The first of a series by Fr. Incognitus, who has worked in Southwest parishes serving immigrants from Central America, Mexican Americans, and Euro-Americans.
2019 marks the 800-year anniversary of St. Francis of Assisi’s meeting with Egypt’s Sultan Malik al-Kamil during the Fifth Crusade. The dialogue must continue.
There is a basic division in contemporary Jewish life, and in all communities that purport to interpret a religious tradition: that of self-expression and community.
Kathryn Tanner offers a pointed theological critique of finance capitalism, which inverts the Christian understanding of human dignity and the dignity of work.
Poet and novelist Fanny Howe is an experimental writer’s experimental writer, the author of dozens of books, one who remains publicly, committedly Catholic.
Global warming, the rise of the Latino vote, and, of course, millennial socialism. New books to keep an eye out for next time you browse the bookstore.
Is liberal democracy really so exhausted that there is no choice but to abandon it? The hopeful answer, articulated earlier by Italian priest Luigi Sturzo, is no.
Available for the first time in English translation, the letters of a young German couple whose love of God and each other sustained them against Nazi oppression.
I’m nineteen years old, the year is 1958, and I’ve already made it through the first nine months of probation. More than anything in the world I want to be a saint.
A new show at the Barnes in Philadelphia transports audiences into the heart of the Bill Viola’s pioneering inquiries into the phenomenon of visual perception.
Someone churchy thought a girl’s outfit was more important than her presence at church. Religion offers many excuses for emotional predation; we have to call it out
The need for abortion is evidence of our broken humanity, but our current response also shows our Church’s inability to respond fully to the female experience.
Thomas Merton taught me to value self-denial, but a bout of depression forced me to question whether asceticism was the healthiest response to my life.
Soviet novelist Vasily Grossman is not often thought of as a religious thinker. But his Armenian travelogue shows a different, more numinous side of his work.
Evangelicals have embraced Donald Trump, despite his obvious moral deficiencies. They do so not so much out of hypocrisy, as out of a sense of being under siege.
A new federal rule redefines who is likely to become a “public charge,” and is therefore ineligible for citizenship. Few remember the rule’s anti-Catholic roots.
For me prayer is concrete, a form of work. Politicians, though, have a different job, and in the wake of mass shootings, they have a duty to take action.
The veneration of relics is a hard thing for many Catholics of this time and culture to wrap their minds around. But the practice is humanizing, not superstitious.
Don’t fall for the deflections of those claiming to seek “middle ground” on gun control and white nationalism. There is only one response: immediate condemnation.
The idea of religious liberty was not simply the product of the Enlightenment. It has ancient origins, going back to early Christians suffering persecution in Rome.
Vatican II marked a turning point, showing that appropriate change did not mean losing one’s identity but, rather, enhancing it or salvaging it from ossification.
A protest outside a Texas detention center featured speeches and songs, but also revealed something more: God’s commitment to accompany those making their way north.
Daniel Callahan was one of the most influential editors in Commonweal’s history, and the preeminent creator of the field of bioethics. He passed away on July 16.
Should Christians renounce both the eating of sentient creatures and the performance of experiments on them? Yes, we should, to the extent that we can.
Progressive religious activists, including Catholic sisters, staged a sit-in at the Capitol, forming a human cross to protest Trump’s cruel treatment of migrants.
Why won’t the pope require bishops around the world to adopt the standards of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child? It signed the treaty, but won’t comply.
Pope Francis’s gift of St. Peter’s relics to the Orthodox patriarch is remarkable. Rather than righting a previous wrong, it constitutes a genuine self-emptying.
In dealing with bishops who engage in sexual misconduct, the USCCB seems to think that bishops can police themselves, without lay input. We need a better system.
