Religion

The USCCB has largely risen to the occasion in condemning MAGA nativism. We hope voters will remove it from power with all due haste.

J. D. Vance seems not to understand that, for Christians, the expectation of the end only deepens our obligations to the vulnerable.

How will the Vatican engage with an American political theology that unfolds under the sign of the apocalypse?

"I started calling life with a terminal cancer patient 'the Sword of Damocles Life.' My wife and I lived under a constant threat, but not under constant assault."

By participating in the rituals of a Lourdes pilgrimage, Pope Leo will join in a broader search for healing and peace.

To understand the legend of Fr. Camilo Torres, imagine Fulton Sheen, Martin Luther King, and Jimmy Hoffa all rolled into one.

This symposium reconsiders 'Time' magazine's landmark cover on the "death of God," sixty years later.

This symposium reconsiders 'Time' magazine's landmark cover on the "death of God," sixty years later.

We remember Time’s 1966 Holy Week issue less for the story itself than for the three words on the cover: “Is God Dead?”

In 1960s America, God was not dead or hidden. So why did Time's "Toward a Hidden God" touch a nerve?

"My time at Orbis Books was centered on the belief that theology could be a force, a source of life, and a resource in the struggle for a better world."

What explains Pope Leo's strange kind of star power? His smile—tranquil, sly, at once inviting and eluding interpretation—may hold the key.

Religious belief has migrated away from public institutional life and toward the interior, the personal, the chosen.

Catholic converts may be seeking tradition in a time of chaos, but many fall far outside the conservative "rad trad" stereotype.

Dolly Parton's non-judgmental faith could be a lesson for many of today’s Christians.

Whether we are cradle or convert, eventually we discover that there’s more Church outside our one little alcove.

For Christians, the death of God in Jesus Christ is not a disaster, but an event of God’s saving and creative power.

Suddenly, a lot of folks are taking the Church’s social teaching seriously. The shift is noticeable even to those outside the Church.

Catholic postliberals keen to dismiss dignity as an empty category should consult the Church's Magisterium—and listen to the cries of the vulnerable.

As a New York Times columnist, Ross Douthat's commentary on the Church was defined by a central antagonist: Pope Francis.

Church teaching on suicide tells us what we must not do. But it doesn’t give us anything helpful to say to those facing intolerable suffering.

The allegations against Fr. Michael Pfleger have once again put the Catholic Church’s procedures around sexual abuse of minors in the spotlight.

A new exhibit at the Morgan Museum and Library traces tarot's transformation from a courtly card game in fifteenth-century Milan into a map of the modern subconscious.

Three writers—a Jewish theologian, a legal scholar and intellectual historian, and a Catholic philosopher of religion—reflect on Omri Boehm’s call for a "radical universalism."

Three writers—a Jewish theologian, a legal scholar and intellectual historian, and a Catholic philosopher of religion—reflect on Omri Boehm’s call for a "radical universalism."

… target racial injustice, from John Brown and Abraham Lincoln to Martin Luther King Jr. and … the argument of another earlier book on the Abrahamic sources of radical universalism. He … of Isaac,” when, in Boehm’s interpretation, Abraham disobeys God’s order to sacrifice his …

The boldest part of Leo’s first encyclical is about war, not artificial intelligence.

Four eminent democratic theorists discuss Francis’s culture of encounter and its significance for democracy in the United States and around the world.

The West still pictures India as rooted in Gandhian tradition. But it is Vinayak Damodar Savarkar's radical nationalism that drives Indian politics today.

J. D. Vance’s ‘Communion’ and Lena Dunham’s ‘Famesick’ are two sequels to splashy, confessional memoirs by millennial authors. Only one of them is fun to read.

St. John's is attempting to justify a union-busting campaign by appealing to the university's Catholic identity and mission.

Physician-assisted suicide is not harmless or selfless: it is a rejection of the inherent dignity of the elderly and the vulnerable.

In the last quarter of the twentieth century, provocative art came to be leveraged for right-wing political power. We're still dealing with the consequences.

Pope Leo faces profound questions concerning women in the diaconate and in lay ministry. What can we expect?

“Yesteryear,” this year’s breakout novel, promises insights into the antifeminist phenomenon, but it doesn’t deliver.

No one should be on the sidelines in the fight against hunger—especially when the GOP's fight against the hungry is being so ruthlessly waged.

The Vatican now views the SSPX as an external schismatic issue. What remains to be seen is how Leo will deal with the issue of internal radical traditionalism.

Many psychedelic users emerge from their trips with renewed interest in the communal and symbolic life of the world’s religions. Catholic leaders should take their experiences seriously.

The United Kingdom now has its sixth prime minister in the past ten years. Will this job crush even the ebullient Andy Burnham?

Martin Scorsese's 'The Last Temptation of Christ' is a Christologically correct film. It lies at the secret heart of the director's entire career.

'The Sheep Detectives' is a family-friendly whodunit that also takes up profound questions about the human condition. Its worldview isn't wholly incompatible with the complexity of our faith.

Patricia Lockwood's latest claims to report “on the state of American Catholicism,” but her essay is ultimately a caricature tailored for the misconceptions of secular readers.

Many declining congregations must figure out what to do with their buildings. What should a sacred space become after it is no longer used for worship?

Accepting the National Constitution Center’s Liberty Medal, Pope Leo explored the relationship between political freedom and care for the vulnerable.

The United States, on its 250th birthday, is a country in decline. American Catholics should embrace this sour semiquincentennial as a moment for discernment.

The conversation among three unlikely dialogue partners—a twentieth-century Jerusalem rabbi, the ancient rabbis of the Talmud, and a German Jewish philosopher—illuminates universalism's real meaning.

Six Commonweal contributors to comment on 'Magnifica humanitas' and reflect on what it may tell us about the trajectory of Leo's new pontificate.

"In twenty-five years as a caregiver for elderly Trappist monks, I’ve experienced countless times the grace that emerges in vulnerability."

"I wanted to understand how people like me—those who grew up in the Black church and later found themselves outside of it—were channeling the impulse to believe."