By Adam Bernstein
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, October 27, 2003; Page B05

James O'Gara, 85, the former top editor of Commonweal, the lay journal for Catholics, and a force in maintaining its independent editorial voice, died Oct. 22 at Charlestown Retirement Community in Catonsville, Md., after a heart attack.

Mr. O'Gara, active in the Catholic Worker movement in his native Chicago, spent 32 years at the New York-based Commonweal before retiring in 1984. For most of his tenure, he was the magazine's chief editor.

Hoping to bring his lay vision to the church, he played a significant role in shaping discussion about the role of modern Catholicism.

Under his editorial direction, Commonweal was a showcase for Catholic intellectuals and activists, including Dorothy Day, Thomas Merton, Eugene McCarthy, Daniel Berrigan, Graham Greene and Wilfred Sheed.

With its largely academic and church readership, Commonweal never had a massive audience -- it peaked at about 40,000 during the Second Vatican Council meetings in the mid-1960s. The magazine was known for its outspoken editorials on politics and society, and Mr. O'Gara, because of his sheer longevity and steady leadership, was a key player in debate over liturgical reform and ecumenical affairs.

He joined the magazine when Sen. Joseph R. McCarthy (R-Wis.) was using abusive tactics to find alleged Communist sympathizers in government and Hollywood.

Mr. O'Gara, though anti-Communist, was highly critical of Catholic support for the senator, and his outspokenness led to conflicts with one of Commonweal's main owners, the conservative Philip Burnham. Mr. O'Gara said he received hints that continued criticism would be most unwelcome.

After discussion among the younger editors, Mr. O'Gara went to a stockholders meeting to protest further interference with editorial policy. Otherwise, he said, all the editors were prepared to resign.

He helped persuade another owner, Edward Skillin, to buy out the other stockholders and protect the editorial integrity of the magazine. That became increasingly important to the staff not only during the Second Vatican Council, but also during the Vietnam War, when the magazine decided early on to deem it an "unjust war."

Mr. O'Gara and his successor, Peter Steinfels, now a religion columnist at the New York Times, helped make Commonweal a nonprofit corporation in the early 1980s. That helped the journal, which rarely made a profit, accept financial contributions to keep it solvent.

Yesterday, Steinfels remembered Mr. O'Gara as "committed to Catholic intellectual enterprise." He also said that his former boss, though a solid six-footer, took pride in the fact that he was not terribly athletic. He liked to joke that his major physical activity was gardening.

Mr. O'Gara grew up in a working-class Irish family. His father was a streetcar driver. He became interested in the Catholic Worker movement in high school and with his friend John Cogley, a leading advocate for church reform, held editing duties at the movement's newspaper in Chicago.

Diverging from many Catholic Workers about pacifism during World War II, he served in the Army in the South Pacific. Afterward, he received bachelor's and master's degrees in sociology from Loyola University in Chicago.

He said he began reading Commonweal in his twenties, decades before the Second Vatican Council brought into the mainstream many of the ideas discussed in the journal's pages.

In a reminiscence, Mr. O'Gara wrote about an insider joke among magazine staff members in the 1950s: "One day, a seminarian going to confession told his confessor that he had read the Commonweal. The confessor said, 'It isn't necessarily a sin to read the Commonweal.' To which the young man replied, 'But Father, I took pleasure in it.' "

After retiring, he was a columnist for a Catholic newspaper near his longtime home in Rockville Center, Long Island. He moved to Catonsville in 1995.

His wife of 53 years, Joan Smith O'Gara, died in 2000.

Survivors include two daughters, Monica O'Gara of Woodbine and Margaret O'Gara of Toronto; a brother; and two grandchildren.