January 1994 Print

The Real Free Press

The journal which you hold in your hand is part of a tradition which goes back a long way. The first Catholic papers were printed broadsides which first appeared in Germany about 1493. During the heady days of the Reformation, all sorts of them were printed, against or in support of the heresies of Luther, Calvin, and the rest. The zealous use of the written word to convert heretics was particularly employed by St. Francis de Sales, leading eventually to his being made patron of the Catholic Press.

With the religious truce which followed the Peace of Westphalia, the general press which began to develop in Catholic countries more or less had to reflect adherence to the dogmas of the Faith, although they might be permitted to criticize Church authorities if these were in conflict at the time with the secular rulers. It was not really until the 18th Century that a regular press as we know it finally came into being in any case; much of it was influenced by the doctrines of the Enlightenment.

A specifically Catholic Press designed to protect the interests of the Faith actually came into existence only during the French Revolution; when underground journals dedicated to intellectual defense of the religious and political traditions of the various lands which fell to the revolutionaries (as well as refutation of the latter’s notions) were needed. They sprung up under the aegis of such men as Antoine de Rivarol. Generally, these did not last very long, being broken up in periodic police sweeps. But no sooner were some shut down, than others replaced them. The story of the Catholic resistance to the revolution in the years 17891815 is one which has yet to be adequately told in English; whenever it will be, the journalists who risked their lives to bring the truth to the people will be seen to have played a large part.

Yet, as is well known, the victory of the Holy Alliance in 1815 was not a complete victory, but merely a truce. For the forces which had been freed in 1789 had merely themselves been forced underground. Secret police and armies could not (and, in the event, were not) enough to squelch them. The battle was intellectual as well as physical. Throughout the early l9th Century, Catholic thinkers arose in every nation where the Faith was strong, who took up mental arms against the revolution. In France, there were De Maistre, De Bonald, and Chateaubriand, to name a few; in Germany, Adam Muller, Franz von Baader, and Karl von Haller; in Spain, Aparisi, Balmes, and Donoso Cortes; in England, Kenelm Digby. While some of these, and others like them occasionally lent their hands to writing articles in papers, it was for the most part left to others to actually conduct the journalistic fray.

In every nation over the course of the l9th Century, the fight between the Faith and Liberalism went on; while the Church’s defenders usually lost or emerged with only a truce rather than victory, it was truly the Golden Age of Catholic Journalism. By the time the Catholic Encyclopedia was published in 1910, the statistics alone were impressive. In AustriaHungary, there were 140 Catholic newspapers and 152 other periodicals; in Belgium, 38 daily papers, over 600 weeklies, and over 180 theological, scientific or learned, historical, literary, and artistic reviews; Canada had 31 Catholic newspapers and journals; England boasted at least 13; in France there were 171 Catholic publications; Germany was graced with 1,045; 163 such periodicals were published in the Netherlands; seven were found in Ireland; in Italy at least 239; 56 Polish Catholic journals appeared in the parts of that nation occupied by Austria, Germany, and Russia; Portugal had 11; five were located in Scotland; Spain possessed 143; there were 64 in Switzerland; and 321 in these United States. This grand total of over 3379 worldwide was accomplished through the titanic and heroic efforts of a relatively small band of dedicated Catholic journalists, most of whom we have not heard of, but to whom every living Catholic owes an enormous debt.

Such men as Fr. Aloysius Taparelli in Italy, Johann Gorres in Germany, Louis Veuillot in France, Jacques Tardivel in Quebec, and Frederick Lucas in England bravely faced the seemingly everconquering Liberals on every matter of conflict in Church and State. Uncompromising, they and scores like them in every country where there was a Catholic press ensured that the truth received some expression in the face of a journalistic profession seemingly consecrated to truth in trifles and lies in essentials.

The United States also boasted among their Catholics journalists of the same stripe. One of these was the famed Orestes Brownson (18031876). While (particularly when collaborating with the Catholic World, published by the Paulists) occasionally producing works tainted by Americanism or Liberalismsomething he himself acknowledged later in life, he did much better while editing his own Brownson’s Review.

