About This Issue

As Catherine R. Osborne notes, “we are only at the beginning of a serious historical reckoning” with the Sex Abuse Crisis, but she and her colleagues, James M. O’Toole, Leslie Woodcock Tentler, Emilie Gagnet Leumas, John C. Seitz, and James T. Fisher, have made an important contribution toward that reckoning in the forum on “Writing Catholic History After the Sex Abuse Crisis,” which is our lead item in this issue. We are grateful to Catherine who served as Guest Editor for the forum.

Monsignor George G. Higgins (1916–2002), appropriately regarded as “the most important figure in American Catholicism dealing with the practical application of Catholic social teaching to the U.S. cultural, economic, and political scenes,” is the subject of Stephen M. Koeth, C.S.C., whose article traces the influences that inspired Higgins to wed liturgical and social reform.

To understand Pope Francis, it is helpful to consider the circumstances of the land and the church in which he spent his first seventy-six years. Phillip Berryman in “The Argentine and Latin American Background of Pope Francis” shares a highly informative narrative on Argentina itself, the Jesuits in Argentina, Francis’s twenty years as bishop and archbishop in Buenos Aires, and his pastoral vision.

The National Shrine of Our Lady of Czestochowa in Doylestown, Pennsylvania was dedicated in 1966, on the one thousandth anniversary of the Christianization of Poland in 966. This year marks the fifteenth anniversary of “American Czestochowa” as the shrine has come to be known, and Thomas Rzeznik’s cover essay captures the story of the shrine in a way that will interest all readers.

Our review section leads with Sr. Sandra Schneiders’s assessment of Tim Roberts’s biography of Sr. Joan Chittister and contains many fine reviews. We are grateful for the excellent work done by our book reviewers and we are pleased to have received notice, just as we are closing this issue, that the book review section has won three awards in the refereed competition held each year by the Catholic Press Association. And there is more good news about these and other awards that will be shared in detail in our next issue.