On the Attack

U.S. Roman Catholics have long felt the need for a central agency where the church could express its official views on social, economic and moral questions. Rather than set up a new agency, they decided on the reorganization of an old one: the ten-year-old bureau of information of the National Catholic Welfare Conference in Washington.

The rejuvenated bureau, explained Bishop John F. Noll of Fort Wayne, Ind., head of the reorganization committee, will "send out publicity releases [and] answer questions by secular papers regarding Catholics."*

Last week the reorganization committee announced the appointment of a new bureau director: the Rev. Thomas J. McCarthy, 37, editor of the hard-hitting Los Angeles Catholic weekly, the Tidings, and a leader among the younger, liberal element in the church. Tall, silver-haired Father McCarthy went to Los Angeles in 1937 at his own request, just after he had been ordained in Springfield, Mass., in his home diocese. "I don't think I could have stood New England," he says now. "The forward movement is so imperceptible."

In 1942, after he had become a Ph.D. in psychology, he was made editor of the Tidings when it was a pallid sheet read as a duty by only about 10,000 of the faithful. A man whose sense of morality is easily outraged, Father McCarthy promptly declared war on the mores of the Los Angeles area, later waged personal feuds with Columnists Drew Pearson ("Vicious slander and irresponsible smearing") and Louella Parsons ("Cheap, meretricious twaddle"). He also hired some topnotch reporters and sharpened the style. ("Get rid of stodgy stories," he ordered. "The essence of journalism is sensation on the wing.") The Tidings' circulation rose to

42,495-Says Father McCarthy of his new job: "The Catholic Church is not confining itself to counterpunching any more . . . The church is on the attack . . . The church today is able to stand before the world and say: 'This is our position. This is what we hold. We don't want it watered down. This is what it is and nothing else.' . . . We've got the dynamite and we don't want that watered down, either. Explode it. It's an explosive age."

* It is uncertain, however, whether the bureau will be. able to influence public pronouncements by such high church dignitaries as Cardinal Spellman (see NATIONAL AFFAIRS).

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