About This Issue

This issue on religious music underscores our commitment to publishing wide-ranging and interdisciplinary articles. On the cover’s listing of contents there is an obvious lacuna: there is no article on contemporary liturgical music. Unfortunately, one of the most popular American Catholic composers became ill during the writing of his contribution, precluding the completion of his article.

We are grateful to the contributors to this issue. Robert R. Grimes, S.J., is Dean of Fordham College at Lincoln Center. He has a Ph.D. in music. Roberto S. Goizueta is the Margaret O’Brien Flatley Chair in Catholic Theology at Boston College. John Haines holds a Canada Research Chair at the University of Toronto. He is professor of music and medieval studies. Justus George Lawler has been consulting editor of our journal for three decades. His article in this issue is twenty-five percent longer than the article in the Harvard Theological Review which he is critiquing. For anyone concerned about the seemingly disproportionate length, we quote from his previous contribution to this journal, “Justus Denied in Massachusetts” (Spring, 2012): “It takes more space and time to refute a lie than it does to tell one; even as with more serious violations, it takes far less time to commit than to convict.”

Amy K. Lewkowicz is a doctoral candidate at the Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music, University of Cincinnati. Ramón Luzárraga is lecturer in the Department of Religious Studies and theologian in residence at the University of Dayton. Rubén Rosario Rodriguez is associate professor of systematic theology in the Department of Theological Studies, St. Louis University. Sandra Yocum is associate professor, Department of Religious Studies, University of Dayton. She is also the president of the College Theology Society and author of Joining the Revolution: The College Theology Society, 1954–2004.

I am very pleased to announce that Father David J. Endres will succeed me as editor of the U.S. Catholic Historian beginning with the winter issue, and I will become an associate editor. He has been assistant editor since 2003. He is assistant professor of church history and historical theology at Mt. St. Mary’s Seminary of the West in Cincinnati. He is a fine scholar; his second book, a history of Franciscan parish life in America, will be published next year.