Dear Readers,
Thank you for blessing Church Life Journal with your support this past year. We reached more readers with our theological explorations than we could have ever imagined. We couldn't have done it without all your generous shares, retweets, and personal recommendations. Please keep them coming.
My special thanks also goes out to Tim O'Malley for his sage meta-advice on running the journal's many operations, and Jay Martin for introducing me to an endless stream of contributors. Ultimately, my thanks goes out to all our contributors who continually surprise me with the quality, intelligence, and beauty of their writing.
I submit to you our most-read essays of 2018 below as a token of my appreciation and as a promise of what you can expect in 2019 (besides a website redesign). Please click on the essay titles to access what look like the most intriguing reads.
A Happy New Year to you and Merry conclusion to your Christmas season. May your Christmas trees make it to February 2nd!
In Christ,
Artur Rosman, CLJ Managing Editor
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The Spiritual Was More Substantial Than the Material for the Ancients David Bentley Hart, theologian and New Testament translator, explores the New Testament's strange intellectual world by defining what spirit, soul, and flesh meant to its writers. -
What Is Integralism Today?
Edmund Waldstein, O.Cist., a monk of Stift Heiligenkreuz, provides the essential background to the renewed debate about integralism in Catholic circles. -
Petrine Primacy: Who Can Speak on Behalf of the Orthodox Church?
John Panteleimon Manoussakis, College of the Holy Cross Professor of Philosophy, probes the chief problem for the Orthodox Churches in their dialogue with Rome. -
Discipleship Isn’t as Exciting as Youth Ministry Makes It Seem
Timothy O'Malley, Director of the University of Notre Dame Center for Liturgy, analyzes how youth ministry programs can avoid the inevitable burnout caused by popular emotive models. -
Our Children Might Return to the Church, but Our Grandchildren Most Likely Won’t
Daniel McClain, Chaplain to the College of William & Mary, scrutinizes children at play and the failures of religious education. -
We Have Never Been Medieval
Stephen Metzger, Ph.D. Notre Dame Medieval Institute, explodes the unexamined assumptions of modernity by extending Bruno Latour's argument into the "Middle Ages." -
The Crisis of Catholic Moral Theology
Charles Camosy, Fordham University Associate Professor of Christian Ethics, identifies the causes of the crisis in the discipline of Catholic moral theology. -
Natural Family Planning and the Myth of Catholic Contraception
Michael Wee, Education Officer of the Anscombe Bioethics Centre, explains the differences between two rival versions of marriage. -
The Strange Myths of the New Evangelization
Mark Giszczak, Augustine Institute Associate Professor of Sacred Scripture, uses hard data to unmask the myth of Catholic decline in the United States. -
The “Gift” of Modernity
Cyril O'Regan, University of Notre Dame Catherine F. Huisking Chair in Theology, distinguishes between the cheerers, weepers, and shadow-seers of modernity. -
The Four Waves of the U.S. Catholic Abuse Crisis
Kim Daniels, Associate Director of the Georgetown Initiative on Catholic Social Thought and Public Life, puts the 2018 crisis in historical perspective and looks for a way forward. -
Alasdair MacIntyre Reads Jane Austen Reading Her Late Modern Reader
Haley Stewart, writer, speaker, and podcaster puts forward the argument that you cannot understand Austen outside of embodying a virtuous life.
Featured Image: From our homepage.