Less affected by Americanism was James McMaster (18201886). A convert, he purchased the New York based Freeman’s Journal in 1848, editing it until his death. He was a master of invective, heaping as much abuse on the enemies of the Church as they themselves did upon her. In American political matters, he was a supporter of States’ Rights and an opponent of abolitionism (on both matters following the opinions of Pius IX). Attacking with his usual fervor President Lincoln’s decision to attempt to force the South back into the Union as unconstitutional, he was arrested in 1861 and his paper suppressed. Released after eleven months, he was permitted to publish again, so long as he did not discuss political affairs. During his entire career, he was a stalwart supporter of Catholic education, condemning heartily the attendance of Catholic children in public schools. He very consciously took Louis Veuillot as his rolemodel.

After McMaster’s death, the Englishlanguage Catholic Press in the United States became to a great degree, more or less unconsciously Americanist--that is, holders of the heresy condemned by Leo XIII in 1897 which held that the Church in this country ought to hold--by virtue of our unique political institutions and culture--attitudes differing from the Church in the rest of the world. The foreignlanguage Catholic Press here was not so strongly affected, but their audience was naturally limited.

This period came to an end with the Great Depression of the 1930s. All over the Western World, faith in Liberal Capitalism was shaken. This led to many people in this country and abroad--not all Catholic, by a long shot to reexamine the Papal social teachings in search of an alternative to both Capitalism and Communism. Indeed, some national leaders attempted to completely reorganize their nations around these teachings, like Salazar in Portugal, Dollfuss in Austria, and Smetona in Lithuania. Large movements wishing to take their countries in this direction sprang up throughout Europe and Latin America; even Englishspeaking countries were affected. Most famous of all were the Distributists in Britain, centering around the Catholic journalists G.K. Chesterton and Hilaire Belloc; their most regular organ of opinion was the famous G.K.’s Weekly.

These developments made their mark here too. Convert from Communism Dorothy Day and French Peasant Philosopher Peter Maurin founded the Catholic Worker in 1933 to combat Communist propaganda as well as Liberal Capitalist indifference to the poor. Although in later years (due to their belief that modern weaponry precludes in the 20th Century a just war according to the Church’s teaching), they often cooperated with Pacifists and so are today often identified with the left, this was not always the case. In the first issue, Maurin wrote, “. . . it is about time to blow the lid off [the Church’s social teaching] so the Catholic Church may again become the dominant social force.”

Similarly oriented in the beginning (although widely divergent in the end) was Fr. Charles E. Coughlin’s Social Justice. Founded in early 1936 as the organ for the National Union For Social Justice, presided over by Fr. Coughlin and founded two years previously, it served to put out in print the same message that Fr. Coughlin broadcast on his weekly radio show. This, in fine, was a version of the teachings of Leo XIII and Pius XI on social matters made nonsectarian for American sensibilities. So in addition to upholding the notions of the common good, subsidiarity, and a just wage, the 16point program of the National Union included as its first point religious liberty. Just as the Catholic Worker came to be associated with the extreme left, so did Social Justice come to be lumped in with the extreme right.

Founded in the same year as the Catholic Worker, the American Review, although edited by nonCatholic Seward Collins, nevertheless provided a forum for G.K. Chesterton, Hilaire Belloc, and various other American and English Distributists. In addition to these, however, there were New Humanists, Southern Agrarians. neo-Thomists, Guild Socialists, Social Crediters, and other representatives of what Collins called “Revolutionary Conservatives.” He wrote that: “The magazine is a response to the widespread and growing feeling that the forces and principles which have produced the modern chaos are incapable of yielding any solution; that the only hope is a return to fundamentals and tested principles which have been largely pushed aside.” However, it was not to be. The New Deal provided many of the economic benefits which Catholic Social theorists and similar thinkers promised the Church’s teaching could provide. Some of this effectiveness was doubtless a result of Msgr. John Ryan, “the Right Reverend New Dealer,” who contributed much mental input to F.D.R.’s policies directly from the Papal teachings. In any case, Collins’ magazine folded in 1937; the limited success of the New Deal and the economic prosperity generated by World War II spelled the end of the sort of creative Catholic thinking called forth by the privations of the Great Depression. American Catholic journalism, with some few exceptions, returned to its role as religious cheerleader for the American Way.

