Commonweal Confronts the Century

For 75 years, Commonweal magazine has sought to bring Catholic faith and modern life -- especially the experience of American freedom and diversity -- into fruitful contact. Now Commonweal Confronts the Century not only marks the anniversary of this distinguished journal, it also traces the ways in which the Catholic intellectual tradition has struggled with modernity, democratic institutions, and American culture while remaining faithful to its heritage.

Collected here are many of the most provocative essays the journal has published by a number of the century's most distinguished writers and thinkers. Together they confront controversial issues of continuing relevance within both the Catholic Church and American society in general. In the pages of Commonweal, liberal Catholics have carried on a dialogue about American culture and politics, the arts, religious pluralism, domestic upheaval, war and peace, liberal freedoms, and new moral and sexual sensibilities. Here is a feast of argument, observations, and good writing that will appeal to both the religiously informed and the intellectually curious. Highlights of Commonweal Confronts the Century include:

Dorothy Day on poverty

Graham Greene on his religious conversion

Thomas Merton on nuclear war

Jean Bethke Elshtain on gay marriage

Daniel Callahan on health care