The American Catholic Quarterly Review published its first issue in January 1876, in the centenary year of the nation’s founding. Its Salutatory declared that the Review would be Catholic and American, and set a second aim alongside the defense of doctrine: to show “the practical development and working of Catholic principle in the history of the world, in the lives of great and good men, and in the destinies of nations.”

At its founding the Review understood itself as the successor to Orestes Brownson’s Quarterly Review, which for three decades had been the premier national journal of opinion for Catholics. Failing health forced Brownson to give up publishing in October 1875. He wrote one last essay before his death the following April, and “The Philosophy of the Supernatural” appeared in the inaugural issue of the American Catholic Quarterly Review. The Review went on to publish forty-eight full volumes, ceasing publication after its January issue in 1924.

If you are a Catholic, perhaps you have a sense that there was once a serious and broad community of educated Catholics who engaged together in reflection at a high level, much to the benefit of the country. That community produced the Catholic Encyclopedia of 1907–1914, which more than a hundred years later has still not been superseded. Dip into the pages of the old Review and your sense will be amply confirmed. You would certainly attain the conviction: they were builders then, and we seem to be in ruins. One rebuilds with whatever tools are to hand. But one must have the intention to rebuild.

Our goal is to revive the Review. We shall do so with the means currently available to us, and in the manner most appropriate for publication in our own day. Quarterly reviews are no longer standard, and Substack suits a start-up that is also an upstart. Whether we move toward a print publication, and whether subscribers might receive a quarterly collection of our best work, we keep as open questions.