Commonweal is a New York based American journal of opinion edited and managed by lay Catholics. Founded in 1924 by Micheal Williams (1877-1950) and the Calvert Associates, Commonweal is the oldest Catholic journal of opinion in the United States. The journal, tagged as "A Review of Religion, Politics, and Culture," is run as a not-for-profit enterprise, and managed by a nine-member board of directors. New York City, officially named the City of New York, is the most populous city in the United States, the most densely populated major city in North America, and the largest financial center in the world. ...

Commonweal publishes editorials, columns, essays, and poetry, along with film, book, and theatre reviews. Although Commonweal maintains a relatively strong focus on issues of specific interest to Catholics, this focus is not exlusionary. A broad range of issues—religious, political, social, and cultural—are examined independent of any relationship to Catholicism and the Church.

Moreover, despite its distinctly Catholic character, Commonweal has consistently spurned sectarianism and religious dogmatism, in turn attracting contributers from all points of the mainstream political spectrum in the United States. Indeed, since its inception the journal has taken a decidely liberal stance on many of the more important issues in the modern religious, cultural and political discourse in the United States. For instance, Commonweal condemned the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki; criticised the tactics employed by the Irish Catholic senator, Joseph McCarthy; supported domestic oppossition to United States involvement in the Vietnam War; and questioned the 1968 Papal encyclical Humanae Vitae, a document spelling out the Vatican's position on abortion and contraception. American liberalism (also called modern liberalism) is a political current that claims descent from classical liberalism in terms of devotion to individual liberty, but rejects the laissez faire economics of classical liberalism in favor of institutions that promote social and economic equity. ... Urakami Tenshudo (Catholic Church in Nagasaki) destroyed by the atomic bomb, the bell of the church having toppled off. ... Joseph Raymond McCarthy Joseph Raymond McCarthy (November 14, 1908 – May 2, 1957) was an American politician originally aligned with the United States Democratic Party and later with the United States Republican Party. ... The Vietnam War or Second Indochina War was a conflict between the Democratic Republic of Vietnam (DRVN, or North Vietnam), allied with the National Liberation Front (NLF, or Viet Cong) against the Republic of Vietnam (RVN, or South Vietnam), and its allies—notably the United States military in support of... In the ancient Church, an encyclical was a circular letter sent to all the churches of a particular area. ... Humanae Vitae (Latin of human life, but typically translated as On the Regulation of Human Birth) is an encyclical written by Pope Paul VI and promulgated on July 25, 1968. ...

Twenty-two issues of Commonweal are released each year, with a circulation of approximately 20,000.

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