Again, almost all the articles are unsolicited. Occasionally, when I hear a talk at a convention that I think would be good for the magazine, I will ask the speaker to send me a version suited for publication in HPR. But that is quite rare.

A large part of my job as editor is reading manuscripts and deciding which ones to accept and which one to reject. Unfortunately, I have to reject more than I accept. The reason is that I get about 30 articles a month and we publish only six or seven. There are many reasons for rejecting articles: The article is too long or too short (we are looking for material in the range of 2000 to 5000 words maximum, including endnotes); it is poorly written; it is on a topic removed from the purpose of HPR; it is too scholarly and so belongs in a magazine that is more technical; it is a term paper or part of a thesis which was prepared for a professor (such material is often good, but not suited for a magazine); it defends a position or proposes something that is not in accord with Catholic doctrine, morals or tradition. There is no room in the pages of HPR for anything that smacks of dissent or heresy or secularism

I am looking for articles on any subject that would be of interest to busy Catholic priests. Authors submitting material to HPR should remember that we are a clergy magazine. Our primary audience and readership is Catholic priests. The magazine is now 100 years old and that has been the focus since the beginning in 1900. We do have thousands of lay subscribers and readers, and that is fine, but the primary orientation of the magazine is for priests. It is important never to forget that. Concerned lay people subscribe to HPR and read it, many from cover to cover, because they want to know what priests are reading and because they know it is thoroughly Catholic, in the sense of being faithful to the Magisterium of the Church.

Those of you who are familiar with the pages of HPR know that not all our authors are priests; almost every issue has at least one or two articles by a lay person. Whether the author is a priest or not is not important; what is important is that the article offers something helpful to the busy priest. One question I have in the back of my mind as I read each article is this: Will this article offer priest-readers some information that will help them in their preaching and other pastoral work? If the answer to that question is No, then it will not be accepted, no matter how good it might be in other respects.

A few simple guidelines: Articles must be typed and double-spaced; start the article in the middle of the first page — the editor needs some space to make notes; put all notes at the end of the article, not at the bottom of the page; if you compose on a word processor then please include a diskette with the file of the article on it; where possible, use concrete examples to illustrate what you are saying. The absolute master at this was Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen and that is part of the reason for his tremendous success as a preacher and writer.

Finally, in this country there is only a handful of magazines directed explicitly to the Catholic clergy. HPR is the oldest of those and, I believe, has the largest number of subscribers and readers. The purpose of the magazine is to help Catholic priests in their apostolic work of preaching, teaching, counseling, administering the sacraments, and growing in personal holiness through prayer and total commitment to Jesus Christ Our Lord. As St. Paul says, priests are ambassadors for Christ; they are his representatives and in the sacraments they act in the person of Christ (in persona Christi). I would appreciate it very much if those who wish to write for HPR would keep these ideas in mind. 

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