Arts

Article

'Pro-Humanity'

“Pro-life” or “pro-choice” cannot describe the sweep and complexity of Richard Strauss's "Die Frau ohne Schatten."

By Harry Rose

December 16, 2024

Arts

Music

Abortion

Feature

The Bible and Marian Art

An author and theology professor journeys through the long history of Marian art across time and space.

By Michael Peppard

December 2, 2024

Arts

History

Italy

Feature

Fix Your Gaze

The problem is not really that we can’t focus. The problem is that we can’t prioritize.

By Jonathan Malesic

November 25, 2024

Arts

Culture

Politics

Article

… the Nativity scene between the Blessed Mother and St. Joseph. The Holy Family, now made … happens, in the history of Catholic devotion and Western art, the baby Jesus was not the … and paintings. But Joseph was almost never included. For example, in a depiction of …

By Kathleen Brady

November 25, 2024

Arts

Religion

History

Feature

The Medium Is the Message

Elizabeth Catlett’s art embraced the causes of Mexicans, Black Americans, and all others around the world who were subject to Western imperialism.

By Clifford Thompson

November 11, 2024

Arts

Culture

Commonweal Centennial

Race

Feature

A Generous Lens

David Katzenstein's photos from across the world show an artist more interested in observation than possession.

By David Katzenstein

October 18, 2024

Arts

Foreign Affairs

Travel

Article

‘Out of the Vortex’

David Jones’ 'In Parenthesis' is "the greatest work of modernist poetry you’ve never read."

By Jared Marcel Pollen

September 16, 2024

War and Peace

Literature

Arts

Article

Getting the Question Right

'The Novelist' insists that the question must be: “How can I live a meaningful life?” and not, “Is life really meaningful?”

By Santiago Ramos

August 21, 2024

Arts

Books

Fiction

Article

Summer Readings & Screenings

In the third installment of our summer series, we're discussing formalism and humanism with the help of Françoise Gilot and Éric Rohmer.

By Griffin Oleynick and Anthony Domestico

August 9, 2024

Arts

Culture

Movies

Article

Time’s Shambles

In Jakob Ziguras’s newest collection of poetry, the past and present of Venice mix and match.

By Micheal O’Siadhail

August 6, 2024

Arts

Books

Poetry

Article

An Image of Faith?

'The Incredulity of Saint Thomas' presents faith as an intimacy with the body of Christ.

By Arthur Aghajanian

July 2, 2024

The Glory of ‘Too Much’

On this episode, Becca Rothfeld speaks about her love of medieval mysticism and her loathing of modern minimalism.

Arts

An Interview with the Winner of the ‘Commonweal’ Prize for Short Fiction

Go behind the scenes of the inaugural Commonweal Prize for Short Fiction with author Kaylie Borden O’Brien and special projects editor Miles Doyle.

Arts

Feature

Kiln & Cosmos

Toshiko Takaezu’s sculptures conjure lush environments filled with sound, movement, and atmosphere.

By Xiao Situ

June 5, 2024

Arts

Environment

Article

All Darkness

The artist Käthe Kollwitz never turned away from the world, or from herself.

By Robert Rubsam

May 29, 2024

Arts

Culture

Feature

How Harlem Saw Itself

The Met exhibition contemplates the power of the gaze in the Harlem Renaissance.

By Clifford Thompson

May 8, 2024

Arts

Culture

History

Article

Klimt's Exquisite Abundance

In person, Klimt’s landscapes are spaces of exquisite abundance. But a new Klimt exhibition at New York’s Neue Galerie underwhelms.

By Robert Rubsam

April 3, 2024

Arts

Culture

Article

Life, as Pasolini Saw It

Poet and filmmaker Pier Paolo Pasolini believed in the importance of being yourself, which means being unrecognizable.

By Griffin Oleynick

April 1, 2024

Arts

Movies

Interview

Article

Seeing the Sistine Chapel

There are two difficulties with writing about Michelangelo’s frescoes in the Sistine Chapel. One is saying anything fresh about them. The other is seeing them at all.

By Jeff Reimer

March 20, 2024

Religion

Arts

Books

Article

Grace & Chaos

A new staging of ‘La forza del destino’ offers audiences the chance to ponder the paradoxes at the heart of what is often considered Verdi's most “Catholic” opera.

By Harry Rose

March 7, 2024

Arts

Religion

Article

An Open Marriage Manifesto?

Molly Roden Winter’s open-marriage memoir features unsexy sex, lots of crying, and a vivid portrait of emotional pain.

By Dorothy Fortenberry

February 16, 2024

Sexuality

Books

Arts

Article

The Ecstatic

Against the quotidian, the ecstatic will always find a way out: whether through music or madness, divinity or drugs.

By William Giraldi

January 29, 2024

Philosophy

Arts

Literature

Feature

Joan of Arc, Warrior-Muse

She had no spite or worldly cunning, but she refused to massage the egos of those around her or to conceal her overwhelming belief in the rightness of her vision.

