Culture

What Leo XIII did for wages and the right of association, Leo XIV does for the human person in the era of the algorithm.

Raphael's art places us at the precise point where humanity and divinity converge.

Pope Leo's call for disarmament leaves room for the possibility that AI can have good uses. But those uses can only be discovered by those who work for flourishing communities.

… But if Michael Pollan’s illuminating new book,  A World Appears , is anything to go … his own master theory of consciousness. All life, he thinks, is grounded in the basic … organisms do precisely that, and, over time, life forms have evolved increasingly complex …

Can a theology of mourning keep Christians facing the decline of "the Christian West" from living in the past?

Accumulating wealth is now the way many people seek to belong—to "buy" their place in the world. But an extrinsic source of belonging will always be fragile.

By serving as a voice for truth and challenging Americans to think critically about complex political issues, Colbert will go down in history as more than a comedian.

Among twentieth-century British artists, there seemed to be a mad rush to Rome. A new book endeavors to explain this explosion in Catholic conversions.

This year’s Venice Biennale was designed to be the most intimate and reflective in recent memory. Instead, it has turned into the most politically clamorous.

These are tough times for Catholic colleges and universities. A commitment to educating the whole person remains the best path forward.

In our age of authoritarian certainty, divinity schools have an important role to play in constructing a liberal vision of human flourishing.

A virtual panel moderated by Centennial Fellow Aaron Robertson

Masking in both its physical and digital aspects is symptomatic of a culture losing the art of face-to-face encounter.

The author and 'New York Times' columnist discussed the Catholic Church’s place in the landscape of U.S. politics and culture today.

The Franco Family Institute for Liberal Arts and the Public Good hosted the Dorothy Day and Thomas Merton Culture and the Public Good Symposium at Notre Dame.

Pope Francis knew that literature is one of the rare human practices still able to establish a common ground.

For Anton Jäger, ours is an era of political excitation absent durable organization. Pope Francis can help us envision a better way forward.

In Ian Buruma’s telling, Berlin during World War II was a time of contradictions: hedonism, escapism, heroism, and compromise.

Seamus Heaney's imaginative reach for the transcendent made him the model of a religious poet for a secular age.

How did Americans become convinced that social problems are better left to the “free” market than to a democratically accountable government?

In fiction and nonfiction by Black American Catholics, the parochial school looms large as a place of education, formation, and conversion—for good or ill.

In the world of Romanian filmmaker Radu Jude, things are dire—but it’s often difficult to take them seriously.

Franz Kafka’s sword-wielding Lady Liberty seems like an all-too-fitting symbol of what America has become in Trump’s second term.

The postliterate society may also be a postliberal one.

What is the future for literature in a world where machines churn out plausible facsimiles of our most artful human narratives?

… it’s easy to imagine young readers of The New Yorker , where most of the stories first … here we are, starting out, well-educated, lucky (most of us), seeing our domestic lives … “the man himself”? He notes, early on, how “life has been suspiciously easy for [him].” …

The growing number of adult baptisms in European and the United States has caught the notice of Church leaders who are attentive to even the smallest signs of revival.

The books we keep on our shelves represent the best of language, of knowledge, and perhaps even of ourselves.

For Vatican theologians, the imagined obsolescence of humanity is not a historical prospect to be welcomed or feared, but an intellectual error to be avoided.

The farmworkers’ movement was never meant to be about one man, but the people. After the Cesar Chavez revelations, that must remain our ideal.

I’ve recently been experimenting with the Catholic AI chatbot Truthly. The experience of interacting with it is not unlike talking to some priests.

Ludwig Wittgenstein believed the age of technology would be the beginning of the end for humanity. The increasing ubiquity of AI may prove him right.

Ann Lee's truest testament was the Shaker community’s practice of care across the boundaries of kinship, gender, and race.

… good health, and I have gotten to a point in life where I am fully engaged in pursuits I am … visual art. I am, in other words, a very lucky man. But sixty-three is sixty-three. I … the works in Color and Mystery , my show at New York City’s Blue Mountain Gallery, on view …

Talk to me. Tell me anything.

Patti Smith on contemplation, family life, and protecting a sense of wonder.

On Holy Wednesday, the procession of Cristo de los Gitanos in Granada fuses religious tradition with flamenco spirit.

When literature was still recognized as an incomparable source of liberty and dignity to millions, the CIA spent decades distributing banned books behind the Iron Curtain.

When I met a fourteen-year-old Harrison Ford, I was sure he wouldn't amount to much.

The rural Ireland of my parents’ generation more closely resembled the Middle Ages than 21st-century Europe.

The hit Netflix series 'Nobody Wants This' makes a keen contribution to the public perception of converts and Jewish identity.

While Trump wants to narrow who qualifies as a citizen, the World Baseball Classic offers a different idea of belonging.

John Updike's writing attempted to capture what is ineffably precious and intangible about life. What will be lost if the culture forgets him?

Poet Dan Chiasson’s ‘Bernie for Burlington’ functions as a triple bildungsroman of Bernie Sanders, the city of Burlington, and Chiasson himself.

A new exhibit at the Metropolitan Museum of Art introduces viewers to Helene Schjerfbeck’s understated, dreamlike paintings.

… police were looking for him. He works in a factory that produces dog food—five nights a … furious when he learned that. So furious, in fact, he forgot I was waiting for him out … he said, “but many ask questions about life in the U.S. and Canada.” One of the …

"Scan polluted skies / for a city of wholeness, distant as hope."

The great English poet tried to solve the problem of objectivity by destroying the boundaries between himself and his subjects.

Kate Lucky reports on the parents choosing to have lots and lots of kids.

The man may be dead, but the ethos of the Epstein network is ascendant in American public life.