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“The crisis consists precisely in the fact that the old is dying and the new cannot be born. In this interregnum a great variety of morbid symptoms occur.”
—Antonio Gramsci, Prison Notebooks
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Cathleen Kaveny, Douglas Laycock, Mark Silk, Michael P. Moreland, Peter Steinfels, William Galston
In April, the Ad Hoc Committee on Religious Liberty of the U.S.
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Compromise is not a dirty word in democratic politics, nor is the balancing of conflicting goods foreign to the church’s tradition of casuistic moral reasoning. So why do so many American bishops appear to spurn both in their prolife advocacy? Do...
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Charles Michael Andres Clark
Throughout this year’s campaign season, the Republican Party promised to reduce the nation’s rapidly growing debt by slashing federal spending for everything but the military.
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Visit dotCommonweal to discuss the election results.
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Charles Michael Andres Clark
One of the most damaging effects of the current deficit hysteria is that it distracts our attention from the more serious problems our elected officials should be trying to solve.
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On April 12 the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops’ Ad Hoc Committee for Religious Liberty released a statement, “Our First, Most Cherished Liberty,” calling on Catholics and others to resist what the bishops characterize as unprecedented
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You don’t have to be a Republican to consider Barack Obama a less-than-ideal president. Indeed, disappointment with the president is rife among progressives.
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Physician-assisted suicide (PAS) and euthanasia have long been the redheaded stepchildren of the prolife movement. They are dutifully included in the litany of life-related issues, yet they have not attracted the sustained attention—or passion—that...
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The U.S.
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Testifying before Congress about religious liberty last February, William Lori, archbishop of Baltimore, proffered an analogy.
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The stars may—just—be aligned to squeeze a national health-care bill out of Congress within the next month or two. Both houses have (barely) passed bills, and now they must cobble together a lowest-common-denominator consensus that can survive one...
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Hadley Arkes
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Elizabeth Warren is the kind of person Massachusetts has always liked to send to the U.S. Senate.
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Everyone knows what the Catholic Church teaches about abortion, right? It is an “intrinsically evil act.” Yet the answers of Joe Biden and Paul Ryan in the recent vice-presidential debate suggested, each in its own way, that knowledge of this...
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More than any other recent U.S. president, Barack Obama has succeeded in puzzling the pundits.
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On February 1, the Department of Health and Human Services released a “Notice of Proposed Rulemaking” that included two important changes to its controversial requirement th
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In 2007 the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops issued Forming Consciences for Faithful Citizenship, a guide for American Catholics seeking to discern their political responsibilities in view of the upcoming 2008 national elections.
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There is a healthy struggle brewing among the nation's Roman Catholic bishops. A previously silent group, upset over conservative colleagues defining the church's public posture and eagerly picking fights with President Barack Obama, has had enough.
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Just when our politics seemed destined to freeze into a brain-dead brand of partisanship, party lines started cracking up.
It is common in politics to assume that whatever has been happening will keep happening. But a series of events last week...
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With regret and some trepidation, Commonweal and many other prolife Catholic commentators and organizations, including the Catholic Health Association, disagreed with the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops about the health-care-reform bill that...
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Two years after the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act became law—and two years before many of its provisions are scheduled to go into effect—the Obama administration’s most important achi
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Both presidential campaigns are calling this election a choice between two starkly different visions of America. At least on that score both are right. The crucial question has to do with the role and scope of government, especially in the economy.
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It is now nearly forty years since the bishops of the Appalachian region of the United States published This Land Is Home to Me, a historic pastoral letter “on powerlessness in Appalachia.” Rarely has any official statement of American Catholic...
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The word "partisanship" is typically accompanied by the word "mindless." That's not simply insulting to partisans; it's also untrue.
If we learn nothing else in 2010, can we please finally acknowledge that our partisan divisions are about authentic...
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Rep. Paul Ryan has long enjoyed a reputation as a wonk’s wonk. Here was a Republican politician happy to engage in substantive conversation about tax policy, debt, and the future of entitlement programs.
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Over the New Year holiday, the attention of prolife activists was focused on beginning-of-life questions, as abortion and health-care reform took center stage in Washington, D.C. On New Year’s Eve, however, a troublesome development occurred...
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What a difference a week makes. In the first presidential debate, President Obama let Mitt Romney's attacks on him stand, and seemed disengaged. Vice President Joe Biden stayed in Rep. Paul Ryan's face for the entirety of Thursday's vice...
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The other night I took my kids to Ford’s Theatre in Washington, D.C., to see The Rivalry, a play by Norman Corwin written in 1958 to commemorate the centennial of the Lincoln-Douglas debates. As is usual when I drag them to something that sounds...
