About
Church Life Journal is published by the McGrath Institute for Church Life at the University of Notre Dame. The McGrath Institute for Church Life partners with Catholic dioceses, parishes and schools to address pastoral challenges with theological depth and rigor. By connecting Catholic intellectual life to the life of the Church, the McGrath Institute forms faithful Catholic leaders for service to the Church and the world.
Church Life Journal opens up readers to first-rate Catholic scholarship—past and present. It is a publication that both deepens the faith of all members of the Church, while also serving as a place where Catholic leaders can think through intellectual and pastoral problems of our day. In this sense, the journal is concerned with taking up the tasks of intellectual evangelization, identified by the American bishops as an important aspect of the Church's work within the University.
Church Life Journal rises above the controversy that besets many Catholic conversations in the public sphere. We focus on first principles grounded in themes related to the flourishing of Church Life: catechesis and formation, the arts, liturgy, pro-life culture and human dignity, Catholic education, science and religion, and technology. While theology is foundational to our work, we seek to engage seriously the entirety of the Catholic intellectual tradition.
The journal's tone is one of dynamic orthodoxy. We seek to understand how the entire Catholic Tradition contributes to ecclesial, social, cultural, and political renewal. We are orthodox, because we desire to think with the Church. We are dynamic because we believe such thinking is not reducible to applying already formulated principles to the problems of our age.