It’s long been a truism that Catholics don’t actually read the Bible — at least not as much or in the same way as their Protestant brethren. But they still encounter it.

Edwin Frank explains why the twentieth-century novel has the ‘power to breach.’

In the Convent of Santa Clara in Carmona, Spain, fourteen nuns carry out ancient traditions with new faces.

Rachel Cusk's innovative new novel 'Parade' explores attention, art, perspective, and secrets.

There’s much that this generation—orthodox, agnostic, and otherwise—could still gain by reading the recently departed British novelist David Lodge.

If the art of Siena, with its electric colors, exotic patterns, and fanciful imagery says anything, it’s this: God is everywhere.

Joseph’s entrance into Nativity scenes introduced an ordinary, flawed human into the moment of the divine miracle.

“Pro-life” or “pro-choice” cannot describe the sweep and complexity of Richard Strauss's "Die Frau ohne Schatten."

An author and theology professor journeys through the long history of Marian art across time and space.

The problem is not really that we can’t focus. The problem is that we can’t prioritize.

Elizabeth Catlett’s art embraced the causes of Mexicans, Black Americans, and all others around the world who were subject to Western imperialism.

David Katzenstein's photos from across the world show an artist more interested in observation than possession.

David Jones’ 'In Parenthesis' is "the greatest work of modernist poetry you’ve never read."

'The Novelist' insists that the question must be: “How can I live a meaningful life?” and not, “Is life really meaningful?”

In the third installment of our summer series, we're discussing formalism and humanism with the help of Françoise Gilot and Éric Rohmer.

In Jakob Ziguras’s newest collection of poetry, the past and present of Venice mix and match.

'The Incredulity of Saint Thomas' presents faith as an intimacy with the body of Christ.

On this episode, Becca Rothfeld speaks about her love of medieval mysticism and her loathing of modern minimalism.

Go behind the scenes of the inaugural Commonweal Prize for Short Fiction with author Kaylie Borden O’Brien and special projects editor Miles Doyle.

Toshiko Takaezu’s sculptures conjure lush environments filled with sound, movement, and atmosphere.

The artist Käthe Kollwitz never turned away from the world, or from herself.

The Met exhibition contemplates the power of the gaze in the Harlem Renaissance.

In person, Klimt’s landscapes are spaces of exquisite abundance. But a new Klimt exhibition at New York’s Neue Galerie underwhelms.

Poet and filmmaker Pier Paolo Pasolini believed in the importance of being yourself, which means being unrecognizable.

There are two difficulties with writing about Michelangelo’s frescoes in the Sistine Chapel. One is saying anything fresh about them. The other is seeing them at all.

A new staging of ‘La forza del destino’ offers audiences the chance to ponder the paradoxes at the heart of what is often considered Verdi's most “Catholic” opera.

Molly Roden Winter’s open-marriage memoir features unsexy sex, lots of crying, and a vivid portrait of emotional pain.

Against the quotidian, the ecstatic will always find a way out: whether through music or madness, divinity or drugs.

She had no spite or worldly cunning, but she refused to massage the egos of those around her or to conceal her overwhelming belief in the rightness of her vision.

Somehow, I became Fraulein Maria. So began my initiation into the Atlanta Catholic community theater and the three most surreal months of my life.

On this episode, we highlight some of our favorite conversations from the past year.

For some, coolness implies distance and detachment. But for painter Barkley L. Hendricks, it becomes a way in.

“Manet/Degas” at the Met tells the story of two lives and one friendship. The experience is exhilarating.

In ‘Killers of the Flower Moon,’ Martin Scorsese serves up an inversion of history as we have come to know it, revealing his larger aim—the correction of memory.

The work of graphic artist Julian Montague trains our eyes on the gaps and edges in society—the places where public life gives out.

Aki Kaurismäki’s ‘Fallen Leaves’ displays the director's wry humor, spare style, and focus on social inequality.

We read Chekhov’s work to inhabit a state of clear-eyed compassion.

Standout films at this year’s New York Film Festival offer neither escape nor catharsis.

On this special episode, Sister Helen Prejean and bass-baritone Ryan McKinny discuss the Met Opera’s new production of ‘Dead Man Walking.’

The Met Opera’s production of ‘Dead Man Walking’ transports its audience to spaces of suffering only God can know.

Plays by Theresa Rebeck and Rebecca Gilman dramatize the psychic tumult of grief and the difficult work of forgiveness.

A conversation with Jake Heggie, the composer who adapted the story of Sr. Helen Prejean's work against capital punishment as an opera.

‘Contempt’ is Godard’s greatest attempt to bring order to the world of cinema, to tame its commercial side and create a beautiful film.

The Buglisi Dance Theatre’s annual show is an embodied liturgy in remembrance of 9/11.

Exhibits celebrating Juan de Pareja and modern Latino artists devote necessary attention to topics that have been willfully marginalized or ignored.

Why is there a picture of Martin Luther underneath the irreligious Paul Klee’s ‘Angelus Novus’?

Five hundred Iranian protesters have suffered serious eye injuries after police fired on them with birdshot. Here are eight faces of courage.

New films by Steven Spielberg and Charlotte Wells offer two profoundly different views of film’s relationship to memory.

On this episode, writer Clifford Thompson speaks about his love of art, music, literature, and film. And Kaya Oakes remembers the late Doris Grumbach.

An exhibition celebrates Lalo Alcaraz—the author of the first Latino-themed nationally syndicated political comic strip. It’s classic Alcaraz: direct and very funny.