The Lamp is a lay-edited Catholic magazine published six times a year. We do not adhere to a fixed editorial line; what we oppose—utilitarianism, techno-optimism, reductive accounts of human nature, attempts to sand down the crooked timber of humanity or subsume our aspirations into political, social, and economic frameworks—is more important. Like Horace Walpole, we sometimes find ourselves “drawn by some strange attraction from the great to the little, and from the useful to the odd.” The magazine could be described as “highbrow,” but the editors agree with Thomas Mallon that “the brow that’s really in danger of disappearing is the furrowed one.” Our sympathies are with the human race rather than the chatbot. Our program, to the extent that we have one, could be described as “Christian humanism,” in the tradition that runs from Erasmus to Pope Benedict XVI.

We take our inspiration from Saint John Henry Newman when he was editing the Tracts for the Times and the British Critic. There, his writers “belonged to various schools, some to none at all. The subjects are various,—classical, academical, political, critical, and artistic, as well as theological.” His editorial ideal continues to be our own: “Every one has his own taste. You object to some things, another to others. If we altered to please every one, the effect would be spoiled. They were not intended as symbols è cathedrâ, but as the expression of individual minds; and individuals, feeling strongly, while on the one hand, they are incidentally faulty in mode or language, are still peculiarly effective. No great work was done by a system; whereas systems rise out of individual exertions. . . . The very faults of an individual excite attention; he loses, but his cause (if good and he powerful-minded) gains. This is the way of things: we promote truth by a self-sacrifice.”

We are always seeking submissions. But first please read our guidelines.

What People are Saying

“Christian journalism that isn’t just part of the culture war.” —Ross Douthat

“A cheeky, eclectic literary journal.” —Jennifer Schuessler, New York Times

“Proof positive that Catholic intellectual life, in all its breadth and depth, is blossoming.” —Zena Hitz, tutor at St. John’s College and author of Lost in Thought: The Hidden Pleasures of an Intellectual Life

“Entertaining, gorgeously beautiful, and does what it should do: get a Catholic thinking.” —Eduard Habsburg, ambassador of Hungary to the Holy See and the Sovereign Order of Malta

“The Lamp is where I go to read interesting things about Catholic life.” —Emma Green, the New Yorker