Commonweal Confronts the Century: Liberal Convictions, Catholic Tradition Paperback - 1999

First line

The first issue of The Commonweal was dated November 12, 1924a week after Calvin Coolidge was elected president of the United States, ten months after the death of Lenin, and barely six weeks before Adolf Hitler was released from the rather comfortable prison to which he had been sentenced for his failed putsch of the year before and where he had occupied himself in dictating the first volume of Mein Kampf.

From the rear cover

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