One great life of Reilly. (editors' note).

Magazines such as U.S. CATHOLIC stand or fall on the quality of their authors--most of whom, in our case, are freelancers. Although our staff does write portions of the magazine, freelancers have contributed the lion's share of our articles for decades. Robert T. Reilly, author of "Love is Patient" (pages 22-26), has in fact written since before our first issue. If you could lay your hands on the August 1960 issue of U.S. CATHOLIC--when it was still called The Voice of St. Jude--you'd find a photo of Mr. Reilly, his wife, Jean, and eight of their 10 children. The author's note would tell you that Reilly, while serving as PR director at Creighton University in Omaha, also wrote novels, biographies, poetry, and short stories, not to mention scripting TV shows, starring in local plays, and helping raise those 10 kids. (In his spare time he ran for Congress.)

On the shoulders of writers such as Bob Reilly has rested the reputation of U.S. CATHOLIC for 40 years. During those years, he's written on marriage, divorce, gays in the church, rural Catholics, prayer, vocations, converts, nuns, interfaith marriages, grief, Confession, silence, morality, Catholic colleges, homilies, and what parents can do when their kids reject them. In the 1980s we asked him to write about near-death experiences, without knowing that in fact he had had one of his own. While a POW in Germany during World War II, Reilly and one other man survived a bombing raid on their camp. The other 77 men in their building perished.

In letters over the past few years Bob mentioned that he was caring for his wife, Jean, who had been diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease. We asked him to write about his experience for the magazine, but the article took its time arriving. Bob wrote that he had suffered a stroke, then early this year that he had chosen to put Jean in a special care facility with a homelike atmosphere and only a few patients. "This will be the best Lent I've ever made," he wrote, "because I gave up the thing I loved most in the world." He asked if we still wanted him to do the article, perhaps suspecting he might be disqualified because he no longer cared for his wife at home. Send it on, we said.

The relationship between editor and freelancer is not always a serene one. We rarely meet in person; most contact happens via mail, e-mail, and telephone. I once talked with a couple of our freelancers who joked about editors as obstacles to be gotten past--people who stand between them and the reader, who make annoying suggestions and cut out their best lines. But in the best of times, the partnership works to our mutual benefit and yours, the reader's.

Bob Reilly finally wrote what may have been the most difficult article of his life. He sent it with a note that said, "Thanks for pushing me to do this." The gratitude, however, is all ours.