Clerical Journalism

Extract

The Catholic bishops of Slovakia and Carpatho-Russia not long ago issued a peremptory order strictly forbidding priests in their dioceses to edit newspapers, even Catholic newspapers, or to become permanent writers for the Press. We have not been able to discover the reasons that have dictated this episcopal discouragement of clerical journalism; but it may, without rashness, be guessed that the prohibition had something to do with the complicated political situation in Slovakia. The bishops are doubtless only giving expression to the wise desire to withhold their clergy from entering an unseemly welter of political passion and racial fury : there is no evidence to show that they have banned clerical journalism on the general principle that priests, by reason of their priestly office, are unsuitable persons to hold pens in their hands or to sit in editorial chairs. Indeed, the fact that St. Francis of Sales has been officially declared the Patron of Journalists would seem to make so sweeping a proscription impossible.

Yet a writer in The Fortnightly Review (St. Louis, Missouri, U.S.A.) quotes this action of the Slovakian bishops as an argument against all priest-editors and clerical journalism in general. ‘A similar prohibition might be salutary and profitable,’ he says, ‘if extended to other countries.’ A priest who becomes an editor, he goes on to say, ‘deserts his calling, neglects his training, and gives himself to a service that a layman can do as well.’