I’ve moved The Papal Bull to a new substack to keep things more organized, and to stop
There is something special about a well made magazine. It represents order, intellectual virtue, tradition, and sometimes, just plain fun. Whether purchased from a drug store magazine stand, or pulled from a mail box, there is something magical about opening a new issue of a favourite magazine.
Even in our digital world, the old main stay publications stand like institutions. Time magazine still holds clout with people who remember it in it’s hay day and it still means something when they names a public figure ‘person of the year;’ National Geographic - progressive politics aside - is still a good place to go for adventure, environmental education, and photography. Even the smaller hobby magazines have a certain ethereal charm that will never be truly replaced by specialty YouTube channels or blogs.
A good magazine is ordered; it is thoughtful.
I can still remember the first time I picked up a copy of Lapham’s Quarterly, with its white satin cover, arrestingly adorned with a single image underscored by a simple, well designed piece of typography, explaining the concept that would tie all the internal pieces together (in this case: States of Mind). The back cover was black, with the names of contributors printed in white, and anyone from Plato to Stephen Hawking might be found here. Between the covers I got lost in the history of the title idea through a global curation of artwork, poetry and prose. It felt distinctly different; Lapham convinced me that editorial selection could be exciting; that it could be beautiful.
And I think this is what makes a good magazine so great: it creates a microcosm of reality, and invites you to bury yourself between the pages - to immerse yourself in a manageable piece of that reality.
Generally, I have been happy with the depletion of magazines on offer, with one significant exception: Catholic magazines. For most of my life there has been nothing in the Catholic world to match National Geographic for ecological adventure; nothing like Life for contemporary issues, news and photo journalism; and nothing like The New Yorker for culture. Instead we have the shameless political regressions of America Magazine, and the bland spiritual musings of every boomer mag, written by, and for, aging religious communities. They all either lack an aesthetic sense of purpose, or the drive to represent the Church in ways that diverge from the comfortable malaise of late twentieth century Catholicism.
Thankfully it would seem that I was not the only one who felt this way, and in recent years there have been attempts to rectify this problem.
Evangelization and Culture, published by Bishop Robert Barron’s organization, Word on Fire, is perhaps the most notable of these attempts. The quarterly exists to help Catholics pursuit their mandate of evangelization by helping them gain a deeper understanding of a specific idea or theme (freedom, poetry, etc.). Every issue starts with simple, easily readable essays and articles and progresses to deeper, more complex, philosophical and academic articles near the end. The progression means that the reader can go as deep as they want, and it gives the quarterly has a wonderfully pedagogical feel.
I remember being completely surprised when I held it for the first time. Each article is accompanied by a large selection of art from Catholicism’s substantial history and no space goes to waste. The graphic design is sometimes over done, but when it works, it works. As someone who grew up in the age of felt banners and guitar masses, I had forgotten what happened when we decided to let a deeper desire for beauty guide us.
The second publication worth talking about is the indie vibing, The Lamp. With a neo-Victorian aesthetic and it’s billing as a lay-edited “journal of Catholic letters,” The Lamp seems to challenges older publications, like First Things, for cultural content, without wading too heavily in politics. Given time to mature, The Lamp will likely be the go to place for Catholic cultural commentary, conversation, and general Catholic musings.
While they have published many excellent essays and articles, I will always remember The Lamp for publishing the first and only seriously interesting theological take on video games that I have ever read.
lastly, New Polity is perhaps the most eclectic publication in this new wave of Catholic magazines. It caters to a very specific demographic and does so without too much self conscious navel gazing. Are you a Catholic who has become disenchanted with liberalism? Do you like academic and philosophical writing? Do you simple, evocative design? Then New Polity is for you. The quarterly is certainly not for everyone, and not every article is a winner, but there is a feeling with every issue that something new is starting to grow; that real, positive social and political change is possible.
It helps that the editor of New Polity, Marc Barnes is perhaps the only living Catholic writer who is worth of Chesterton’s mantel - not so much as a thinker (although he is very bright), but as a constructor of pros, and a lover of the written word.
But why have I told you all of this? And why did I change the name of my substack? Because I still think there is still a hole in the market. There is a still a Catholic magazine that I want to read that does not exist. No matter how hard I look, I can't find anything to fill the general, well rounded, well written, and well journalismed shoes of something like The New Yorker. And I still want something to read that presents Catholicism as the central axis of the world, instead of one choice among many.
Enter The Papal Bull (title pending official approval of the editorial board), the imaginary magazine that has lived in my head for the last few years; that I hope you will one day find in your mail box.
Please do not misunderstand me: I have no intention of trying to create a Catholic New Yorker; rather, I want to make something that will scratch the same itch that The New Yorker scratches. I want to break out of the paradigm of over produced evangelization periodicals (this is not say that they have no quality, but we hardly need a new one) and boomer spiritual publications, and offer a space where Catholics can celebrate Church culture on it’s own term. The word ‘mystagogy’ has come to mind - I’ll write about this in a later post.
In the coming weeks and months I am going to use this substack to lay out the ground work and examine all the attributes of what I hope The Papal Bull will be (starting with the title), with the intention of building towards a day when the idea is no longer limited to theoretical scribblings in my notebooks, but sits in your hands as a genuine artifact.