Despite the pivotal role he played in Vatican II, Benedict XVI has spent the rest of his career, particularly his emeritus papacy, distancing himself from it.
Ministerial Juridic Persons, mostly comprised of laypeople, have canonical authority for church ministries. That’s unprecedented, and potentially transformative.
Readers respond to pieces about the reach of EWTN, the performative politics of abortion, and the Vatican’s failure to consult the laity on reproductive technology.
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.
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.
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.
A new, polyphonic collection with poems by more than a hundred Latinx writers responds to the vexed problem of identity with expansiveness, not reductionism.
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.
