The Commonweal (shortened to Commonweal in 1965) is the oldest independent lay Catholic journal of opinion in the United States. Founded in 1924 by Michael Williams (1877–1950) and the Calvert Associates, it reflected a growing sense of self-confidence among American Catholics as they emerged from a largely immigrant status to become highly successful members of the American mainstream. Modeled on the New Republic and the Nation, the magazine’s goal was to be a weekly review “expressive of the Catholic note” in covering literature, the arts, religion, society, and politics.
Liberal in temperament—opinionated and engaged, but tolerant in tone—the magazine’s editorial strategy was (and continues to be) to reject sectarianism and to rely on reasoned discussion. It has never shrunk, however, from taking strong and controversial positions. When it declared its neutrality during the Spanish Civil War (1938), circulation plummeted by 20 percent. During World War II, it condemned the firebombing of Dresden and the use of atomic weapons at Hiroshima and Nagasaki. It criticized American racism, the anti-Semitism of Father Charles Coughlin, and the smear tactics of Senator Joseph McCarthy; supported resistance to U.S. involvement in Vietnam; and took issue with the 1968 papal encyclical Humanae vitae.
The magazine’s high quality and editorial consistency have been aided by long editorships: Michael Williams (1924-38); Edward S. Skillin (1938-67); James O’Gara (1967–84); Peter Steinfels (1984–88); Margaret O’Brien Steinfels (1988–2002); and Paul Baumann (2003– ). Edward Skillin’s (d. 2000) association with the journal was perhaps unique. He joined the staff in 1933, became editor and a principal owner in 1938, served as publisher from 1967–99, and transferred ownership to the nonprofit Commonweal Foundation in 1982.
On the occasion of Commonweal’s fiftieth anniversary (1974), historian John Tracy Ellis wrote that, with the exception of the nineteenth-century lay trustee movement and lay congresses, Commonweal “was the American Catholic laity’s most ambitious undertaking, and to date remains the most successful one.” Commonweal was credited with helping prepare American Catholics for Vatican II and its aftermath, and for introducing readers to a new level of literate Catholic discussion. It has published such authors as Nicholas Berdyaev, Emmanuel Mounier, François Mauriac, Georges Bernanos, Hannah Arendt, Luigi Sturzo, G.K Chesterton, Hilaire Belloc, and Graham Greene. It has printed the short fiction of Evelyn Waugh and J.F. Powers, the poetry of W.H. Auden, Josephine Jacobsen, Theodore Roethke, Stanley Kunitz, Robert Lowell, Marie Ponsot, and John Updike. Its cultural commentators have included Walter Kerr, Wilfrid Sheed, John Simon, David Denby, and Arlene Croce; there have been illustrations by Jean Charlot, Rita Corbin, Fritz Eichenberg, and Emil Antonucci.
The magazine has an ongoing interest in social-justice issues (John A. Ryan, Dorothy Day, George G. Higgins, A.J. Muste, Michael Harrington), ecumenism (Reinhold Niebuhr, Martin Marty, Thomas Hopko, George Lindbeck, Marc Tannenbaum), just-war teaching (J. Bryan Hehir, Thomas Merton, Paul Ramsey), the renewal of the Roman liturgy (Virgil Michel, Robert Hovda, Mark Searle, Rembert Weakland), women’s issues (Mary Daly, Abigail McCarthy, Sidney Callahan, Elizabeth Johnson), the primacy of conscience (John T. Noonan, Bernard Häring, Charles Curran), and the interchange between Catholicism and liberal democracy (Jacques Maritain, Eugene McCarthy, Peter Steinfels).
Part of the price for its independence has been the magazine’s periodic ostracism from various church and political circles, and its chronic sense of financial precariousness. The Commonweal Associates, established in the 1960s, have met the magazine’s annual revenue shortfall through generous donor gifts, and an endowment fund was inaugurated in 1994.
Commonweal has consistently received awards from the Catholic Press Association and the Associated Church Press, and its blog (dotCommonweal) and Web site (www.commonwealmagazine.org) have extended the journal’s reach to a younger, international audience. Since 2005, the Commonweal speakers’ bureau has introduced the magazine’s editors and authors in person to groups here and abroad. The successful College Subscription Program now provides over a thousand free subscriptions to college and graduate students each year.
When President Barack Obama met with a select group of Catholic journalists at the White House in June 2009, he told Commonweal editor Paul Baumann that “as a Christian, I’m constantly wrestling with my faith.” It is something Commonweal continues to do in every issue, as an intelligent, open, committed, but critical arbiter of American life and Catholic thought and practice.