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Catholics who like the word “solidarity” are sometimes suspicious of the word “subsidiarity.” They worry it's a euphemism for privatization. Catholics who like the word “subsidiarity,” meanwhile, are often uneasy with the term “solidarity”—unless it...
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On May 20, 2010, the Secretariat of Pro-Life Activities of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops issued a statement supporting H.R. 5111, sponsored by Congressmen Joseph R. Pitts (R-Pa.) and Dan Lipinski (D-Ill.). H.R.
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WASHINGTON -- Reaching agreement on a health care bill is harder in theory than it will be in practice.
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A politically shrewd Senate Democratic staff member chatting about the future of health care negotiations stopped in midsentence late Tuesday afternoon as news flashed across his computer screen. "My God," he said. "Byron Dorgan is retiring."
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If Paul Ryan were a liberal, conservatives would describe him as a creature of Washington who has spent virtually all of his professional life as a congressional aide, a staffer at an ideological think tank, and, finally, as a member of Congress. In...
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The concept of the common good, ancient in origin, would seem on the face of it an ideal foundation for health-care reform. We all get sick and depend on others to care for us, and many of us will need expensive treatments that are beyond the means...
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Ever heard the one about the guy who hated government until a deregulated Wall Street crashed, an oil spill devastated the Gulf of Mexico, a coal mine collapsed, and some good police work stopped a terrorist attack? Rarely has the news of the...
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This year's elections may exacerbate the difference between our two political parties, but not in the way most people are talking about.
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The aftershocks of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops’ opposition to certain elements of recent health-care legislation are still being felt in the church months later.
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In a piece written for the Web site Public Discourse, Professor Helen Alvaré of George Mason University has responded to my article “Episcopal Oversight,” which appeared in the June 4 issue of Commonweal.
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Can a nation remain a superpower if its internal politics are incorrigibly stupid?
Start with taxes. In every other serious democracy, conservative political parties feel at least some obligation to match their tax policies with their spending plans...
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The lame-duck session of Congress that kicks off this week will test whether Democrats have spines made of Play-Doh, and whether President Barack Obama has decided to pretend that capitulation is conciliation.
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Sometimes, when talking to younger audiences, the theologian Lisa Sowle Cahill will describe herself as a “relic” of the distant and benighted era before the Second Vatican Council.
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My auto mechanic, Maynard, has a lesson to teach us about the unfortunate dispute between the U.S. bishops and the Catholic organizations that support the health-care law enacted last March.
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We’re still debating whether what we’re doing in Libya can rightly be described as war, though bombs dropped amid an “intervention” are just as deadly. But where’s the debate over whether it’s fair or accurate to assert that Republicans in Congress...
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After the 2008 election of President Barack Obama, the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops launched a well-financed campaign against the Freedom of Choice Act, a legislative initiative allegedly at the top of Obama’s to-do list. As the...
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Any day now, the U.S. Supreme Court may make possible something that has yet to happen: an honest and complete discussion of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act.
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Deficit hawks are worried that the Medicare debate in the presidential campaign will make it impossible to reach a post-election deal to balance the budget. At the same time, much of the punditry focuses on how mean and nasty this campaign is.
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Normally, a president presiding over 8 percent unemployment and a country that sees itself on the wrong track wouldn't stand a chance. But then a candidate with Mitt Romney's shortcomings, including his failure to ignite much enthusiasm within his...
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The most incisive reaction to Mitt Romney's disparaging comments about 47 percent of us came from a conservative friend who emailed: "If I were you, I'd wonder why Romney hates America so much."
A bit strong, perhaps. But the more you think about...
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There has recently been much talk about whether Rep. Paul Ryan’s budget is faithful to the principles of Catholic social thought—or is instead a libertarian rejection of the church’s commitment to the poor. In response to the Ryan budget, the chairs...
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The right wing has lost the election of 2012.
The evidence for this is overwhelming, yet it is the year's best-kept secret. Mitt Romney would not be throwing virtually all of his past positions overboard if he thought the nation were ready to...
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President Obama's re-election was at once a deeply personal triumph and a victory for the younger, highly diverse and broadly progressive America that
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With a narrow edge in the popular vote and a decisive victory in the Electoral College, President Barack Obama has secured a second term.
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The human capacity to put passion and intense feeling over cool rationality does not surprise us when it comes to love, sex, family, friendship, certain kinds of religious commitment and even devotion to sports teams.
But emotional approaches can be...
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America's Big Religious War ended on Friday. Or at least it ought to.
