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Second
Spring
Editor Stratford Caldecott
Editorial Board Stratford & Léonie Caldecott, Philip and Carol
Zaleski
Publisher Jeffrey O. Nelson
Mail address:
6a King Street, Jericho
Oxford OX2 6DF
Tel: (44/0) 1865 552 154
Email:
At the beginning of the 1990s we decided to create a forum to explore, from
within the Catholic tradition, the beauty that inspires conversion to
Christianity and the creation of a Christian culture. We wanted to respond to
the call of John Paul II for a "new evangelization", in gratitude for
the gift of faith we had ourselves received. We began to visualize a magazine
that would imbued with the spirit of faith and of the joy that comes from faith,
but which would not dwell exclusively on the Church and theology, but turn its
attention to the world of science, of literature, of economics, of art and
architecture, of history.... It would not be afraid of tackling theology, but it
would do so in a way that was open to human experience and would relate theology
to the deepest concerns of the human heart. It would be about spirituality as
well as culture, about social action as well as intellectual analysis. It would
be committed to truth wherever we could find it.
The gap between faith and culture, which Paul VI called the
"drama of our times", cannot be addressed by an attempt simply to
recover a world that has been lost: a mythical golden age set back in the 1950s,
the 1870s or the Middle Ages. Yes, we need to restore and retrieve much that has
been lost or forgotten in the rush to be "modern" – now that
Modernism itself has become passé. But we must do it within a new cultural
moment. We must learn from the past, not merely repeat it. In particular, we
believe that the Second Vatican Council, for all the disasters associated with
its aftermath, was an act of the Holy Spirit that made possible a new springtime
of the faith in the twenty-first century. Its true fruits are only now beginning
to be manifest.
Between 1992 and 1999 Second Spring appeared as a
quarterly supplement within the Ignatius Press magazine Catholic World Report.
From 1994 we were building up the Centre for Faith & Culture in Oxford,
together with its twice-yearly Faith & Culture Bulletin, as the supporting
structure for the forum we wanted to create. In 2000 we established the Second
Spring website. Through all these means, and the conferences we organized
each year, we were making contact with others who felt the same need we did.
Friends, old and new, became collaborators, and a complex network began to form,
of individuals and institutions in many countries that all wanted roughly the
same thing: a thing that is hard to put into words, but which we all recognize
when we see it. It has something to do with hope, and something to do with
beauty. We hope you will catch a glimpse of it when you read these pages.
In 2007, a new phase began, when Second
Spring became the journal of the Thomas More College of Liberal
Arts, in Merrimack, New Hampshire. The College is also now the sponsor of the
Centre for Faith & Culture in Oxford. For information on the College,
see www.ThomasMoreCollege.edu
What readers have said about us:
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Surely it is a sign of the turning of the tide of dense materialism. I find it is filled with a sense of beauty and kindness.
Dr Kathleen Raine
(Founder of the Tenemos Academy)
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As beautifully produced
as its contents are carefully crafted, Second
Spring is a sign of re-flowering for a Catholic culture generously
conceived.
Aidan
Nichols OP
(Blackfriars, Cambridge)
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Second
Spring is one of the great contemporary journals spanning the bridge
between theological reflection and cultural analysis. Its list of
conributors also spans the English speaking world. It’s Catholic in the
best and broadest sense of the term.
Tracey
Rowland
(John Paul II Institute for Marriage and Family, Melbourne,
Australia)
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“Second
Spring, dedicated to the conversion of culture, is a delightful
counterpart to the theological journal Communio.
The interdisciplinary articles and poetry, with their particular
emphasis on beauty of content and presentation, succeed in nourishing both the
mind and the heart. Mining the tradition they carve out new insights to
reveal the contours of a revivified Christian culture for the third
millennium.”
Mary
Shivanandan,
(Professor of Theology at the John Paul II Institute for Studies
on Marriage and Family at the Catholic University of America)
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Second Spring constitutes a sort of
plumbline, or tuning-fork, when it comes to the question of journals. It is an immensely handsome publication, for a start, with graphics ranging from the pleasing to the awesome. Format and type-face (for an old editor like me) are elements too often shortchanged in our own epoch, and here again, Second Spring sets a standard. But above all of this are the content and the contributors. This is journalism at its highest level: indeed, the word 'journalism' falls away soon enough, and we find ourselves needing the words 'discourse' and even 'scholarship' in order to reach the mark. And, arching over it all, we must blazon the glorious word 'Catholic Orthodoxy', a commodity not easily come by at present.
Tom Howard
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Usually a new magazine elicits from me a rueful sigh. Not this time! Second Spring woke me up, fascinated me and gave me the kind of pleasure St. Thomas Aquinas said none of us could live without. And something else happened after my first uplifting read of this splendid magazine: a new spring in my step replaced an old limp. Isn't that amazing? In this plodding, prosaic age where dullness makes nudnicks of us all you break through with style, a lovely graceful form shining with three attractive features: lucidity, elegance and individuality. These ingredients of style permeate more than the writing. It looks and feels beautiful.
Fr William McNamara OCD
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