For Active Presence

Today the Catholic press exists, above all, to exert an active presence and testimony. Its presence must be active, intelligent and alert in respect to the innumerable problems posited by present-day life.

--Pope John XXIII

The Roman Catholic press in the U.S. has 580 newspapers and magazines, a total weekly circulation of more than 25 million, and a lively intramural issue: Should it stick to strictly Catholic affairs, reporting on rubrics, clerical appointments and church-building, or should it expand its coverage? Last week, from Robert G. Hoyt, editor of the Catholic weekly Reporter of Kansas City-St. Joseph, Mo., writing in the Jesuit-edited weekly America, came one of the strongest arguments for the idea that the Catholic press should be more catholic.

To Editor Hoyt, the diocesan press has a responsibility for reporting on the secular news events that affect Catholics as homeowners, voters and parents. "These people," says Hoyt, "are threatened by the disintegration of social institutions. They bear some of the responsibility for racial discrimination, juvenile delinquency, cultural shallowness, political apathy, and economic partisanship . . .

"It is my impression that the contents of Catholic papers do not reflect a very profound acquaintance with these people or even much interest in them. Speaking broadly, a story isn't a story for the Catholic paper unless its 'Catholic angle' sticks out a mile . . . I wonder: if a nuclear bomb falls on Kansas City, will the Catholic angle be to describe the damage to the churches?

"While diligently reporting the launching of every new school-building drive, the making of new monsignors, the results of vocation appeals, the needs of charitable institutions, we are letting a good many other matters escape our observation. The Catholic press represents the Catholic mind at work; if it is never 'present' in the slums, at school board and city council meetings, in the union halls and the Chamber of Commerce luncheons; if it has nothing to say about music or art and discusses novels and films only when they are smutty and denounceable--to the extent that we are absent from these spheres, we misrepresent the Catholic mind."

For an example of what he was criticizing, Hoyt had to look no farther than his own paper. A couple of years ago, the Reporter went all out in covering a Kansas City symposium at which Missouri's Democratic Senator Stuart Symington, Atomic Physicist Edward Teller, General James H. Doolittle and Convair Vice President Thomas G. Lanphier Jr. discussed nuclear weapons. "No doubt," writes Hoyt, "this full coverage was justified by the importance of the issues involved; it struck me later, however, that we had not made our decision because of the intrinsic significance of the event but because of an extraneous factor: the symposium was sponsored by the local Jesuit college and took place on its campus."

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.