Former members of the editorial and design staff of Compass: A Jesuit Journal have set up a new association, the Compass Foundation, in an effort to continue publication of the award-winning Canadian magazine.

The Jesuit Fathers of Upper Canada have transferred the assets of Compass -- primarily its subscription list and back issues -- to the Compass Foundation. The Foundation is committed to finding sponsorship for a successor magazine to Compass, which suspended publication after its May/June 1997 issue.

The Jesuit Fathers, who had published Compass since 1983, ended their sponsorship of the magazine in early 1997 as part of an overall reduction in their activities. However, the four Jesuit members of the Compass editorial board -- Jack Costello, Peter Larisey, Douglas McCarthy and Brian Massie -- are all involved in the efforts to sustain the magazine as founding members of the Compass Foundation.

Other members of the Foundation are editor Bob Chodos, associate editors Louisa Blair, Mary Rose Donnelly, Curtis Fahey, Judy MacDonald and Stephanie Vincec CSJ, designer/illustrator Philip Street and desktop publisher/Webminder Gail van Varseveld.

Under Jesuit sponsorship, a yearly subsidy from the Jesuit Fathers accounted for a significant part of Compass's budget. After an initial investment from new sponsors, the Compass Foundation hopes to finance the magazine through revenue from publication and reader support. The Foundation is applying for charitable status so that it will be able to receive tax-deductible donations.

Since the announcement that Compass was suspending publication, many of the magazine's readers have sent letters expressing the hope that it would find a way to continue. "I'm sure there are many worthy Christian publications out there," wrote a reader in Calgary. "But the most interesting, far-ranging, and vital that I have come across is Compass, a Jesuit journal that covers an astonishingly wide variety of themes." And a British Columbia reader wrote, "I consider Compass to be one of the most intelligent magazines in Canada today -- in fact one of the most engaging and thoughtful magazines in North America."

Compass won a silver National Magazine Award in 1995 in the category of Best Editorial Package and an honourable mention in the same category in 1996. It was also on several occasions named the best Christian magazine in Canada by Canadian Church Press and the best Catholic magazine in North America by the Catholic Press Association. In addition, it won the A.C. Forrest Award for excellence in religious journalism in 1994 and an honourable mention for the same award on several other occasions.

Regular contributors to Compass have included spiritual writer Joan Chittister OSB, former federal cabinet minister Eric Kierans, philosopher Charles Taylor and cultural observer Margaret Visser. Over the years, Compass has published a wide range of writers: novelists such as Janette Turner Hospital and Robertson Davies; Protestant theologians such as John Howard Yoder and Wilfred Cantwell Smith; historians such as Michael Bliss and Ramsay Cook; rabbis such as Lawrence Kushner and Gunther Plaut; Catholic thinkers and activists such as Gregory Baum, Ruth Burrows, Mary Jo Leddy, Rosemary Haughton and Jean Vanier; and numerous Jesuit writers including Daniel Berrigan, Michael Czerny, John English, Marc Gervais, Julien Harvey and Luis Perez Aguirre.

In a May 1997 editorial statement, the members of the Foundation identified the elements in Compass that they hope to preserve in the successor magazine. They described Compass as "a journal of reflection on contemporary life rooted in the Catholic tradition." They noted its Jesuit origins and said that a "continuing Jesuit character is ensured by the presence of a significant number of Jesuits on its editorial board."

With content and a way of operating that are "based on the collective religious commitment of its editorial board," they added, Compass is "open to a diversity of voices, advancing different points of view and expressing them in different modes, experiential and analytical as well as reflective."

Although no new issues of Compass are currently being published, Compass is still available on the World Wide Web at http://gvanv.com/compass/comphome.html

Previous announcement available here.

Compass Foundation Home Page

For more information please contact Bob Chodos

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