Paul Baumann

Article

Journalism, Race, and Moral Clarity

The reaction to Tom Cotton’s ill-conceived essay is not just a step on the slippery slope to intellectual conformity. It is illiberalism, full stop.

By Paul Baumann

June 12, 2020

Donald Trump

Race

Social Justice

Article

The Haves and the Have-Nots

Like his wife Joan Didion, John Gregory Dunne had an abiding interest in, and a cleared-eyed view of, the struggle between the haves and the have-nots.

May 28, 2020

Article

Sex & ‘the Human Focus’

The late Terrence McNally’s work included one play that stirred considerable controversy among American Catholics. It’s worth revisiting that debate today.

April 7, 2020

Article

Afghanistan Forever?

If American men and women were being drafted to fight in Afghanistan, there is not the slightest possibility the war would have dragged on for eighteen years.

December 18, 2019

Article

Fallen Priests

The essayist Richard Rodriguez challenges us to imagine the lives of abusive priests. Failing to do so protects nobody but ourselves.

December 3, 2019

Article

The Welter of Memory

Born into rural and humble circumstances in the west of Ireland, Edna O’Brien rose to literary fame in 1970s London. She’s still active today.

By Paul Baumann

October 18, 2019

Fiction

Must Reads

Politics

Socialism or Feudalism

In today’s hypercapitalist society, the rich don’t just get richer. They accumulate more political power as they bend laws to their will.

By Frank Pasquale

June 15, 2020

Religion

A Different Kind of Catholic

Longtime peace activist Martin Gugino represents a face of Catholicism that Donald Trump would not know from the ‘powerful’ Catholics around him.

By Paul Moses

June 16, 2020

Culture

Working for Justice Means Taking Sides

Defending racist and violent policing as the result of individual “bad apples” doesn’t just obscure larger systemic problems. It hinders the pursuit of justice.

By Mollie Wilson O'Reilly

June 9, 2020

Books

Home Songs

A new, polyphonic collection with poems by more than a hundred Latinx writers responds to the vexed problem of identity with expansiveness, not reductionism.

By Isabella Simon

June 12, 2020

Collections

The Coronavirus

COVID-19 has profoundly affected our daily lives. Catch up with some of Commonweal’s best writing on the political and spiritual ramifications of the virus.

By The Editors

April 21, 2020