Phil Lawler on four decades of independent Catholic journalism

Jan 27, 2026

Veteran Catholic journalist Phil Lawler recently retired as the
editor of Catholic World News at CatholicCulture.org. Phil was the
first lay editor of Boston’s archdiocesan newspaper, The Pilot, but
negative experiences trying to do real journalism while financially
dependent on the Church hierarchy prompted him to move on to a
career in independent Catholic journalism, with stints as editor of
Crisis, Catholic World Report, and finally founding Catholic World
News, which in 1995 was the first English-language Catholic news
service operating on the internet. In the early 2000s, CWN merged
with Catholic Culture.

Phil joins the podcast to look back on his journalistic career,
the problems with Church-run news agencies, the value of
financially independent Catholic journalism, the current state of
Catholic media, and his reporting on the clerical abuse crisis for
years before most people found out about it in 2002.

Links

Phil Lawler’s Substack https://pflawler.substack.com/ 

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