In an article published over a year ago, we touched upon this subject in connection with the duty of American Catholics towards Catholic literature. Our remarks were generally approved, we believe, but they called forth some little criticism of an unfavorable character which, upon the whole, we were not sorry to see. It is an encouraging sign of development when the religious press shows vitality enough to discuss something else than the commonplaces of controversy which have formed the staple of Catholic and Protestant polemics for generations. It is high time for us to apply to our own publications a little of that free examination which we have bestowed upon others, and to let argument among Catholic writers be something more than the foolish wrangling of ambitious rivals. In the article to which we have alluded, we said that few of the Catholic papers had a circulation of more than 10,000; and some people found fault with us for that. We wish we could give them 25,000 or 50,000 apiece; but it will not mend matters to say that all Catholic papers are powerful organs of public opinion, when we know that they are nothing of the sort. Most of them are doing excellent service within their own sphere; but why affect to deny that their sphere is a narrow one and their means are small? We have tried to impress upon the Catholic public the duty of supporting the Catholic press to the utmost of their ability. We have shown that where Protestants attack us in a million printed sheets, we give a feeble answer in perhaps ten thousand. We number 8,000,000 souls, yet our newspapers with very few exceptions languish for want of readers, and our colleges are not creating a literary class among the laity. This is one side of the picture, but there is another. If the public is doing little for the papers, are the papers doing much more for the public? We dare say they are doing what they can; but how much is that? What Catholic journal have we capable of meeting Harper’s Weekly, for instance—we do not mean in argument, but in influence? As we write, the current number of that periodical is laid upon our table. It contains a long article on “Romish Cruelty,” telling how in a Pennsylvania town “the Roman Catholics formed a plot to murder” a school-teacher. “The priest aided in encouraging the dangerous spirit of the people, and the assassins seem to have been urged on to their dreadful deed by the open countenance of the Romish Church.” The writer comes to the conclusion that “no one’s life is any longer safe who ventures to doubt the divinity of Mary or the supreme prerogatives of the Pope.” This is only a sample of many similar slanders which the unprincipled publishing firm of the Harpers are spreading all over the country. What are we doing to counteract them? Surely, we cannot afford to let them go unanswered, and we leave it to any Catholic to say whether there is a single publication of our creed in the United States which we can depend upon for a prompt and thorough reply to such falsehoods, in such form and manner as to convince not merely the Catholic, but the Protestant public. We must confront our assailants on their own ground. If they tell us that a priest and his parishioners in an obscure Pennsylvania town have conspired to murder Protestant school-teachers, we must be able to show, and to show at once, that the incidents never occurred, or that the interpretation placed upon them is unwarranted. We ought to have our sources of information as well as our enemies. We need our news-gatherers and investigators, who shall answer falsehood not with indignant invective, but with fact. This is not the work for a monthly magazine, but for a much prompter sort of publication. Long before the true story of such an affair could be told in The Catholic World, it would have been succeeded by a new slander. The poison would have run through the public veins, and it would be too late for the antidote to overtake it. Newspapers ought to do this work, and we suppose they would do it if they had the money; but investigations are expensive, and when the force of a Catholic organ consists of nobody but the editor, who writes all the fourth page, and the assistant, who makes up the rest of the forms with a paste-pot and a pair of shears, there is of course no reporter who can be sent away on excursions. The New York Times, which has long rivalled Harper’s Weekly in bigotry and anti-Catholic malice, allows a correspondent to take up this story, repeat it as a well-ascertained truth, and enforce the lesson that “a faithful son of the Romish Church cannot be a law-abiding citizen of this free Republic.” We dare say scores of Union newspapers will follow the example of the Times; and, meanwhile, if a few weekly Catholic papers succeed in getting at the truth of the incident, we may depend upon it their refutation of the falsehood will never reach Protestant ears. It is time for us to understand that calumny cannot be conquered by such means as we now employ, and that practically our enemies are having everything their own way.
