February 18 commentary posted online by U.S. Catholic, a monthly edited by lay people and owned by the Claretian order of priests and brothers. And “This Will Do” came from the biweekly, independent, lay-edited Commonweal in its February 22 edition (like the America editorial, already available online). The headline introduced an editorial holding that the newly revised federal rules on private health insurance coverage of contraception, affecting religious institutions and their employees, should “put to rest the claim” that the Obama administration’s controversial birth-control mandate “wantonly violates religious liberty.” (The U.S. Catholic bishops had taken the opposite stance on February 7, in their own assessment of the revision.) Besides Malone, the editors seated with Roberts at a small round table at the front of the room were Paul Baumann of Commonweal and Meinrad Scherer-
photograph: Gary Wayne Gilbert
Emunds of U.S. Catholic. Along with the National Catholic Reporter, known as NCR, the three magazines are among the most familiar brands in American Catholic journalism. Commonweal, widely considered the leading voice of thoughtful, liberal Catholicism, and America, produced by the Society of Jesus in the United States, are opinion journals, both published in New York City. America does not identify itself as liberal, conservative, or centrist (and Malone argued at the forum that such labels don’t travel well from secular to religious discourse). U.S. Catholic, published in Chicago, reaches more broadly for the pews as a general-interest magazine that handles questions about Catholic teaching on subjects such as confession and capital punishment (in a department called “Glad You Asked”) and regularly surveys its readers on a wide range of non-religious topics. NCR, an independent
biweekly newspaper with a daily online edition and headquarters in Kansas City, Missouri, is often cited for its unflinching coverage of the institutional Church, with in-depth stories on such matters as clerical sexual abuse and financial irregularities in Catholic dioceses and at the Vatican. In part, the panelists aired the same digital-era worries that keep their secular counterparts up at night. Baumann said plainly that the “business model” of publications like his will have to change, because paid subscriptions, the traditional source of revenue, are waning. (Figures were not discussed, but America reports a print circulation of 37,000; NCR, 35,000; U.S. Catholic, 24,000; and Commonweal, 18,000.) Commonweal’s demographics, Baumann added, are “frightening,” in that its readers are “very mature.” Malone, whose magazine is subsidized by his order, was more upbeat. Citing the success, lately, of long-form journalism online
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