Magazine

October 2020

v.147 n.9

Article

The Worst

Donald J. Trump is uniquely unfit for the office he holds. This year, voters will have the chance to do something about it.

By The Editors

November 2, 2020

Article

The Cut of Their Jib

The dashing, Johnny Depp-ian swashbuckler may live in our stories, but the motivation for “turning pirate” rarely has anything to do with a yearning for open waters.

By Regina Munch

October 24, 2020

Books

Article

Third-Culture Kid

“The joy of reunion gave way, necessarily, to grief. After returning home I could feel Brazil receding. It felt like a kind of bereavement.”

By Eric Miller

October 24, 2020

Article

The Suspended Beauty of the Cross

In David Jones’s ‘Crucifixion,’ beauty and brutality are so interwoven that they stun us into silence.

October 18, 2020

Article

Baptizing White Supremacy

An interview with Robert P. Jones examining the relationship of Christianity and white supremacy in America.

October 14, 2020

Article

Teetering on the Edge

The ongoing social and environmental destruction of Amazonia is not just a local or South American problem. It’s a global one.

By Bryan P. Galligan, SJ

October 6, 2020

Foreign Affairs

Climate Change

Coronavirus

Article

Vaccine Politics

If people don’t trust the efficacy and safety of a vaccine, they won’t get it; if enough people forgo it, the virus rages on.

October 6, 2020

Article

Stop Shaming Public Schools

Catholic and public schools are undergoing different reopening processes, but that is not an indictment of public education.

By Mollie Wilson O’Reilly

October 5, 2020

Coronavirus

Education

U.S. Catholicism

Article

Radical, Moderate, and Necessary

Prioritizing social Catholicism could create lasting positive change for our country and our Church.

September 30, 2020

Article

Russia’s Toxic Behavior

Instead of enabling Vladimir Putin’s lawlessness, the United States should be working with Europe to stop it.

September 28, 2020

Article

‘It’s for RBG’

Ruth Bader Ginsburg was an extraordinary champion of gender equality and justice.

September 21, 2020

Article

Zero Tolerance, Zero Progress

El Salvador’s ‘tough on crime’ approach toward groups like MS-13 shows how such policies only exacerbate the gang problem.

By César J. Baldelomar

September 9, 2020

Article

Savers and Unloaders

Physical objects carry meaning for us, but their accumulation can be a kind of spiritual error. Reconciling this contradiction leads us to richer, deeper lives.

By Rand Richards Cooper

August 20, 2020

Article

Much of the Catholic parish life Biden describes is now largely gone, but its values, such as community and reverence for sacrifice, still play in the broader society.

Redemption & Suffering in Joe Biden’s Eulogies

By Paul Moses & Michael Connor

November 7, 2020

Election 2020

Death and Dying

Article

‘A Woman Called Moses’

What would it mean to describe Moses as weak, frail, even feminine? A new book offers a provocative portrayal of the most important Jewish prophet.

By Mahri Leonard-Fleckman

October 23, 2020

Theology

Jewish-Christian Relations

Article

Can a Lawsuit Stop a Genocide?

A historic judgment by the World Court could prevent future acts of violence against the Rohingya.

October 13, 2020

Article

I, like the author, am an outsider to the Valley; I do not wear rose-colored glasses when I look at it.

Letters | Drinking alone and together

By The Editors

October 12, 2020

Letters

Article

D. H. Lawrence, Arch-Heretic

Nature is central to this collection of D. H. Lawrence’s nonfiction, from New Mexican deserts to flowering Tuscan hills.

October 10, 2020

Article

The Integralism of Adrian Vermeule

Harvard law professor Adrian Vermeule does not compartmentalize or soft-peddle his Catholicism. But his ‘integralism’ project should not be called Catholic.

By Jason Blakely

October 5, 2020

Secularism and Modernity

U.S. Catholicism

Philosophy

Article

Books in Brief

This month: surviving pain through poetry, surviving the climate apocalypse through new (and ancient) narratives, surviving the present through dystopian fiction.

By The Editors

September 29, 2020

Article

Sailing Without Ballast

A closer look at the French Revolution might teach us something important about our own political moment.

By Costică Brădăţan

September 28, 2020

Books

Foreign Affairs

Article

We calculate trajectories of moving objects & analyze the chances of touching death, then living instead

Poem | Math Drills

By Uma Menon

September 28, 2020

Poetry

Article

Poem | October, Falling

This is what I want to do with my late seventies, / honor the sky, scatter stained glass on the sidewalk, // follow the path their hues take us, you beside me.

By Peter Cooley

September 28, 2020

Poetry

Article

Poem | Shark

A voice is a breath / turned scarlet. I inhale / by traveling. Where was I / before now?

By Michael Cadnum

September 28, 2020

Poetry

Article

Do Something Big

In Idaho, grassroots volunteers secured a landslide victory for Medicaid expansion, even in conservative rural counties.

September 22, 2020

Article

The West Coast Wildfires

The wildfires raging on the West Coast are part of a broader, climate change–induced pattern. We must respond with real solutions, not just mitigation.

September 16, 2020