Coming Next Week: A Refreshed Catholic Moral Theology.com

And all the archives, too

In 2011, a group of then-mostly-young Catholic moral theologians emerged out of a lobby conversation at the Society of Christian Ethics, in hopes of providing an online outlet - a blog! - that would use our expertise in Catholic moral theology to help elevate the Catholic and public conversations online. We thought, even if no one reads it, we will be able to talk to each other.

Well, we did get a decent readership, and at its peak in the early years of the Francis papacy, we had thousands of hits and nearly-daily posts by a wide variety of voices. That also generated opportunities for many of us to publish in other spaces, and while the blog kept going, it certainly slowed down. All of us got older and busier. The United States (and many parts of the world, too) seemed to get more and more polarized, making it harder and harder to hit the right spot in discussing issues publicly. None of us took to the aggressive and constant nature of social media, which seemed more and more necessary to promote online content. And, we should add, none of this involved anyone getting paid.

Still, there is a lot of valuable content in that blog history. And there is certainly still a need for intelligent online public discussions of Catholic moral teachings and its relevance. The election of (Chicago’s Very Own!) Pope Leo XIV prompted a sense of a new era, and energy from the Journal of Moral Theology, spurred us to regroup. Substack has clearly become the medium by which substantial writing of this form gets pushed out.

So, starting next week, we will be running a renewed catholicmoraltheology.com, here at Substack. Many regular contributors will be back, in addition to some new voices. We will continue our popular weekly lectionary commentary from the perspective of its significance for moral theology. We hope to focus especially on important episcopal and papal statements as jumping-off points for perspective on our divided world. We look forward to the pope’s first major solo encyclical soon! And we’ve partnered with the Journal to make its more scholarly mission accessible to a wider audience, through podcasts and public-facing forums on important articles and issues of the Journal. We also will be featured material from our archives that continues to be relevant.

Thank you for joining us, and please spread the word.

David Cloutier and Jana Bennett