Switzerland: The Jesuit magazine “Choose” will cease publication at the end of 2022
In a press release published on the journal’s website, the Jesuits of Switzerland and the members of the editorial staff “regret to inform [their subscribers]that the cultural newspaper Choisir will cease publication on December 31, 2022. The continued erosion of the number of its subscribers and that of the Jesuits established in the French-speaking cantons has forced the authorities of the Society of Jesus to put an end to its publication. »
Times and cultural habits are changing, said Fr. Pierre Emonet sj and Lucienne Bittar, director and editor respectively.
The transition in 2016 from a monthly publication to a quarterly publication, with two thematic files per edition, and the development of the site which offers unpublished articles, were not enough to relaunch subscriptions, they explained.
A special edition is announced for November 2022. It will present a retrospective and an analysis of the challenges facing the Church and society, explains Lucienne Bittar to the Swiss agency cath.ch. “It should make it possible to consider the developments of recent decades, in various fields. The jesuites.ch site will continue its development and continue to offer in-depth articles.
It is “the end of a great adventure”, write the authors of the press release, where the major work of the Jesuits of French-speaking Switzerland, Choisir, imposed itself for 63 years in the media landscape “animated by the same objectives which guided its founders in 1959: to offer readers a publication of Christian inspiration immersed in the debates of the world, tracing paths of research and promoting dialogue.
The disappearance of the magazine is “a blow”, confides the editor-in-chief. “With the suppression of other media and in particular television broadcasts with a Christian vocation, I have the impression that the momentum of creativity and dynamism that followed Vatican II is running out of steam”. It is the turning of a page in the history of the Society of Jesus in French-speaking Switzerland.
