Magazine

September 2020

v.147 n.8

Article

Making an American

Jia Lynn Yang tells the story of a forty-year fight over immigration in the twentieth century, asking: What makes an American and who gets to decide?

September 7, 2020

Article

The Paradoxes of Enclosure

The first in a series of three meditations on the art of David Jones, this essay probes the mystery of the Incarnation.

September 4, 2020

Article

Will Anything Change This Time?

To understand and address the structural sin of racism, we should look to Pope John Paul II’s explanation of social sin. Only solidarity can help us overcome it.

September 3, 2020

Article

Another Side of Flannery O’Connor

Concerned for the well-being of its students, Loyola University Maryland took the writer’s name off a dormitory. But it did not cancel her.

August 27, 2020

Article

Beirut’s Agony

In the United States as in Lebanon, the question is how much government negligence the people will put up with. We will have our own answer soon.

By Griffin Oleynick

August 26, 2020

Foreign Affairs

Election 2020

Muslim-Christian Relations

Article

HEROES & Cheapskates

For millions, the pandemic has meant serious deprivation: not enough food, too many medical bills, the loss of a business, the prospect of losing one’s home.

August 26, 2020

Article

Keeping the Faith

In the face of continued voter suppression by Republicans, the time has come for new legislation protecting the rights of all American voters.

By The Editors

August 25, 2020

Article

Jazz Vespers

During lockdown, daily concerts from balconies in Brooklyn created a welcome ritual that shaped the endless days and strengthened the community.

August 12, 2020

Article

‘Nameless Greatness’

Novelist Louise Erdrich’s latest book explores her Catholic and Ojibwe roots as it probes a painful period in recent Native American history.

August 7, 2020

Article

The ‘Canceling’ of Flannery O’Connor?

This summer, Loyola University Maryland hastily decided to remove Flannery O’Connor’s name from one of its buildings. It should never have happened.

By Angela Alaimo O’Donnell

August 3, 2020

Fiction

Race

Higher Education

Article

Poland’s Complacent Majority

This summer, President Andrzej Duda of Poland won reelection in two successive rounds of voting. His success represents a growing threat to Polish democracy.

August 3, 2020

Article

Terrorizing Protesters

One consequence of Trump’s order to send federal immigration enforcers to Portland is that Americans will get a better sense of the unjust ways these agents operate.

By Paul Moses

July 27, 2020

Article

‘Women Are Proclaiming the Word’

While St. Ephrem of Syria did not explicitly call for ordination of women to the diaconate, he envisioned radical equality between the sexes in ministry.

By Joseph Amar

July 21, 2020

Women in the Church

Theology

Synod on the Amazon

Article

The Cinema of Atrocity

Many films have been made about the senselessness and brutality of war. But Elem Klimov’s ‘Come and See’ deserves renewed attention for its masterful ambiguity.

July 17, 2020

Article

Leave It to the Laity

Not least among its virtues, a new book of essays on Catholic Social Teaching throws into stark relief the state of the Church in the United States and Europe.

September 8, 2020

Article

Is There a Religious Left?

The Religious Left has been here all along, engaging in protests and helping the vulnerable, a coalition of coalitions not tied to a single faith or set of policies.

By Kaya Oakes

September 7, 2020

Books

Social Justice

Domestic Affairs

Article

Why the Left Must Work with Liberals

Deep disagreements over politics are as old as the nation itself. As we approach the November election, we need to think carefully about how we got here.

By James T. Kloppenberg

September 3, 2020

Article

Precious Protector

Not unlike the pope after the collapse of the Papal States in the nineteenth century, the Dalai Lama now occupies a largely spiritual role.

By Thomas Albert Howard

September 2, 2020

Foreign Affairs

Spirituality

Article

Madonnas in Gas Masks

The art that has emerged from the Chilean ‘estallido social’ is often ironic, playfully sending up the conventions of Catholic hagiography.

September 1, 2020

Feature

Will a Plebiscite Bring Reform in Chile?

Mass demonstrators want to re-legitimize, reconstruct, and reconfigure Chile’s political foundation. But first, Chile must get past the pandemic.

September 1, 2020

Article

Religion & Presidential Politics

Religion has rarely been a significant factor in presidential politics, and isn’t likely to be now. In fact, it’s politics that often shape our religious beliefs.

By Kenneth L. Woodward

September 1, 2020

U.S. Catholicism

Domestic Affairs

Election 2020

Article

Letters | An exchange about the Armenian genocide, pandemic sanctions

An exchange about the Armenian genocide and a reader response to Cuban sanctions in light of the economic strain of the pandemic.

By The Editors

August 26, 2020

Letters

Article

Poem | Incarnation

a voice / announced greetings / to your young heart

By Sr. Lou Ella Hickman

August 26, 2020

Poetry

Article

Hagia Sophia: A Bridge Unlike Any Other

Hagia Sophia’s history as a church, mosque, and museum makes it a unique cultural bridge, but now it is also a symbol of the populist threat to religious minorities.

By George E. Demacopoulos

August 18, 2020

Muslim-Christian Relations

Foreign Affairs

Secularism and Modernity