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The deficit that should concern us most right now has to do with time, not money. Money can be recouped. Time just disappears.
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Many of the groups challenging the contraception mandate in the Affordable Care Act on religious-liberty grounds hang their hopes on one Supreme Court case: Gonzales v. O Centro Espirita Beneficente Uniao do Vegetal.
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If a president finds himself in the role of a political scientist, he has a problem -- even when his political science lesson is 100 percent accurate.
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With Chief Justice John Roberts authoring the opinion, one in which he joined with the Supreme Court’s four “liberal” justices for the first time, the Court has upheld the constitutionality of the Affordable Care Act.
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Three days of Supreme Court arguments over the health-care law demonstrated for all to see that conservative justices are prepared to act as an alternative legislature, diving deeply into policy details as i
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President Barack Obama's call for "a more civil and honest public discourse" will get its first test much sooner than we expected.
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Every nation needs an intelligent and constructive form of conservatism. The debate over the health-care bill, which mercifully came to a close on Sunday night, was not American conservatism's finest hour.
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Here's a chance for all who think Obamacare is a socialist Big Government scheme to put their money where their ideology is: If you truly hate the Affordable Care Act, you must send back any of those rebate checks you receive from your insurance...
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President Obama is a freer man than he has been at any point in his presidency.
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President Obama got roughed up by the pundit class last week. The question is what lessons he draws from the going-over.
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We interrupt this highly partisan and ideological moment with some contrarian news: President Obama is not the only politician who thinks that expanding access to pre-Kindergarten is a good investment.
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One of Barack Obama's great attractions as a presidential candidate was his sensitivity to the feelings and intellectual concerns of religious believers. That is why it is so remarkable that he utterly botched the admittedly difficult question of...
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For campaign operatives and cable-news anchors, it is a job requirement to insist earnestly, if overconfidently, that each upcoming election is historic, realigning, and game-changing. Most, thank God, are not.
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The Democratic Party is likely to receive a harsh rebuke in November’s midterm elections. Republicans will probably take control of the House of Representatives, while a loss of seven or eight Democratic Senate seats may bring even greater gridlock...
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To say that the Belle Harbor neighborhood on New York City's Rockaway Peninsula was slammed by Hurricane Sandy understates the case. Like many other parts of the region, it has suffered the kind of devastation we usually associate with wars.
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If there’s an issue big enough to stall health-care reform, surely it’s abortion policy. Unlike other obstacles to reform (distrust of big government, new taxes, or anything that looks vaguely European), the abortion debate, like the debate over...
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An old joke about business management consultants is that if a client company is centralized, they tell management to decentralize; and if it’s decentralized, they straight-facedly urge centralization. The truth is that such seemingly inconsistent...
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The Obama administration has rejected appeals to exempt religious-affiliated institutions, such as hospitals and universities, from the mandate issued by the Department of Health and Human Services requiring all health-insurance policies to include...
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For those who feared that Barack Obama did not have any Lyndon Johnson in him, the president's determination to press ahead and get health-care reform done in the face of Republican intransigence came as something of a relief.
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In 1964, George Romney, then the governor of Michigan, walked out of the Republican National Convention during Barry Goldwater's acceptance speech. He was protesting his party's sharp turn rightward and its weak platform plank on civil rights.
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If President Barack Obama gets to sign a health-reform bill, as I believe he will, one reason may be Rep. Jay Inslee's difficult experience renovating his kitchen.
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"Lead from behind" may be a sound bite the Obama administration regrets, but debating from behind is clearly something President Obama is very good at. He got the first debate's wakeup call while Mitt Romney let the encounter in Denver mislead him...
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Is the tea party one of the most successful scams in American political history?
Before you dismiss the question, note that word successful. Judge the tea party purely on the grounds of effectiveness and you have to admire how a very small group has...
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Does it ever seem to you, when you spy those lonely cigarette smokers puffing away outside offices, or sip the crystalline air in a bar, that overnight we have awakened to a post-tobacco world?
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Churches that preach the immorality of contraception are excused from federally imposed obligations to promote the practice. But federal law will soon require that the employees of hospitals and other charitable institutions run by such churches—...
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With prospects quite good for a Democratic Congress and administration in 2009, the United States is on the brink of joining all other industrialized nations in ensuring the provision of some form of basic health care for all Americans.
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It is commonly accepted that any entity that is part of the Catholic health-care ministry must offer its services in a manner consistent with the Ethical and Religious Directives for Catholic Health Care Services [PDF] (ERDs), a publication of...
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Now, two people will have to choose. The fate of the health care bill is largely in the hands of Barack Obama and Olympia Snowe.
