Readers weight in on the debate started by Albert B. Hakim on universal salvation and damnation for the unjust, and fact-check our review of 'Spotlight.'
The environmental movement gets criticized for neglecting social and economic injustice. But California is seeking to align climate and economic policy-making.
At the end of his address to the Roman Curia, Pope Francis quietly invoked the memory of one of the most important reform-minded bishops in the United States.
Almost without exception, students respond favorably to René Girard’s work. In some cases, the encounter with Girard changes their lives--as it has changed mine.
John’s gospel is not a story about shepherds and angels. And for that reason, though it's the assigned reading for Mass on Christmas day, most people won't hear it.
Catholic teaching emphasizes the obligation of nations to help the stranger in need. It is neither statesman-like nor Christian to close the door on Syrian refugees.
Current students are taught by lay people. Our teachers were Benedictine monks, and teaching only begins to describe the role those virtuous men played in our lives.
Selected articles, interviews, and video from our coverage of the Synod on the Family—and the continuing dialogue about sex, marriage, and Catholic family life.
So this, I realized as I watched, was still a church of surprises. Vatican II lived on. A weight accumulated over thirty-five years dropped from from my shoulders.
Pope Francis to everyone: reread Evangelii Gaudium; to bishops: be pastors, nothing more; to St. Peter's square audience: I need your help in reforming the church.
Process, papacy, and accompaniment: It may not be too early to wonder how Pope Francis's handling of the Synod on the Family fared on these three considerations.
Francis has introduced the possibility that the spotlight of moral judgment can can be shone back on those who make the judgments, and on their very act of judging.
John Henry Newman once said of the laity that the church would look foolish without them, and from the beginning the synod did indeed look foolish without us.
Aside from restatements of the teaching on sexual morality, there were glimpses of how a spirituality of discernment could infuse the church in its mission of mercy.
Mary Ziegler’s account of the “lost” history of Roe may surprise even the closest (and oldest) observers of the battles following the 1973 Supreme Court decision.
Paul Ryan has always wanted to be several things at once, which makes for a hard balancing act. He knows his faith teaches compassion, but he's also an ideologue.
Engagement rather than denunciation marked the synod’s formal pronouncements, a pastoral style deeply rooted in Vatican II, and embodied in everything Francis does.
John Norris's new biography of Pulitzer prize-winning political journalist (and Commonweal Catholic) Mary McGrory is engaging, carefully researched, and sympathetic.
Standing in that endless, pointless line, I realized, wasn’t communicating our affection for the pope but our acceptance of the authority of the security state.
In "Christian Human Rights," Samuel Moyn concedes that the modern human-rights movement is untethered from its Christian origins. Is this something to worry about?
U.S. Paulist Fathers give moral prescription for Synod; Priest fired for announcing gay partnership reveals more in upcoming book; Families in Rome welcome migrants.
Francis knows there's no such thing as a perfect family. Yet he also knows it's within families where we learn what it means to be responsible for one another.
Peter Mitchell's take on Charles Curran and the "dissident theologian" strike at Catholic University in 1967 presents a conspiracy so big it's literally incredible.
After news of secret visit with Kim Davis, could the affection that Pope Francis generated with his visit to the United States last week vanish in a cloud of smoke?
Are Catholics still obligated “under pain of mortal sin” to follow what the church teaches? It seems nowadays most believers prefer to focus on grace and Eucharist.
The bishops and the church as a whole are about to take an honest look at the gap between that which cannot be changed and that which can and sometimes ought to be.
Adult baptism in the United States fell 43 percent between 2005 and 2013. Does it suggest a stagnation of our collective imagination about baptism itself?
Readers write to petition for women writers, praise Luke Timothy Johnson's essay on Thomas Merton, take issue with Andrew Bacevich, and clarify education goals.
The American media have discovered that a Catholic church exists beyond the sex abuse and financial scandals. But as others have said: The church is not the pope.
The departure of Scott Walker from the presidential campaign should come as a relief to American working people. But the hostility toward labor he embodied remains.
As important as hearing Francis’s words will be paying close attention to whom he chooses to visit while he’s here. In his value system, the last really are first.
