Apostolate of the Press

New Zealand Tablet, 15 October 1908, Page 10

Apostolate of the Press

The biographer of Father Hecker writes of the distinguished Paulist missionary: 'He believed in types, as he believed in pulpits. He believed that the printing office was necessary to the convent. To him the apostolate of the press meant the largest amount of truth, to the greatest number of people. By its means a small band of powerful men could react an entire nation and elevate its religious life.'

Had France learned this lesson in time, things might have been far otherwise at present in that lodge-ridden land. But the journalistic strength of Catholic France was frittered away in a multitude of Semaines Religieuses — pitiful weekly weaklings .wh,ich were published in almost every diocese, which "were scarcely read except by a few devout women, which had neither strength nor -courage nor influence nor ability, but which, never--.theless, stoocHn the way of really capable and high-class Catholic journalism conducted by such men as the two Veuillots. The . apostolate .of the press is -a serious and yearly more pressing business. A great German bishop— Dr. Ketteler— said a few years ago that if St. Paul were on earth to-day, he would be a newspaper editor and would use the lever of the world's mightiest engine, the press, in the service of God. The day is' not, we hope, far distant when there will arise a new Order in the Church— to be called, say, the Pauline Order of the Good Press — with, in addition to the 'ordinary, vows, those of. truth in charity in all things, and with tertiaries to aid in various ways in their good work for the greater glory of God and the highest good of their fellow-men.