When he introduced movable type in the 15th century, German Printer Johann Gutenberg knew what the public wanted: a Bible. In the U.S., Protestant and Roman Catholic publishers alike found it profitable to follow Gutenberg's lead. Bibles and hymnals, missals and prayer books, inspirational and theological works always had a certain dependable bread-and-butter market. Religious periodicals were a bonanza —with a combined circulation, in the mid-'60s, estimated at nearly 60 million. But the crisis in Christian faith during the late 1960s and divisions over doctrinal and social issues within Protestantism and Catholicism have changed the situation. Religious publishing is in serious trouble.
Catholic publications have suffered most in recent months. Sheed and Ward, once among the most flourishing of Catholic book publishers, has retrenched to a skeleton staff and a spare list of new books. Commonweal, the most intellectual of U.S. Catholic weeklies, has appealed to its readers for funds to survive. Herder Correspondence, a scholarly international Roman Catholic monthly, died in June. Ave Maria, a brightly edited but faltering magazine, tried to keep 105 years of publication history alive by changing its name, content and format; but the replacement, A.D. 1970, expired two weeks ago after only 18 issues. And despite an enviable record of reportorial scoops, the aggressively liberal National Catholic Reporter has lost 22% of its circulation over the past 18 months.
The latest symptom of crisis occurs this week when the National Register, a 43-year-old weekly Catholic newspaper supported widely by U.S. bishops, will be taken over by Twin Circle Publishing Co., a right-wing Catholic enterprise supported by Schick Millionaire Patrick J. Frawley.
Council Victim. The $500,000 purchase agreement, reportedly financed by Frawley, solved the immediate fiscal problems facing the Register publishers, Denver's Catholic Press Society. The paper's national edition was down from 190,000 at the beginning of 1969 to 112,000 recently; the number of its diocesan editions dropped from a high of 36 to 25.
Like many other victims in the Catholic publishing world, the Register was also a remote casualty of the Second Vatican Council. During the exciting conciliar years 1962-65, Catholic publishing enjoyed a remarkable boom that inspired what Cross Currents Editor Joseph Cunneen calls "unreal expectations." Moreover, the widespread liturgical experimentation encouraged by Vatican II seriously undermined a profitable "black book" trade in breviaries, missals and hymnals. Many Catholic bookstores, dependent on these items and such increasingly unpopular devotional accessories as rosaries and statues, simply went out of business, thus depriving publishers of one of their major outlets. Rapid developments in theology compounded the problem, often outdating books before they appeared. Eventually, the tide of reform following the Council produced a reaction among traditional Catholics—a shock manifested by their rejection of publications that brought them the discomfiting news.