Confession Isn’t Therapy
Frequent confession was once normal—monthly, biweekly, or even weekly. But it became rarer among Catholics formed from the 1970s through the 1990s. Today, many Catholics go to confession only…
June/July 2026
Print Edition
June/July 2026 Print Edition
America’s Most Influential Journal of Religion and Public Life
The Education of Cole Tomas Allen
Our Strange Catholic Moment
American Catholicism is in steep decline. In 2000, 2.6 million American children attended Catholic schools. In 2025,…
Why I Became Orthodox
Bulbous onion domes topped the Corinthian columns, and baroque stucco architraves lit up the drowsy city toward…
Scout’s Honor
My six-year-old son wants to join the Scouts, but I have mixed feelings. As an Eagle Scout,…
A Dreadful Humility
At some point we must give up trying to understand other people. Love them, surely. But recognize…
The Twisted Consequences of Chatbots
The Culture of Death Loses One—for the Moment
Good news not being thick on the ground these days, I’m delighted to note some very good…
Confession Isn’t Therapy
Frequent confession was once normal—monthly, biweekly, or even weekly. But it became rarer among Catholics formed from…
Hochul’s Tax Credit and the Fight for Catholic School Choice
Give credit where it’s due. That’s the message New York governor Kathy Hochul seems to have embraced…
Til Death Do Us Part
Marriages end in death. This isn’t news, but rarely is it foremost in the minds of the…
The Truth About Christian Hospitality
The world has changed and the ground has shifted under us. All that is solid melts into…
Thomophobia
Every year the American Library Association marks “Banned Books Week,” a celebration devoted mostly to books…
Catholics and Modern Anti-Semitism
For certain personalities, drugs such as methamphetamine have an almost irresistible appeal. Only later does it turn…
Has Freya India Cracked the Commodification Problem?
The myth of Narcissus tells of a beautiful young man’s obsession with his own image, captured in…
Liberalism Is Christianity’s Prodigal Child
Something of a shift in the landscape is signaled when a press like Polity releases, almost simultaneously,…
A Kinder, Gentler Repression
Vladimir Putin chose to invade Ukraine in the month of February, rather than waiting a few weeks…
Birds
I wait for themthis dark spun dawn,kinglet, titmouse, nuthatch, wren,names so sweet on winter’s frozen tongue,such feathered…
Irises
Only he could see them clearly: the wayThey curl their shadows close beneath their leaves, Cupping clefts of…
Tool and Toy
When you select the proper tools to use,favor those that make delightful toys,like whistling tops driven by…
The Crisis of Conservative Judaism
The institutions of Conservative Judaism—its synagogues, its summer camps, its youth organizations, its sisterhoods and men’s organizations,…
I Want Life, Not the “Meaning of Life”
Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel, a posthumous but vivid presence at this publication through his friendship with Fr.…
God and Gender in Judaism
Some time this year the Reform movement will issue its new High Holy Day prayerbook, for the…
Spirituality Without Spirits
It’s a great and self-serving mess, this claim to be “spiritual but not religious,” which we hear…
The Problem with Salad Bowl Religion
I wonder what my rebbe ancestors would think of me,” writes a young Unitarian Universalist minister in…
Between Liberalism and Orthodoxy
Beyond Reasonable Doubtby louis jacobslittman library of jewish civilizations, 267 pages, $32.95 In 1957, Louis Jacobs, a…
