About This Issue

] About This Issue F or a journal committed to publishing theme issues, it was only a matter of time before we would devote an issue to the numerous historical events of 1968. Forty years later, we turn to those issues and themes that are significant to the character of our journal. In American Catholic history there were several notable events that year. In March occurred the first meeting of the Black Catholic Clergy Caucus in Detroit, just one week before the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. This meeting led eventually to the establishment of the National Office of Black Catholics. By May 1968, Catholic anti-war protesters, including Daniel and Philip Berrigan, were engaging in war resistance strategies symbolized by breaking into the draft files of Catonsville, Maryland, and publicly burning them with homemade napalm. They were immediately arrested and served jail time. On July 29, Pope Paul VI issued the encyclical Humane Vitae (On Human Life). Though the Pontifical Birth Control Commission that studied the implications of artificial birth control registered a majority approving the new birth control measures , Pope Paul disagreed with their recommendation and reiterated the traditional teaching of the Church. Even those who did not support the encyclical were impressed by the encyclical’s positive language related to marriage. Charles Curran, a moral theologian at Catholic University, issued a statement at a press conference signed by 172 priests asserting the primacy of conscience of spouses to practice birth control. Senator Eugene McCarthy (D-Minnesota), the peace candidate, challenged President Johnson in the New Hampshire primary. Though Johnson held the majority , he won by a very slim vote, and Johnson announced that he would not seek reelection. At the subsequent Democratic Convention, Mayor Richard Daley ordered the police to forcefully disperse anti-war demonstrators which just inflamed the confrontation . These protests and acts of dissent occurred in that dramatic year which was the beginning of the "second 1960s" that closed with the National Guard’s firing on protesting students at Kent State University in 1973. We are grateful to our contributors: Jeffrey Burns is archivist of the Archdiocese of San Francisco and Director of the Academy of American Franciscan History in Berkeley, California; Helen Ciernick is assistant professor of religious studies at Mt. Marty College in Yankton, South Dakota; Francis J. Sicius is professor of history at St. Thomas University in Miami, Florida. Rodger Van Allen is professor of theology and religious studies at Villanova University and co-editor with Margaret McGuinness of American Catholic Studies. Nancy M. Davis is associate professor in the School of New Learning at DePaul University in Chicago. Christopher J. Kauffman ...