Commonweal Magazine

5 days ago | commonwealmagazine.org | Randy Boyagoda |Bernard G. Prusak |Peter Quinn

Article Holy Chaos “In this holy chaos, my first feeling was joy. I didn’t know what this new pope portended for the life of the Church, and it didn’t matter.” Article Interregnum Report Commonweal editors curate a twice-daily roundup of updates about the conclave. Must Reads Politics More, or Else Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson offer a vision of a progressive future in which Democrats stop getting in their own way.

1 week ago | commonwealmagazine.org | Gordon Marino

The plaintive clanging of the round keeper’s bell in a silent arena is the boxing equivalent of a twenty-one-gun salute. Recently, the bell rang ten times in honor of the two-time heavyweight champion George Foreman. As a reporter who once covered the small boxing beat for The Wall Street Journal, I was privileged to enjoy numerous conversations with the “virtuoso of violence” who spread love and peace as easily as he flung feed to the chickens on his Texas farm.

1 week ago | commonwealmagazine.org | Michael Beltran

Catholics in the Philippines, Southeast Asia’s most Catholic nation, mourn Pope Francis with a special fervor. Pictures of the late pontiff hang on the walls of chapels and cathedrals throughout the archipelago, with families at home glued to live feeds from the Vatican. Churches here have been full since news of Francis’s passing broke on Easter Monday.

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.

3 weeks ago | commonwealmagazine.org | Regina Munch

Anyone who has ever been pregnant is familiar with the barrage of advice and opinions that comes their way. Eat this, not that; try swimming or prenatal yoga to relieve backaches; go to this obstetrician or that pelvic-floor therapist. It could be your own sister or a stranger in the grocery store haranguing you about C-sections or water births. Everyone has a story to share, either their own or that of someone they love.