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WASHINGTON--It was not the soaring rhetoric that is Barack Obama's signature, but he recently offered the sound bite that may define his presidency: "Don't bet against us."
There are reasons to believe that his confident words--they were about...
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Wow, what big and unexpected news! Reforming the health-care system is really hard, and Republicans want President Obama to fail. Imagine that.
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Catholic social teaching, as the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops has tirelessly reminded our elected officials, has long regarded access to decent health care to be a basic human right, not just the privilege of the wealthy or those lucky enough...
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It now seems clear that political pressures have transformed President Barack Obama’s health-care reform plan into a health-insurance reform plan. Some commentators have protested that this transformation will result in a reform package too limited...
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The Catholic bishops of the United States have historically been a strong voice in favor of health-care reform.
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WASHINGTON -- This is the paradox of the moment: President Barack Obama's speech on Afghanistan and his subsequent jobs summit underscored why it's essential to get a health care bill done quickly. The calendar of politics has an urgency that the...
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It turns out there were core contradictions in the promises Barack Obama made to the country in 2008. They caught up with his party on Tuesday in Massachusetts.
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As we go to press, the fate of President Barack Obama’s health-care reform legislation remains unclear. So do the prospects for his presidency and for the nation’s politics and future.
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By the time you see this, the fate of the Democrats' health-care legislation will probably have been decided. The House of Representatives plans to vote on the Senate bill a few days after we go to press. Whatever the outcome, one thing is already...
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Yes, we did.
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Toward the end of the health-care battle, a beleaguered Obama staff member sent me an e-mail that ended with the words: "Sisyphus was a sissy compared to what we've been through!"
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Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli seems determined to use an attack on health-care reform to bring us back to the 1830s. Cuccinelli, to cheers from the Tea Party crowd, went to court this week to overturn the new law, which he says...
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Making health-care reform “abortion neutral” was never going to be easy. Rep. Bart Stupak (D-Mich.) was the first to demonstrate that it was possible, practically and politically.
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Barack Obama's campaign promise of change did not include a pledge to transform American conservatism.
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Liberals may lament the administration’s failure to make progress on immigration and climate-change legislation in this congressional session, but it may be time to shift energies to protecting what has already been passed.
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In an election, a solid "no" usually beats an uneasy "yes, but." That's the heart of the problem Democrats and President Barack Obama face this fall.
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When the German journalist Peter Sewald recently asked Pope Benedict XVI whether the Catholic Church was “opposed in principle to the use of condoms,” the pope replied that under some circumstances the use of a condom could be a “first step” toward...
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A great national debate is about to be played out in the Supreme Court. The question presented is whether we may all be required to buy insurance under the Obama health-care law, the Patient Protection and Affordable Health Care Act of 2010. Can...
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Less than a year after being passed into law, the Democrats’ health-care reform is under renewed attack on two fronts.
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Not all religions have imposed moral precepts upon their adherents, but all those known as “world religions” have made such a firm connection between their practice and the practice of the moral virtues. Living a morally upright life is, in the...
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As if our political system was not having enough trouble already, we now confront the possibility that a highly partisan judiciary will undo a modest health-care reform that is a first step toward resolving a slew of other difficulties.
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Any time the Obama administration touches issues related to the Roman Catholic Church, it seems to get itself caught in a rhetorical and moral crossfire that leaves all involved wounded and angry.
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Almost two years after being passed into law, the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act—known to most of its enemies as “Obamacare”—remains a subject of great controversy. Some argue that, by allowing the federal government to require citizens...
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On January 20, the day before the South Carolina primary, the Washington Post published a long story about how political polarization in that state was reflected in—and sharpened by—South Carolinians’ choices of news providers.
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The nation's Roman Catholic bishops will make an important decision this week: Do they want to defend the church's legitimate interest in religious autonomy, or do they want to wage an election-year war against President Barack Obama? And do...
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In a March 14 statement (“United for Religious Freedom”), the Administrative Committee of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops strongly reaffirmed its opposition to the contraception mandate in the Affordable C
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On March 12, as required by the Affordable Care Act, the federal government released regulations that will determine how state health-insurance exchanges will work.
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Over the course of three days in March, the Supreme Court spent six hours hearing oral arguments about the most significant achievement of Barack Obama’s first term: the Affordable Care Act—or, as it is now called by both supporters and detractors...
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The Supreme Court's decision upholding the health care law is not only a huge victory for President Obama, but also a moment of leadership for Chief Justice John Roberts. The court's mixed verdict could create problems, notably in its weakening of...
