In his new documentary, Richard Linklater comes home to Huntsville, Texas: a town organized by the business of state executions.

Burke Nixon reviews:
commonwealmagazine.org/cruel-and-unus…

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One of the misconceptions about Judaism is that the religion is concerned primarily with justice and the law, not love and grace.

A conversation with Rabbi Shai Held:
commonwealmagazine.org/podcast/judais…

'He often casts Francis as a kind of Trojan Horse determined to smuggle the dreaded post–Vatican II reform agenda back into the Church.'

Paul Baumann on Ross Douthat, Commonweal, and the varieties of liberal Catholicism:
commonwealmagazine.org/liberal-cathol…

'It was artists who took up what had once been the bailiwick of mystics—the pursuit of an uncorrupted utterance.'

Jared Marcel Pollen on language, literature, and Clarice Lispector: commonwealmagazine.org/other-side-sil…

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'Like Kafka and Beckett, Lispector approaches the allegorical but deprives us of the easy interpretations that allegory usually lends itself to.'

Jared Marcel Pollen on Clarice Lispector:
commonwealmagazine.org/other-side-sil…

'Levitation is still a subject that attracts disparagement and repels serious inquiry.'

Carlos Eire: How should historians make sense of testimonies of levitating saints?
commonwealmagazine.org/saints-levitat…

'That, at least, was my experience of so-called liberal Catholicism at Commonweal.'

Paul Baumann on the varieties of liberal Catholicism:
commonwealmagazine.org/liberal-cathol…

'Can’t we all become better listeners? Can’t we all practice the art of friendship? These are all realistic goals for ordinary people.'

John Rodden on following the example of St. Philip Neri — a saint for ordinary people:
commonwealmagazine.org/philip-neri-sa…

.@MattMazewski: A seemingly trivial change to New Jersey’s ballot design is good news for the future of democracy in America.
commonwealmagazine.org/end-line

'Douthat seems to harbor a hope that 'some more decisive event' might finally separate the liberal goats from the orthodox sheep.'

Paul Baumann on Ross Douthat:
commonwealmagazine.org/liberal-cathol…

'For a saint, Philip was remarkably ordinary.'

Philip Neri is just the kind of saint we need: a model of lightness of spirit, divine laughter, and extraordinary ordinariness.
commonwealmagazine.org/philip-neri-sa…

'Last year, the number of executions increased nationally for the second year in a row, and Texas played a large part in the increase.'

Burke Nixon on the business of executions in the state of Texas:
commonwealmagazine.org/cruel-and-unus…

'I wish Douthat would make more room in his analysis of American Catholicism for liberal Catholics who do not fit the conservative Catholics’ stereotype of them.' — Paul Baumann
commonwealmagazine.org/liberal-cathol…

'Rejected by those they considered community leaders, some students escalated in a manner that was shocking but totally foreseeable.'

Ariana Orozco on the protests at Columbia:
commonwealmagazine.org/rejoice-revolu…

'In reading her, one sometimes gets the sense that she is less a novelist than a mystic for whom the novel is a metaphysical arena for staged confrontations with language.'

Jared Marcel Pollen considers Clarice Lispector's ‘The Apple in the Dark’:
commonwealmagazine.org/other-side-sil…

Liberal Catholicism, which Ross Douthat tends to present as a monolith, in reality comes in various shapes and sizes.

The latest from Paul Baumann:
commonwealmagazine.org/liberal-cathol…

Christians in the Middle East see themselves not just as abandoned, but as betrayed. How did we get here?
commonwealmagazine.org/christianity-m…

''The Apple in the Dark' lavishly basks in its own unknowing, in its koanlike prose, in the knocking, jostling symbolism of its abstract passages.'

Jared Marcel Pollen on Clarice Lispector:
commonwealmagazine.org/other-side-sil…