After the War ended, idealistic young Catholics came back to peacetime determined to transform their nation. Among the groups and apostolates which flourished in that era was Integrity, founded by Carol Robinson and Ed Willock in 1946. Attempting to apply the teachings of St. Thomas Aquinas unsparingly to modern life, they soon uncovered (and wrote about) the intrinsic opposition between many facets of American culture and living, and our Catholic Faith. This was not a popular stance to take. After five years, Integrity went under somewhat different management, and finally ceased in 1956. Once again, conformity was dominant in the American Catholic Press.

Yet another attempt to launch an integrally Catholic journal was the founding of Triumph Magazine in 1966 by L. Brent Bozell, brotherinlaw of William F. Buckley, Jr. Bozell gathered into his staff such brilliant Catholic writers as William Marshner, Farley Clinton, Thomas Molnar, John Wisner, Frederick Wilhelmsen, and Gary Potter. For a decade, some of the best and most uncompromisingly Catholic material being written on the planet was turned out by this band. But in the end, Triumph followed its predecessors. On a personal note, I was in High School in 1976, and read a denunciation of Triumph in a Modernist publication. I wrote away to the address I dug hard to find in the library. In reply to my letter, came a regretful note from Mr. Bozell informing me that the magazine had ceased publication, but enclosing a retrospective called The Spirit of Triumph. That was what first sparked my interest in the possibility of Catholic journalism as a career, although I did many other things before pursuing it.

Considering the long train of failures with which the road of integrally and uncompromisingly Catholic journalism is littered, why does anyone bother? Why are the last twonamed Triumph writers still at it (a bit of their work gracing other pages in the magazine you are now reading)? With the major difference that much of the secular press has becomewell, unsavory, to be charitable, the answer given by Fr. Calvert Alexander, S.J. in 1935 remains valid today:

Modern journalism is. . . a legitimate means of support, and is just as clean and wholesome as any other commercial occupation. One even finds, at times, newspapers where the old tradition still prevails and the journalist is a gentleman and not just an employee. But even as an employee a Catholic can earn a modest living, which is all any journalist asks, and may achieve some measure of fame as the late Frank Ward O’Malley, Floyd Gibbons, and others have.

My point is that his fame will not be founded on the expression of that which lies closest to his heartthe essential Catholic spirit. The restrictions placed upon him by the very nature of the Capitalist Press, its preoccupation with claptrap instead of truth, will prevent this. Only a few succeed in breaking through these restrictions, and they only partially. The vast majority are simply lost, swallowed up by the huge secularizing machinery. They make a burnt offering of their talents and enthusiasm and are rewarded with a living (The Catholic Literary Revival, p. 385).

It is a fate worse than death. Despite the small pay, the lack of recognition, and indeed the ever increasing knowledge of one’s seeming inconsequence in the great struggle, there can be no doubt that, for a journalist who is Catholic, Catholic Journalism, with all its difficulties is the best way of fulfilling his vocation. Hilaire Belloc, that sterling model for us all in this odd trade, addressed this very point: “To release the truth against whatever odds. . . is a necessity for the soul. We [the journalists of the Catholic Press] have this consolation, that those who leave us and attach themselves for fear or greed to the larger party of dissemblers gradually lose thereby their chance for fame in letters. Sound writing cannot survive in an air of mechanical hypocrisy. They with their enormous modern audiences are the hacks doomed to oblivion.”

So, at any rate, one would hope. In any case, you who read these lines, know that you are one in a long chain of Catholic readers, even as we are in one of Catholic writers. Pray to St. Francis de Sales for us, and for all Catholics everywhere who take up the pen in defense of truth and Holy Mother Church. It may be that this venture will succeed where those past failed. Or not. But whatever the outcome in this world, our struggle for truth and Church (for those on both sides of the page! ) will be remembered in the next.