Before proceeding to point out some of what seem to us to be the grave defects of the secular press, we freely and thankfully admit that its tone as regards the Catholic Church has greatly improved within the last few years. Those who remember the scoffs and sneers, the outrageous calumnies and downright falsehoods, which were usually associated with everything Catholic in so many New York journals a quarter of a century ago, now look with more than complacency on the comparative fairness which at present characterizes their reports, correspondence, and editorials. The manner in which the life and death of the late Pope, the venerable Pius IX., was treated and commented upon is a notable example of this growing spirit of liberality and good sense alike gratifying to their Catholic readers and honorable to themselves. Now and then, of course, we found expressions and sentiments opposed to our sense of historical truth and moral rectitude; but as a whole the non-Catholic press have expressed very just and impartial views of the multifarious labors and shining virtues which distinguished the career of the wonderful man who was lately called to his reward. The same may be said of their allusions to his successor, Leo XIII. Abandoning the senseless and mischievous course of their European contemporaries previous to the meeting of the conclave, they gave us a truthful and succinct account of the meeting of that august body, the result of its solemn deliberations, and excellent sketches of the life and services of the illustrious prelate selected to bear the burden laid down by Pius IX. For all this, considering how Catholic questions were formerly treated, we ought to be, and are, thankful. Again, looking nearer home, the services and ceremonies of the church are described with much more regard to their sanctity and less to the gratification of idle curiosity and insensate popular prejudice than formerly. Some of the press accounts of the nature and reason of fasts and feasts, abstinence, prayer, and good works, which are especially enjoined at particular periods, have been so precise and discriminating that the conviction is forced upon us of their having been written, or at least dictated, by persons fully in accord with Catholic teachings.
Yet while we cannot but admit this salutary change and admire the variety, system, and attention to details exhibited in the mechanical arrangement of news, and the extraordinary industry displayed in the general manufacture of our modern newspapers, it must be confessed with regret that in elevation of tone and honesty of purpose there has been little or no improvement on the slower and less attractive productions of our ancestors. We may take as an example the metropolitan press of New York, which in point of ability, influence, and circulation far surpasses that of any other city on the continent. Let any impartial person, after the careful perusal of any one of our five or six prominent daily newspapers which are supposed to control and lead public opinion, ask himself what there is in its pages to command the attention of the moralist, or to move the sceptical or thoughtless to a sense of his duty to God and his neighbor: what stern rebuke has been administered to the growing spirit of peculation and heathenism which is constantly gnawing at the vitals of society. How seldom do we find in the labored essays, the disjointed platitudes, the pretentious diatribes, the ornate editorials, or the epigrams which distinguish our prominent journals a sentiment or an argument based on sound views of morality and religion! With a constituency at least professedly Christian, they bandy with words and phrases, opinions and speculations, essentially anti-Christian. One sneers at the Catholic Church and everything we hold sacred; another patronizes us in a manner more insulting than complimentary; while the others, when not openly misrepresenting and maligning us, allude to our faith in a manner even more objectionable. All without exception, possibly without knowing it, are the advocates of the secret societies abroad, which are endeavoring to undermine the fabric of social order and Christian civilization, and the apologists for those home fanatics who seek to excite public prejudice against us, and oppose class to class and creed to creed for their own selfish and diabolical ends.
Of course we do not expect secular newspapers to become active exponents of the great truths of religion, nor should it even be required of them to give undue prominence to the publication of matters of a religious character. That is not their province. But appearing as they do in a Christian community, and being supposed to reflect in a great measure the feelings, views, and moral status of the people who support them, we have a right to demand that they adhere to the teachings of that moral law which ought to govern us all, and that when they treat of sacred things, and deal with questions affecting faith and religion, it shall be done with that serious reverence which persons are bound to observe in social life. Neither do we ask that they advocate the superior claims of Catholics, nor even enter upon our defence against the many unscrupulous enemies who are constantly rising up against us; but we do insist that we shall not be insulted, that our opinions be respected, and that the code of morals which all who profess to be Christians acknowledge be not constantly and persistently outraged.
The secret of this apparently unanimous anti-Catholic feeling which we lament in the New York daily press is to be found in the mental, not to say moral, inferiority of the editorial fraternity as a class. Since the death of Greeley and Raymond and the practical retirement of Bryant we have had no really able journalist among us; while, unlike Paris, Berlin, London, and other European cities, where the foremost statesmen and most profound thinkers scorn not to take up the editorial pen occasionally, we have no voluntary contributors above the level of mediocrity. A New York editor is usually a man paid to write something or anything on certain subjects, whether he be familiar with them or not. He writes not to express his own well-considered convictions, or to give the public the benefit of his study and experience of a particular topic, but simply to meet a special emergency, and to embody, more or less lamely, the half-formed notions of his employer, who is as likely as not an uncultured man himself. Hence the greater number of what are called leading articles which appear in our daily papers, instead of presenting clear views, sound reasoning, and reliable information artistically epitomized, are seldom other than a mass of hasty, crude, and shallow speculations on topics of the greatest importance. With the mass of casual readers, who are too busy to look beneath the surface, such productions pass for gospel truths, and therefore are likely to do more harm than more elaborate articles; but to the intelligent reader it soon becomes obvious either that the heads of the writers are astray or that their hearts are not in their work. The latter surmise, we are inclined to believe, is more generally correct. How can a Hebrew, for instance, write a eulogium on the glories of the Catholic Church; a Catholic, no matter how lukewarm, praise the Communists and applaud the Carbonari; or a follower of the stern precepts of Calvin glorify free love and exalt the doctrines of universalism? Yet such anomalies are frequently found in New York journalism, where every man seems to be in the wrong place. The well-known fact that the editorial staff of all our large dailies is principally made up of persons of diverse nationalities, creeds, and opinions accounts for the discordance noticeable in every one of their pages. They have no fixed principles. No matter what political party journals may support, and how emphatic they may be in their advocacy of this or that public measure, when they come to treat a great social question, or one of vital importance to the honor and reputation of the republic, one column of the same paper is usually found to contradict the other, and the principles advanced to-day are in imminent danger of being condemned to-morrow.
