Catholicism Archives - Public Seminar

Art & Design

The Good Word According to Sister Corita Kent

On how a Catholic school teacher became a radical proponent of activist art

June 9, 2026 • by Juliana Allan Bomfim

Someday Is Now: The Art of Corita Kent, a monograph first published by DelMonico Books in 2013 and now reissued, after a decade out of print, provides a look back at a Catholic school art teacher’s journey to become one of the most visible activist artists of the 1960s and ...

The Good Word According to Sister Corita Kent

North America

The Legacy of the Catholic New Right in Project 2025

The Heritage Foundation returns to its roots

August 26, 2024 • by Chelsea Ebin

For the past four decades, the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank, has published policy proposals ahead of presidential elections. The most recent installment of the “Mandate for Leadership” series, published in 2023, is a 900-page collection of essays written by a host of right-wing thinkers and advised by more ...

The Legacy of the Catholic New Right in Project 2025

Higher Ed

“God Is Dead”

And other memories of coming of age gay and Catholic in the sixties

October 12, 2022 • by John D’Emilio

I was flabbergasted. The idea that someone not only didn’t believe in God but also had grown up without God was something I couldn’t take in. All I could think was, “Wow. Without God, he’d never have to worry about whether he was going to hell, whether he’d make it ...

Announcements

Live at Public Seminar: John D’Emilio

Public Seminar celebrates the publication of Memories of a Gay Catholic Boyhood

October 10, 2022 • by Public Seminar

John D’Emilio, a pioneering figure in the field of LGBTQIA+ history, will join Public Seminar Co-Executive Editor Claire Potter in a discussion of Memories of a Gay Catholic Boyhood....

Europe & Central Asia

Part 1: A Just War?

Revelations of the War in Ukraine: An anti-war activist’s personal and political reckoning

September 7, 2022 • by James Carroll

In nations bracketing the North Atlantic a great sigh of relief could almost be heard: how great to be free once more to demonize Moscow....

Politics

I Am Ignoring Amy Coney Barrett

And you should too — because she will be confirmed, Trump is trolling us with this nomination, and we have an election to win

September 28, 2020 • by Claire Potter

I doubt that Barrett drinks a lot of beer or is prone to nasty sexual behaviors. The only thing that could stop her confirmation is a new and damaging revelation about the charismatic, evangelical Catholic group, People of Praise, to which she and her family belong. This is unlikely, and ...

Feature

The Rorschach Test of Notre Dame

Notre Dame fire provoked universal shock and grief but its meaning has been refracted through radically different lenses

May 11, 2019 • by Sławomir Sierakowski

Although the Notre Dame fire in Paris provoked universal shock and grief, its meaning has been refracted through radically different lenses. Whereas the French have focused on issues of distributive justice, Poles have locked horns in another battle in the culture war that has defined the country's post-Cold War history. WARSAW ...

Activism

How Media, Political and Religious Elites Shape Plebian Resistance

Part Two: Confronting Polish Responsibility for the Shoah in Paris

April 24, 2019 • by Izabela Wagner

Editor’s note: in the first part of her essay on the challenges Polish scholars are confronting in their efforts to bring attention to Polish-responsibility for portions of the Shoah, Wagner discussed origins of – and the rise of resistance to – the New Polish School of the History of Shoah. In this ...

How Media, Political and Religious Elites Shape Plebian Resistance

Feature

The Abortion Debate in Argentina

Or how men, priests, and the ignorant subjugate women

September 17, 2018 • by Emmanuel Guerisoli

In the very early hours of August 9, the Argentinean Senate missed a historic opportunity to become the first Catholic-majoritarian country in the global south to legalize voluntary abortion. Instead, the upper chamber’s total rejection of abortion revealed three dynamics that prevent women from acquiring full citizenship rights, and which ...

Feature

Like a Virgin?

The Medieval Origins of a Modern Debate

September 3, 2018 • by Katherine Harvey

Although well-behaved women seldom make history, they do sometimes make the news. Over the past few days, numerous news outlets have reported on a new Vatican ruling concerning consecrated virgins. These unmarried Catholic women, also known as ‘brides of Christ’, take a vow of chastity and perform various religious works, but do not ...

Feature

What Do Latin Americans Do When They Do Religion?

From Destination to Journey

August 23, 2018 • by Gustavo Morello

Economic development, democratic governments, and a growing middle class have changed the spiritual realm in Latin America. Once dominated by Catholicism, today’s Latin Americans are migrating from one religion to another as they look for meaning and engage with superhuman powers. While there are many studies of the changing nature ...

What Do Latin Americans Do When They Do Religion?

Feature

The Catholic ’68

Love and Protest

August 11, 2018 • by Adrienne Harris

“1968 youth need 1968 priests”, read one of the banners outside Westminster Cathedral, carried by marchers from a south London parish as part of a coordinated series of ‘pray-ins’ and protest meetings at cathedrals across the country. Progressive Catholic activism in the summer of 1968 took a variety of forms, ...