Julia Morales* Of Loves and Laws

Noli timere. Be not afraid.

This command pervades the Scriptures, and yet many in Western societies are engulfed in a sense that doom is near and what was will no longer be. There is fracture and pain exploding out into the open—for some it’s long-rumbling, for others it’s a shock. Almost everyone feels besieged and misunderstood, reduced to a caricature and cut off without grace. But emerging from this morass is a call to a new kind of engagement with one another, one that Comment would like to answer with a long and unpredictable table that seats elite next to commoner, scholar next to practitioner, black next to white, able-bodied next to handicapped, young next to old, rich next to poor, privileged next to overlooked, immigrant next to indigenous. What does it require to be repairers of the breach? How can a magazine informed by 2,000 years of Christian social thought help us tend to the task? This print issue opens up these questions, inviting an exploration of the fears and loves that compete for eminence in a nation, a neighborhood, a society, a soul.