To this rule, however, there is an exception. It seems to be a canon of the press of this city, and we might add of the entire country, that Catholics can be abused, scoffed at, and misrepresented with impunity. Their religion is unfashionable; their social, commercial, and political influence small in comparison with their numbers; the world is not their friend, nor the world’s law, and therefore the generous and large-minded editors of our newspapers, when at a loss for something else to say, have always an arrow in their quiver for the “tyranny of Rome,” and the dangers to which their beloved country is exposed from the “machinations and encroachments of Romanism.” Vulgar nicknames and insulting epithets applied to the church and the religious orders, which have long since been banished from the vocabularies of other countries, are freely used with a coolness and a facility which show that the writers are either too ignorant to know when they are vulgar, or so barren of ideas and expressions that they are compelled to borrow those which have done service in the days of a bigoted and fanatical generation.
But turning from the editorial page to what constitutes the bulk of our journals, we find their dangerous character revealed. What mainly fills their capacious pages and constitutes their principal attraction for the generality of purchasers? Extended reports of divorce cases, criminal trials, matrimonial escapades, and the minutiæ of executions; “spicy” paragraphs and indecent anecdotes to which the ordinary and instructive news of the day is only an adjunct. The sensational style of reporting, the dressing-up of disgusting topics in romantic phraseology, though unknown a few years ago, or confined to a few disreputable weekly papers, is fast becoming a distinctive feature in New York journalism. It is a growing evil, as well as a most insidious one, and the keen competition which exists between proprietors of daily journals for popular patronage has a direct tendency to develop it still further. So much, indeed, do our papers, big and little, vie with each other in catering to the depraved taste of a certain portion of the people that it has become a matter of serious consideration with many persons whether they can safely introduce into their families the papers they are obliged to take for business purposes.
It is very safe to assert that too many of those who collect the city and suburban news for the daily press are as devoid of conscience in their method of communicating as they are often shameless in their manner of procuring their information. They seem to think that a reporter, in his official capacity, has no moral responsibility, and act consistently with the supposition. They fairly revel in scandal; consider vice only something to be elaborately depicted in their respective newspapers, and crime, no matter how heinous, a fitting theme for their nimble and facile pens. Their excuse for all this prostitution of ability which might be turned to some good account is that the public demand this highly-seasoned style of reporting, forgetting that they themselves have excited this prurient taste, and that if, repenting of their past misdeeds, they were to return to the old-fashioned method their present admirers would soon follow them.
It is certain that the degeneracy of the newspaper press in this respect is fast sapping the morals of the community, particularly the younger portion of it. Once familiarized with crime of every sort and degree through the florid descriptions of the reporters, our young men and women must necessarily become mentally debased. Their thoughts, unbidden, will stray to matters of which they have lately read, a dangerous curiosity will be excited, and from constant reflection they will begin to lose that horror of sin which is one of the safeguards of virtue, which every pure-minded youth should keep constantly before his eyes. The mind once disturbed, the imagination led astray, every defaulter and swindler, if he be a criminal on a large scale, is apt to appear to them as “a smart fellow”; the betrayer of female innocence, the faithless husband or disloyal wife, as one more sinned against than sinning; and even the murderer, whose sayings and doings are faithfully chronicled, and whose solemn exit from the world is made the occasion of a grand dramatic scene, becomes in some degree a hero and a victim of revengeful law.
Of course it is easier to point out the evils which disgrace the editorial profession, and so materially impair the usefulness of the press, than to suggest an adequate remedy for them. It is useless to appeal to the conductors of newspapers; for as long as Catholics can be abused with impunity, and the moral sense of the community be shocked by vile and obscene descriptions of crime and criminals with profit to themselves, they will heed neither advice nor remonstrance. The cure rests with the public who purchase and support such journals. As far as Catholics are concerned, the true course would be to establish a daily paper of their own, which would reflect their sentiments and opinions, and furnish them with reliable foreign and domestic news collated in unobjectionable style; but this, it seems, is impossible at present. The embarrassed financial condition of the country is opposed to the initiation of such an enterprise. Our only present resource, as long as so many of us must read daily papers, is to concentrate our patronage on that journal which presents the least objectionable features, and, by encouraging it to do better things, prove to its contemporaries by the strongest of all arguments to them—their decreased circulation—that the Catholics of this city and vicinity will no longer pay to be abused and calumniated. But there are many among us who from habit take daily papers with which we can well dispense. We advise them to discontinue their misdirected patronage and bestow it on our struggling weekly Catholic journals. They will thus administer a wholesome lesson to bigotry and immorality, and at the same time give encouragement and life to Catholic serial literature.
There are, however, other and more cogent reasons why the reading of daily papers, now so prevalent, should be discouraged, or at least confined within reasonable limits. There can be little doubt that their constant and persistent perusal is apt to create a distaste for more profound and healthful reading. Drawing our opinions mainly from the hastily composed contributions of overworked correspondents and editors, we are pretty sure to fall into the habit of reaching conclusions and entertaining views of life neither logical nor well considered. Like those who feast overmuch on sweets, we conceive a dislike for solids and as the body suffers in the one case, the mind naturally is impaired by indulgence in the light and meretricious literature of which newspapers are, if not the worst, certainly the most widespread and exemplary, types.