected Trump by not thanking him sufficiently for his largesse.
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2 months ago | 
commonwealmagazine.org | Paul Baumann |Alejandra Oliva |Thomas Banchoff |Antonio Spadaro
Last summer, the Horcynus Festival in Messina, Sicily, hosted a conversation between director Martin Scorsese, speaking via Zoom from his home in New York City, and Antonio Spadaro, SJ, an undersecretary for the Vatican Dicastery for Culture and Education.
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Dec 26, 2024 | 
commonwealmagazine.org | Daniel Rober |Paul Baumann |Alejandra Oliva |Todd Shy
I used to think there could be no such thing as a lukewarm Evangelical. By definition, by constitution, to be an Evangelical was to commit fully to every implication of your beliefs. T. M. Luhrmann’s When God Talks Back: Understanding the American Evangelical Relationship with God (2012) confirmed the “intense inner attention” at the heart of Evangelical experience.
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Dec 19, 2024 | 
commonwealmagazine.org | Paul Baumann
Many years ago, my wife bought a painted wooden Advent calendar, a bit of folk art. The colors are warm and inviting; the calendar itself is square, about the size of a Monopoly board. Each of the twenty-five miniature doors is decorated with a painting of a familiar, mostly nonreligious Christmas scene: there are Christmas trees and wreaths, Teddy Bears, Santa, Noah’s Ark, rocking horses, and many culinary items.
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Dec 1, 2024 | 
catholicoutlook.org | Paul Baumann
One politician often described as a liberal Catholic is leaving the White House, and another politician, a convert who describes himself as a conservative Catholic, is moving in (at least to the West Wing). What might J. D. Vance’s ascendency to the vice presidency tell us about American Catholicism, and how should Catholics understand this shift in the likely public perception of the faith? How do liberal and conservative Catholics reconcile their faith and their politics?
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Nov 19, 2024 | 
commonwealmagazine.org | Paul Baumann |Charles McNamara |Stephen Pope |Regina Munch
One politician often described as a liberal Catholic is leaving the White House, and another politician, a convert who describes himself as a conservative Catholic, is moving in (at least to the West Wing). What might J. D. Vance’s ascendency to the vice presidency tell us about American Catholicism, and how should Catholics understand this shift in the likely public perception of the faith? How do liberal and conservative Catholics reconcile their faith and their politics?
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Oct 23, 2024 | 
commonwealmagazine.org | Paul Baumann |Alejandra Oliva |Alice McDermott |Paul Griffiths
The Christian account of human death is a story of bodies and souls. Bodies are given the lives they have by their souls. Their souls are their lives, what animates them. Bodies, however, are mortal, and eventually die, resolving into corpses. When a body dies, its soul separates from it and continues to live, but now in discarnate form, without a body. Souls cannot die: they are immortal.
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Oct 18, 2024 | 
commonwealmagazine.org | Mary Gordon |Paul Baumann |Phil Klay |George Scialabba
Article Tense Necessities Elizabeth Cullinan’s recently reissued collection paints a messy, rich, and tragic portrait of Irish-American womanhood. Article Keeping the Windows Open “The history of Commonweal is a history of hope and confidence.” Feature Where Secularism Fails It will be the job of Commonweal, as it always has been, to resist the pressures of contemporary secular culture.
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Sep 27, 2024 | 
commonwealmagazine.org | Paul Baumann |Peter Quinn |George Scialabba
I recently reviewed a book about the May 1970 Ohio National Guard killings of four Kent State University students during protests against the Vietnam War. The demonstrations were prompted by President Richard Nixon’s decision to expand the war into Cambodia. In addition to the four students who died, nine others were wounded, including one who was paralyzed from the waist down. Two of the students killed were mere onlookers, uninvolved in the unruly protest.
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Sep 25, 2024 | 
commonwealmagazine.org | Phil Klay |Paul Baumann |Joseph Amar |David Katzenstein
In the brief introduction to Distant Journeys, a new collection of photography assembled from trips undertaken over nearly five decades and across six continents, David Katzenstein tells us that his “passion for discovery” began early. Perhaps it was when he was only three years old, gripping his father’s back as their “frisky gray mare” galloped across a beach in Cuba, or when he visited Norway at age seven and watched a waterfall plunge half a kilometer into the sea below.
