The Catholic Press

Newsmen who serve the biggest specialized press in the U.S. gathered in Dallas last week, and most of them turned out in an odd journalistic garb: black suits, black hats, clerical collars. Some 350 of them came from 48 states for the annual convention of the Catholic Press Association, a vast, closely knit (yet loosely governed) publishing empire with a total magazine and newspaper circulation of almost 24 million. Today, as Bishop Robert J. Dwyer of Reno told the delegates, the Catholic press is "reaching more people and exerting a greater influence over American thought than at any time in the past."

Once scorned among Catholics themselves as "dreary diocesan drivel," the U.S. Catholic press has grown in variety, liveliness and readability. Many Catholic papers draw enough advertising to turn a steady profit; where they do not, the church pays their deficits. The press still suffers widely from what Bishop Dwyer called "a good deal of pious incompetence." But the intellectual weeklies--the liberal lay Commonweal and the Jesuit-edited America, etc.--come up to any secular standard; the layman-edited monthly Jubilee is a tasteful slick picture magazine, and an infusion of trained lay journalists has given many of the diocesan papers both professional polish and a telling effect in their communities. Last week the association honored New Jersey's weekly Advocate (circ. 96,881) for a crusade against firms operating on Sunday that cost the paper $45,000 in canceled ads, but succeeded in getting the legislature to ban Sunday used-car sales. Another prizewinner: Cleveland's Catholic Universe Bulletin (circ. 90,795), which campaigned successfully for the ouster of a Communist labor group from local industries.

What Is "Official"? As it moves ever higher by secular standards, the Catholic press faces much the same problems as the rest of the U.S. press. But one is unique: the widespread confusion over whether the Catholic press, on such problems as U.S. foreign policy, immigration or "right to work" legislation, speaks with the voice of the church and follows a "Catholic line." What confounds the confusion is the "official" label in the masthead of virtually all the 104 diocesan weeklies. Unlike secular editors who wistfully hope that readers may take their editorial views as gospel, many a thoughtful Catholic editor wishes that readers would not.

The "official" status of Catholic papers confuses not only non-Catholics but many of the faithful themselves. In the view of Catholic critics, some hotly partisan Catholic papers, e.g., Brooklyn's right-wing Tablet (circ. 119,893), seem content to let readers believe--as many do--that editorial tributes to Joe McCarthy and Senator Jenner of Indiana are church-inspired.

From the standpoint of the church, nothing in the Catholic press is official except the quoted pronouncements of its hierarchy. "A Catholic paper," editorialized America recently, "is not a little Pravda." Many of the diocesan papers tend to reflect their bishops' views, but even that does not always give such views religious weight. Though editors are supposed to apply a spiritual yardstick in making their worldly judgments, the Catholic press proves in practice to be catholic--not only diverse in its views but sometimes so bitterly at odds in its own fold that Bishop Dwyer cautioned last week: "There is no point in carrying intramural controversy beyond the limits of fairness and courtesy."

The Farthest Poles. One experienced observer of the controversy is the Catholic Press Association's outgoing president, Charles McNeill of Dayton, Ohio, general manager of a firm publishing Catholic children's magazines. "Diocesan newspapers have called Commonweal Communist," says he, "and some of the Jesuits have claimed that America has sold out to the Commies. I have been called brutal, blasphemous, unscrupulous and monstrous, for publicly defending the right of laymen to run magazines like Commonweal. Because of my job, they have even called me a perverter of the minds of Catholic children." At the farthest poles are Brooklyn's Tablet and Manhattan's radical-pacifist Catholic Worker. When she was asked where the two papers might come together, the Worker's Publisher Dorothy Day replied: "Only at the Lord's table." Items:

P: When Osservatore della Domenica* a Catholic weekly published in Vatican City, ran an article attacking U.S. Protestants, sloppy reporting made it appear in many U.S. papers as a Vatican-inspired view. But Milwaukee's Catholic Herald Citizen (circ. 126,097)--which is just as official as the unofficial Osservatore--rapped the Italian article as "stupid, untruthful, uncharitable."

P: Father Raymond T. Bosler, editor of the Indiana Catholic and Record (circ. 35,122), has backed the American Civil Liberties Union in a local fight against the American Legion, once attacked Spain's hard-bitten Cardinal Segura for his crackdown on Protestants. The paper's editorial was headed: THE CARDINAL CALLED THE COPS 400 YEARS TOO LATE. The only comment Editor Bosler got from Archbishop Paul C. Schulte: "I thought your headline was a little flippant."

P: On the issue of desegregation, Catholic newspapers in Louisiana, Texas, North Carolina and Virginia have come out strongly in favor of the Supreme Court decision opening white schools to Negroes. But though papal teachings clearly point to this anti-discrimination position, the Catholic press in most of the deeper South has kept mum.

P: An editorial in the right-wing Our Sunday Visitor, published in Huntington, Indiana (national circ. 749,995), attacked world federalism. The liberal Davenport, Iowa Catholic Messenger, whose relatively small circulation (19,800) reaches 43 states, reprinted the editorial, and alongside, almost paragraph for paragraph, it ran excerpts from Pope Pius XII's statements in direct rebuttal.

Increasingly, Catholic papers try to keep their readers straight on what is official and what is not. The Boston Pilot, founded in 1829, the country's oldest Catholic paper, carries an official slug over such material as pastoral letters and directives from the archbishop. At the head of its editorial page, the Indiana Catholic and Record runs a line frequently heard in Catholic journalism: "The opinions expressed [here] represent a Catholic point of view--not necessarily THE Catholic point of view."

Within such limits, church leaders, e.g., Cardinals Stritch of Chicago and Mclntyre of Los Angeles, have called for more controversy in the Catholic press on public issues of the day. Said Editor Bosler to his colleagues last week: "Even the most timid of Catholic editors these days is emboldened to poke his head out of his shell and to take a look around. And high time it is, too." Added the Rev. Thurston Davis, Editor of America: "Catholics, of course, think and judge alike on matters of faith and morality. But on all other matters, usually of a social, economic or cultural nature, in which the church has taken no authoritative position, she can be said not only to tolerate debate, but actually to encourage and urge it. The fact that we see eye to eye on the mysteries of the incarnation, the redemption and the divine trinity does not make it any easier--or, for that matter, even necessary--that we all nod our heads together when someone mentions the Bricker amendment, fluoridation of water, or the merger of the C.I.O. and A.F.L."

* Not to be confused with the Vatican's daily Osservatore Romano (circ. 50,000), which contains both official and unofficial views. The official Vatican organ, which runs only official texts, is the Acta Apostolicae Sedis.

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