Catholic questions of the most momentous character are now agitating the whole continent of Europe. Germany is shaken by the problems of education; Italy, by the contest between the rights of the Vicar of Christ and the usurpations of the godless Sardinian monarchy. The Döllinger party are encouraged by some of the secular powers to attempt a new heresy. France and Spain are both vexed by infidel and persecuting political factions. England even and Ireland have their Catholic difficulties arising out of the relations between the state and the schools. All the intelligence which reaches us on these important topics comes from the worst sources. The cable reporters who collect European news for transmission through the telegraph are usually not well informed on Catholic subjects, and not always honest. When they touch upon religious matters, they are habitually, even though not intentionally, untruthful. The impression conveyed by their meagre and blundering dispatches is almost always the direct reverse of the right one, and the press telegrams from Rome especially are marvels of ingenious and bold falsification. All the European dispatches printed in American newspapers are sent from London. They are dated at various cities on the Continent, but they all come from one central office in the English metropolis, and they are obtained there from a Jewish news-agency which has relations with the Continental press. Thus, they really give merely the statements of a few French, Italian, Spanish, and German journalists, and these are almost invariably journalists of the anti-Catholic party. In Italy, the mendacity of the anti-Papal press is almost beyond belief; and probably there is no class of persons anywhere so utterly unscrupulous, so wedded to lying, as the radicals of Italy when they speak of the Pope or the Papal Government. The German Liberal and Protestant press is only a little better. It has magnified and misrepresented the Döllinger movement, and distorted, in the grossest manner, the story of the school question in Prussia. Elsewhere, on the Continent, the difficulty is the same. A vigorous press is constantly battling against us, and it is from this press and this press alone that we get our European news. The mail correspondence of American secular newspapers is colored by the same influences which deform the telegraphic summaries. The lie which is insinuated to-day by a cable dispatch will be rubbed in by a letter in due course of the post. Here, again, our enemies have things all their own way. The best of our weekly papers, indeed, do something to correct the falsehoods of the daily journals, but the great difficulty still remains; they cannot reach the general public. Fisher Ames said that “a lie will travel from Maine to Georgia while the truth is putting on its boots.” But, if the lie has the advantage of a daily newspaper and a telegraph under the Atlantic Ocean, whilst the truth must trust to steamships, and post-offices, and a small weekly paper or a monthly magazine, what hope is there that the lie can ever be overtaken?
Secular literature is almost entirely in Protestant hands, and in a thousand unsuspected ways it is infusing into our intellectual system the poison of indifferentism, or infidelity, or miscalled liberalism, and teaching our young people to divide themselves between two incompatible lives—an active Protestant life, which absorbs all their busy and productive hours, and a sluggish Catholic life, which is confined to Sunday mornings and a few great festivals. What is the Catholic press doing to correct these literary influences? What is it doing to cultivate the art of criticism? If we want to know the characters or the literary merits of a new book, shall we turn to the journals of our own faith, or to the Tribune and the World? Our periodicals (with a few honorable exceptions) rarely give any notice at all to the productions of secular book-houses, while magazines and books bearing the imprint of a Catholic publisher are generally reviewed in some such style as the following:
“This sterling periodical has now reached its eleven thousandth number, and has improved with every issue since it was started. The present number alone is worth a year’s subscription. No Catholic family can afford to be without it. Price 25 cents.
“The enterprising publishers, Messrs. Jones & Robinson, have just got out in the elegant style for which they are celebrated a new edition of Barney O’Toole: a Tale of ’98. This is a work of great learning, and no Catholic library is complete without it. We are deeply indebted to the liberal publishers for sending us a copy. It is elegantly gotten up. For sale, in this city, by Michael Smith. Price 50 cents.”
This sort of journalism is worse than a waste of ink and paper. It is a direct injury to the cause it is intended to serve. There is no reason why a book that is badly printed and shabbily bound should be described as “elegantly gotten up”; nor why every number of a magazine should be called the best ever printed; nor why everything published at a Catholic house should be declared essential to the spiritual welfare of every Catholic family. But there is a reason why Catholic journalists should tell the plain truth, and sometimes the whole truth, if they expect to obtain influence in an intelligent community.
The time has come when a vigorous, enterprising, well-conducted press is essential to every community in the United States. No man in this country can do without his newspaper. He must keep abreast of the age; he must know what happens in politics, finance, trade, literature, art, and society, and he must know it promptly; otherwise the current of the world flows past him, and he is left idly floating in the pools by the shore. We cannot afford to ignore this imperative want; it is a necessity created by conditions of society far beyond our control; and it is by no means a necessity which we ought to regret. Our task should be not to oppose this demand for newspapers, but to satisfy it more thoroughly than it has ever been satisfied yet. We are numerous and rich enough to create a Catholic periodical literature which shall be the glory of America, and, next to the church and school, the noblest defence of Catholic principles. We are numerous and rich enough to make newspapers which shall meet every demand of the most active and intelligent and best educated citizen; which shall give our own people the most palatable as well as the most nourishing intellectual food, and enforce from our adversaries a respect which is not now paid us. In the providence of God, we believe such a press will some day be built up in America, and then we shall wonder how we lived and kept our faith so long without it.