Culture

Article

When Muse Becomes Mother

‘Phantom Thread’ is a painfully beautiful depiction of all-consuming love and art

By Travis LaCouter

March 8, 2018

Movies

Article

Thunder Entered Her

Munch’s Mary is strange and unfamiliar, but she’s a Mary for all of us

By B. D. McClay

March 6, 2018

Arts

Spirituality

Feature

Taking the Measure of #MeToo

Two views on finding justice amid moral outrage

By Gary Gutting, Sarah Ruden

March 2, 2018

Ethics

Gender

Domestic Affairs

Article

Oscar Time

Picks, peeves, predictions from a year of films that are sensitive to the zeitgeist

By RAND COOPER

March 2, 2018

Movies

Media

Article

Making Wakanda Great Again

Timing is everything, in politics and in Hollywood

By RAND COOPER

March 1, 2018

Movies

Race

Article

America in the Meantime

'Where We Are' implies that as Americans we now find ourselves in a precarious situation, and demands that we take a stand

By Griffin Oleynick

February 24, 2018

Arts

Spirituality

Domestic Affairs

Feature

Strange Elegies

The elites who vowed to listen to the heartland wind up repeating elite meta-narratives about the wisdom of centrism and the limits of politics

By Frank Pasquale

February 22, 2018

Article

Bias, ‘Brogrammers’ & Blind Spots

Tech companies are dominated by a very particular type of person, and their influence can affect the culture at large

By Regina Munch

February 21, 2018

Domestic Affairs

Media

Article

Phenomenology of the Gun

We’ve obscured the purpose of guns to ourselves

By B. D. McClay

February 20, 2018

Domestic Affairs

Ethics

Columnists

Feature

‘Cast a Cold Eye’

Christianity may debunk death, but it also regards it as an abomination. What do we do with it?

By Terry Eagleton

February 17, 2018

Death and Dying

Theology

Spirituality

Article

Strike 3?

Editor Paul Baumann responds to a reader who considers Commonweal “elitist”

By Paul Baumann

February 15, 2018

Donald Trump

Media

U.S. Catholicism

Feature

The Feminist Wife

The ambitious woman, the wife, the mother: we are each more complex than the roles we play

By Kate Lucky

February 15, 2018

Women in the Church

Sexuality

Article

Lenten Hours

As Lent invites us to slow down, rich medieval art helps us see God’s presence in time

By Griffin Oleynick

February 14, 2018

Arts

Spirituality

Article

How to Fell a Tree

What are the costs and dignities found in physical labor?

By Mark Phillips

February 12, 2018

Domestic Affairs

Spirituality

Books

Article

Monsters, Politics, Romance

In this sci-fi monster movie, political parable, spy drama, and love story, Guillermo del Toro purveys such stuff as dreams—and nightmares—are made of

By RAND COOPER

February 7, 2018

Movies

Article

The Comedy in Ash & Roses

Ash Wednesday and Valentine’s Day coincide this year like a bad joke, but there is truth in it

By B. D. McClay

February 5, 2018

Liturgy

Spirituality

Article

In the Ruins of New York

This was the city / That dressed herself in paper money. / She lived four hundred years

By Thomas Merton

January 29, 2018

Poetry

Secularism and Modernity

Article

Elegy for A Trappist

“Maybe the martyrology until today / Has found no fitting word to describe you”

By Thomas Merton

January 29, 2018

Poetry

Spirituality

Article

Life in a Shithole Country

Reflections from a beautiful, so-called "shithole country," where they know a shithole style of leadership when they smell one

By RAND COOPER

January 27, 2018

Article

Poetry: Eight Distillations

“He talked of nothingness until it wasn’t. / He bragged his gravity into God.”

By Christian Wiman

January 24, 2018

Poetry

Spirituality

Poetry

Two Poems

“A slow release / will always leave the one who authored you afraid”

By Steven Toussaint

January 15, 2018

Poetry

Article

‘Be Such as God Made You’

Rethinking the spirituality of body image with some help from the ancient church

By Amanda C. Knight

January 11, 2018

Article

Liturgies of Loss

Rowan Williams argues that the “tragic imagination” is a moral imagination

By Steven Knepper

January 8, 2018

Books

Theology

Article

‘The Last Jedi’: A Fan’s Notes

Carrying the torch, and the Force, forward

By RAND COOPER

January 4, 2018

Movies

Article

An Interview with Jamie Quatro

Author Jamie Quatro discusses passion and longing, both for God and the world

By Anthony Domestico

January 4, 2018

Books

Article

Borne Back into the Past

In the crowded field of Fitzgerald scholarship, the scope of David Brown’s book deserves this ambitious title

By Mike St. Thomas

January 4, 2018

Books

Article

California Burning

As fire season rages, a reflection on preparing for the worst

By Jack Miles

January 2, 2018

Domestic Affairs

Environment

Climate Change

Article

Top Books of 2017

Whatever else happened, there was also great art; there’s always great art

By Anthony Domestico

December 30, 2017

Books

Article

How Christmas Was Trumpified

Trump managed to weaponize the season with branding that turned Christmas upside down

By Paul Moses

December 28, 2017

Donald Trump

Article

Staff Pick: ‘On Evil’

Terry Eagleton tries to figure out what we mean when we use the E-word

By Regina Munch

December 28, 2017

Ethics

Secularism and Modernity

Article

Sacred Stories, Modern Audiences

The Academy of Sacred Drama and Jeremy Rhizor are creating new audiences for once-familiar and forgotten music

By Kate Lucky

December 27, 2017

Music

Article

A Christmas When Music Invited Me In

Life is short, the world beautiful, and love urgently necessary

By RAND COOPER

December 21, 2017

Music

Spirituality

Article

‘What If You Woke Up One Day and All the Arabs Were Gone?’

All good learning is a discovery

By William Collins Donahue

December 20, 2017

Middle East

Jewish-Christian Relations

Foreign Affairs

Article

What St. Francis & the Sultan Knew Well

Contributor and author Paul Moses talks about his involvement with the upcoming PBS special ‘The Sultan and the Saint’

By The Editors

December 20, 2017

Media

Television

Muslim-Christian Relations

Article

Hard to Watch

Even when it’s easy to spot the racism that poisons parts of them, the more pertinent question is what makes some of these films engrossing even now

By Richard Alleva

December 19, 2017

Article

Of Course They Hated Her

Mary McCarthy's writing is always taking the temperature of the room, feeling the social shifts in attention and power, uncovering pettiness and mistaken victories

By B. D. McClay

December 18, 2017

Book Essay

Books

Article

A Burnt-Out Case

The spiritual costs of the way we work

By Jonathan Malesic

December 14, 2017

Spirituality

Theology

Article

Take It Down!

In the museum world, 2017 will likely be remembered for controversies over exhibitions offending specific groups

By Daniel Grant

December 13, 2017

Feature

Wonders Never Cease

How the modern period arose and how it has become another era, and in need of another name

By Marilynne Robinson

December 11, 2017

Secularism and Modernity

Theology

Spirituality

Article

Not Worth a Cake?

It’s hard to see how a baker’s claim to religious freedom doesn’t amount to discrimination

By John Gehring

December 7, 2017

Article

Video: The Catholic Tradition in Contemporary Fiction

Alice McDermott and Kirstin Valdez Quade on the importance of place, how Catholicism has influenced their work, and representations of immigrants in fiction

By The Editors

December 5, 2017

Books

U.S. Catholicism