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In current battles between church and state about health care and health insurance, it is often the poor and uninsured who end up as unintended casualties. A recent episode in Kentucky demonstrates how this happens—and just how much is at stake.
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There is the idea of having Paul Ryan on the Republican ticket, and then there is the reality.
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Paul Ryan is known for his devotion to a fitness regime called P90X, which involves "working out 6-7 days per week, with each workout lasting about 1-1½ hours," according to WebMD.
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Finally, Mitt Romney shook the Etch A Sketch.
Having given conservatives everything they had asked for -- from switching his positions on abortion and immigration to picking their favorite as his running mate -- Romney turned Thursday night to his...
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The Obama Democrats who gather in Charlotte this week have a big advantage over Tampa's Romney Republicans: Last week's GOP convention gave President Obama a peek at Mitt Romney's playbook. Combining the lessons of this highly public briefing with...
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[This is an updated version of an earlier post.]
Bill Clinton is typically described as the empathetic, feel-your-pain guy. But his greatest political skill may be as a formulator of arguments -- the explainer in chief.
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The Obama-Clinton alliance, formalized with Bill Clinton's blockbuster speech at the Democratic convention, confirms what has often been played down: President Obama has chosen to build on Clinton's legacy rather than abandon it.
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Nobody claimed it was the best of times. Either it was the worst of times, as the Republicans insisted in Tampa, or it could have been even worse, as the Democrats replied in Charlotte. Each nominating convention competed to present the more...
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In this week's debate, Mitt Romney has too much to do. President Obama has a great deal to lose. Romney's is the most difficult position. Obama's is the most dangerous.
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The strangest aspect of Wednesday night's debate was Mitt Romney's decision to change his tax policies on the fly. Having campaigned hard on a tax proposal that called for $5 trillion in tax cuts, he said flatly that he was not offering a $5...
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If anyone can testify to the problem of giving really rich people a chance to tilt the political playing field, it's Sen. Sherrod Brown.
A proud labor-populist, Brown seems to invite the hostility of wealthy conservatives and deep-pocketed interest...
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Margaret O'Brien Steinfels
“I’m not the president of black America. I’m the president of the United States of America.” That was Barack Obama’s rejoinder to criticisms that he hadn’t done enough for African Americans. More than an answer to blacks though, it sounded an...
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As he tries to engineer a comeback in this week's presidential debate, President Obama needs to recognize two things. First, when it comes to politics, Mitt Romney treats himself as a product, not a person. Second, Republicans cannot defend their...
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Everywhere you turn, President Obama is accused of not offering a clear second-term agenda. It's not surprising that Republicans say it, but you also hear it from quarters sympathetic to the president.
But how true is the charge?
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Here's where we have arrived as a country: We are so polarized that even compromise has become a partisan issue.
As the 2012 campaign closes, bipartisanship and "working together" are more in vogue than ever because the few voters still up for grabs...
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The 2012 campaign began on Aug. 2, 2011, when President Obama signed the deal ending the debt-ceiling fiasco. At that moment, the president relinquished his last illusions that the current, radical version of the Republican Party could be dealt with...
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The cheering supporters at his victory rally may still be hoarse, and his inauguration is three frosty months away. But Barack Obama has already secured the most important achievement of his second term: Winning it.
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It is said after every election that the victors should put politics aside and work for the good of the country.
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Human nature and politics being what they are, Republicans will underestimate the trouble they're in, and Democrats will be eager to overestimate the strength of their post-2012 position.
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What is the point of Barack Obama's second term?
A president who has been pondering that question for a while might find the best answers by consulting what just went on in the campaign.
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In a recent article in these pages (“Boom Times Ahead?”), I wrote about the positive impact of the coming energy boom in theUnited States.
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Beware of any entitlement reform described by its advocates as “win-win.” Such proposals are almost always too good to be true. Presented as nothing more or less than common sense, they often owe their whole appeal to common misconceptions.
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Should our politicians dedicate themselves to solving the problems we face now? Or should they spend their time constructing largely theoretical deficit solutions for years far in the future to satisfy certain ideological and aesthetic urges?
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Barack Hussein Obama can begin his second term liberated by the confidence that he is already a landmark figure in American history.
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To understand how Barack Obama sees himself and his presidency, don't look to Franklin Roosevelt or Abraham Lincoln. Obama's role model is Ronald Reagan -- and that is just what Obama told us before he was first elected.
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Do conservatives still believe in American greatness?
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The National Rifle Association is facing attacks from Gun Owners of America for being too soft on gun control. This is like a double cheeseburger coming under severe criticism for lacking enough cholesterol.
