Welcome to the Journal of Catholic Legal Studies!

Let's give a grand welcome to the new Journal of Catholic Studies which was just launched as the successor to St. John's Law School's Catholic Lawyer. If the first isue (which I just recieved) is any indication, it will be a marked and much more scholarly improvement on its predecessor. MOJ's own Susan Stabile and her colleague Mike Simons are the presiding geniuses, and their former colleague and MOJ's own Rob Vischer was present at the creation. The first issue is a bit of an MOJ-fest with articles by the two Michaels, Perry and Scaperlanda, and yours truly. Mike Scaperlanda's piece is part of a fascinating (and ecumenical) symposium on "Religious Education and the Liberal State." There is also an intriguing piece that I can't wait to read" "Gotti, Mob Funerals and the Catholic Church." I encourage our readers to support this important new publication by actually subscribing (and to Villanova's Journal of Catholic Social Thought as well!)

The creation of this new journal triggered a few thoughts on what I am now bold enough to call the Catholic Legal Theory Movement. The success of that movement will depend ultimately, of course, on the power of our ideas and our ability to articulate them. But institutions are also important, because they provide platforms for the expression, dissemination and testing of those ideas. Institutions provide places for publication of pieces thay may not appeal to secular publications, conferences where we can meet, and, most important, a support framework for younger scholars finding their way. MOJ is one of those institutions, the Journals of Catholic Legal Studies and Catholic Social Thought are others, as are the workshops and symposia they sponsor, and Catholic organizations are now working with the Fellowship of Christian Law Professors to create an ongoing presence at the AALS Annual Meeting. There is also some evidence that more Catholic law schools are now actually becoming hospitable to Catholic scholarship. The famous term "critical mass" once more comes to mind; we need a critical mass of institutions, as well as people, for Catholic legal theory to flourish.

--Mark