First issue of Commonweal, 1924

The Commonweal is the oldest independent lay Catholic journal of opinion in the United States. Founded in 1924 by Michael Williams, 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. Never bound by a strict ideology, Commonweal (“the common good”) became a forum for thoughtful, urbane discussion, largely from a liberal, reformist point of view, and has had a distinguished roster of editors and writers. 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. The magazine has an ongoing interest in social-justice issues, ecumenism, just-war teaching, the renewal of the Roman liturgy, women’s issues, the primacy of conscience, and the interchange between Catholicism and liberal democracy. 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.” In 1990, then editor Margaret Steinfels defined the ongoing mission of the journal as “a bridge for a two-way conversation between faith and life.” Commonweal continues to publish in that spirit, as an intelligent, open, committed, but critical arbiter of American life and Catholic thought and practice. (From the magazine’s website)