The Weekly Dispatch
Winter is coming in Gaza. How much worse will the misery get?
Most families have been forced to move many times and with each new displacement, families lose or abandon more belongings. Not many of them by now have clothing appropriate for worsening weather conditions.
Of Many Things
The False Compassion behind the U.K.’s Assisted Suicide Law
A proposed assisted-suicide law in Britain does not serve compassion. Instead it presents an illusion of final autonomy.
Your Take
Your Take: Is ‘Conclave’ worth seeing for Catholics?
Readers react to a papal election on the big screen.
Editorials
Can Americans still communicate across difference? That’s our work—even after the 2024 election.
In the language of Catholic social teaching, we might say that voters doubt whether the political system in which they participate sustains the common good.
Short Take
How Trump won over Hispanic Catholics: appealing to faith, family and community
Donald Trump’s gains among Hispanics in 2024 are a wake-up call for Democrats.
Dispatches
Border enforcement policies are effective—at driving up migrant deaths
Enforcement tactics do not in the end deter asylum seekers, who are typically fleeing life-threatening circumstances, but stricter enforcement does push border crossers to more dangerous paths.
Donald Trump’s election has brought new fear to immigrant communities
“These are clear signs that the president-elect intends to carry out some of the worst campaign promises, including mass deportation,” Dylan Corbett, the executive director of Hope Border Institute, told America.
Italy broadened its ban on surrogacy. Will other European states do the same?
Pope Francis has condemned surrogacy as a form of “false compassion.” Now, in Italy, engaging in surrogacy in another country, even where it may be legal, will be a criminal offense for Italian citizens.
Features
An atheist’s return to the Catholic Church: a story of death, love and meaning
From Nietzsche and Heidegger to Charles Taylor, Dostoevsky and the Gospels, one believer’s journey to faith.
The joy and the pain of being a Catholic foster parent
If foster care works as it is designed to, that sacrifice will lead to goodbyes. The tension can be brutal. It’s also profoundly Christlike.
Faith and Reason
A Catholic guide to migration ethics in the Trump era
Donald Trump’s second term as U.S. President will surely raise significant questions about the ethics of migration policies. How might we resist extremism and polarization while retaining a commitment to the church’s teaching on the dignity of all peoples?
Faith in Focus
My final vows as a religious sister—and the people who got me there
I hoped my final vows would be an occasion of encounter with the goodness of God for each person present
3 lessons from the synod for dealing with our post-election divisions
The fundamental insight of the synod was not only that attentive listening was helpful in decision making, but also that the Holy Spirit was at work in everyone.
Books
Two things can be true: Catholicism and feminism
Can you be a Catholic and a feminist? Julie Hanlon Rubio gives her answer in the introduction of her new book—in the form of a confident “yes.”
Review: Joyelle McSweeney mourns in verse
Joyelle McSweeney’s ‘Death Styles’—her 10th book across creative and critical genres—rewards our attention.
Frantz Fanon is having a moment
With his new biography, ‘The Rebel’s Clinic: The Revolutionary Lives of Frantz Fanon,’ Adam Shatz seeks to give us Fanon the person, and not just his most famous soundbites.
Review: Eamon Duffy on Peter Ackroyd’s ‘The English Soul’
Peter Ackroyd declares at the outset of ‘The English Soul: Faith of a Nation’ that Christianity has been “the reflection, perhaps the embodiment of the English soul.” But his book is not about Christianity so much as it is about some notable figures in Protestant England.
Art
At the Metropolitan Museum, art communes with the saints in ‘Siena: The Rise of Painting’
A once in a lifetime exhibit of Italian paintings at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York reminds us of the foundations of our faith.
Poetry
Juniper Rising
Who am I to prune the surging crown?
The Prayer of Unseeking Despair
just ordinary sunlight shimmering through a drizzling, autumn rain
Last Take
Remembering the spiritual poverty and subversive laughter of Gustavo Gutiérrez
In faith, in love and in hope, Gustavo Gutiérrez gave everything to the present. The world is a better place for it.
Faith
My final vows as a religious sister—and the people who got me there
I hoped my final vows would be an occasion of encounter with the goodness of God for each person present
A Catholic guide to migration ethics in the Trump era
Donald Trump’s second term as U.S. President will surely raise significant questions about the ethics of migration policies. How might we resist extremism and polarization while retaining a commitment to the church’s teaching on the dignity of all peoples?
An atheist’s return to the Catholic Church: a story of death, love and meaning
From Nietzsche and Heidegger to Charles Taylor, Dostoevsky and the Gospels, one believer’s journey to faith.
The joy and the pain of being a Catholic foster parent
If foster care works as it is designed to, that sacrifice will lead to goodbyes. The tension can be brutal. It’s also profoundly Christlike.
Remembering the spiritual poverty and subversive laughter of Gustavo Gutiérrez
In faith, in love and in hope, Gustavo Gutiérrez gave everything to the present. The world is a better place for it.
Canonization cause of Pedro Arrupe—Jesuit who tended to victims of Hiroshima—takes an important step forward
The cause for the canonization of Pedro Arrupe, S.J., 28th superior general of the Society of Jesus, took an important step forward today, Nov. 14, with the closing of its diocesan phase.
Vatican Dispatch
Canonization cause of Pedro Arrupe—Jesuit who tended to victims of Hiroshima—takes an important step forward
The cause for the canonization of Pedro Arrupe, S.J., 28th superior general of the Society of Jesus, took an important step forward today, Nov. 14, with the closing of its diocesan phase.
Politics
Faith
Culture
Vatican
Scripture
Podcasts