I spent an evening running the word “Catholicism” through the 20+ filters of a popular AI image generator. The results were both stunning and revelatory.
Catholic Identity
Posted inArts & Culture, Catholic Book Club
Alice McDermott and the Brooklyn Irish Catholic community that inspired her writing
In her eight novels and many short stories, Alice McDermott has brought a distinctly Catholic imagination to her fiction—but not in the same way as her forebears.
Posted inArts & Culture, Vantage Point
From 1943: William Lynch on the Catholic imagination
In 1943, William F. Lynch, S.J., tackled a question many America writers would explore before and after: Is there such a thing as a Catholic imagination?
Posted inPolitics & Society, Short Take
How do pollsters decide who’s a ‘devout’ Catholic?
Abortion polls tell part of the story.
Posted inArts & Culture, Vantage Point
From 1986: Andre Dubus on being a Catholic writer in a country that lost religion
A wide-ranging interview with Andre Dubus on literary influences, faith and the process of writing.
Posted inArts & Culture, Catholic Book Club
Jon Hassler put Catholics’ complicated fear around Vatican II into his novels
Jon Hassler wrote novels that examined with infinite compassion the lives of the residents of small-town Minnesota.
Posted inFaith, Faith in Focus
Angry at the church? Mass may be the only place to heal.
The great Catholic irony is that the Mass—that ripe cadenced insane activity at the heart of the church—is weirdly, bizarrely, the right and fitting place to bring our concerns about the Mass itself.
Posted inDispatches, Politics & Society
Partisanship is becoming a religion unto itself. How do Catholics respond in the voting booth?
Notre Dame researchers are exploring a surprisingly complex aspect of Catholic life: how Catholics vote. The report focused on the unique pressures and behaviors of “seamless garment” Catholics in making electoral decisions.
Posted inArts & Culture, Features
‘We are all responsible together for what the church becomes’: Vatican II, synodality and the future of Catholicism
Kenneth Woodward interviews the Rev. Joseph Komonchak, the renowned scholar of the Second Vatican Council, on the council’s impact yesterday and today.