By Anna Ballan

December 28, 2023

Arts

Saints

Women

Article

Portrait of the Scholar as a Young Governess

Somehow, I became Fraulein Maria. So began my initiation into the Atlanta Catholic community theater and the three most surreal months of my life.

By Susan Bigelow Reynolds

December 26, 2023

Arts

U.S. Catholicism

Best of 2023

On this episode, we highlight some of our favorite conversations from the past year.

Spirituality

Arts

Feature

‘The Grandeur of My Folks’

For some, coolness implies distance and detachment. But for painter Barkley L. Hendricks, it becomes a way in.

By Griffin Oleynick

December 19, 2023

art

Arts

Race

Feature

Not What but How

“Manet/Degas” at the Met tells the story of two lives and one friendship. The experience is exhilarating.

By Robert Rubsam

December 7, 2023

Arts

Culture

Article

Gaslit

In ‘Killers of the Flower Moon,’ Martin Scorsese serves up an inversion of history as we have come to know it, revealing his larger aim—the correction of memory.

By Rand Richards Cooper

December 6, 2023

Movies

Arts

History

Feature

Julian Montague’s ‘Cosmic Jokes’

The work of graphic artist Julian Montague trains our eyes on the gaps and edges in society—the places where public life gives out.

By Jonathan Malesic

November 20, 2023

Arts

Culture

Article

Getting Through Life

Aki Kaurismäki’s ‘Fallen Leaves’ displays the director's wry humor, spare style, and focus on social inequality.

By Alexander Stern

November 8, 2023

Movies

Arts

Article

Chekhov’s Genius

We read Chekhov’s work to inhabit a state of clear-eyed compassion.

By Burke Nixon

October 28, 2023

Article

Borders & Boundaries

Standout films at this year’s New York Film Festival offer neither escape nor catharsis.

By Robert Rubsam

October 27, 2023

Movies

Arts

Culture

An Opera for ‘Life People’

On this special episode, Sister Helen Prejean and bass-baritone Ryan McKinny discuss the Met Opera’s new production of ‘Dead Man Walking.’

Arts

Capital Punishment

Article

Redemption Songs

The Met Opera’s production of ‘Dead Man Walking’ transports its audience to spaces of suffering only God can know.

By Griffin Oleynick

October 5, 2023

Article

Between Mourning and Melancholy

Plays by Theresa Rebeck and Rebecca Gilman dramatize the psychic tumult of grief and the difficult work of forgiveness.

By Rhoda Feng

September 28, 2023

Culture

Arts

Article

'This Is Our Opera'

A conversation with Jake Heggie, the composer who adapted the story of Sr. Helen Prejean's work against capital punishment as an opera.

By Griffin Oleynick

September 25, 2023

Arts

Music

Interview

Article

Godard’s Sly Subversion

‘Contempt’ is Godard’s greatest attempt to bring order to the world of cinema, to tame its commercial side and create a beautiful film.

By Santiago Ramos

September 23, 2023

Movies

Arts

Culture

Feature

Memory and Movement

The Buglisi Dance Theatre’s annual show is an embodied liturgy in remembrance of 9/11.

By Cecilia Whalen

September 11, 2023

Arts

Music

Feature

Diversity Done Right

Exhibits celebrating Juan de Pareja and modern Latino artists devote necessary attention to topics that have been willfully marginalized or ignored.

By Alejandro Anreus

August 14, 2023

Arts

Latin America

Feature

Angel of Mystery

Why is there a picture of Martin Luther underneath the irreligious Paul Klee’s ‘Angelus Novus’?

By Max Pensky

July 7, 2023

Feature

Faces of Courage in Iran

Five hundred Iranian protesters have suffered serious eye injuries after police fired on them with birdshot. Here are eight faces of courage.

By Anonymous

April 6, 2023

Article

What Do Movies Remember?

New films by Steven Spielberg and Charlotte Wells offer two profoundly different views of film’s relationship to memory.

By Robert Rubsam

March 31, 2023

Movies

Arts

Culture

Renaissance Man

On this episode, writer Clifford Thompson speaks about his love of art, music, literature, and film. And Kaya Oakes remembers the late Doris Grumbach.

Arts

Music

Feature

Lalo Alcaraz Comes Home

An exhibition celebrates Lalo Alcaraz—the author of the first Latino-themed nationally syndicated political comic strip. It’s classic Alcaraz: direct and very funny.

By Claudia Avila Cosnahan

March 25, 2023

Article

On Tradition and the Passion Play

How a Bavarian village’s once-a-decade Passion play became a wrenching, intimate, sometimes chaotic psychological theo-drama

By Susan Bigelow Reynolds

March 15, 2023

Arts

Jewish-Christian Relations

Lent

History

Feature

Beauty & Grief

The Whitney’s ‘no existe un mundo poshuracán’ exhibits not only the horrors of natural disasters and human incompetence, but also the power of resilience.

By Alejandro Anreus

March 1, 2023

Arts

Latin America

A Flock without Shepherds?

Massimo Faggioli reflects on the most recent elections at the USCCB, the sixtieth anniversary of Vatican II. Plus, Natalia Imperatori-Lee on artist Yolanda López.

Bishops

Arts