Religion: Institutional

When advertising was very young, nearly every advertisement envisaged a direct, immediate sale. The prospect was urged to remove his pimples at once. Now it is otherwise. Advertising is primarily engaged in influencing public opinion, slowly, subtly. And in this way advertising has become a tool of all human design.

There is, in Pittsburgh, a devout Catholic layman of prosperous business. He desires to do something for and about his religion. He would create sympathetic understanding for a religion which he supposes is grossly misunderstood. He would, so far as in him lieth, win souls.

He purchased last week in The New York Times a space about four inches wide, two and a half inches deep—technically 70 agate lines valued at about $1.20 per line, or a total of $84.00. He bought it day after day—in accordance with the advertising principle of cumulative effect.” And this is what he said one day:

A CATHOLIC REMOVES HIS HAT

When passing a Catholic Church, as a mark of respect and honor to God who really and truly dwells therein, just as he, like every good American, removes his hat in respect and honor to the flag passing by.

THE FATHER OF AMERICAN SHORTHAND, THOMAS LLOYD, WAS A CATHOLIC

These advertisements inserted daily and paid for by a native Pittsburgh Catholic business man who believes in his religion.

On successive days, he reminded the public that Columbus discovered America, that Columbus and Queen Isabella were Catholics, that his ship bore a sacred name, Santa, Mana.

Respect for the Catholic Church was also claimed because Cardinal Mezzofanti was “the world’s greatest linguist,” because Naturalist Fabre was a Catholic. And then, to overcome one of the “resistances” to Catholicism he printed this 2 x 4 essay:

SCANDAL

Christ never guaranteed that His Church would be free of scandals: but He did guarantee that it would not teach error. There were grave scandals in the Church in the time of Christ. Judas was a thief, as well as a traitor and a suicide. Peter was a perjurer, James and John Quarreled, and so did Peter and Paul. All Catholics readily admit the Catholic Church needed housecleaning in the 16th century, but theReformers set about, not to clean the house, but to dynamite it. If a child, has a dirty face you do not kill it: you wash its face. But in spite of the unholy lives of many Catholics, in the 16th and all other centuries, the Catholic Church never has taught, does not now, and never will, teach error. Consult your Bible (Matt. 28, 20). And lo, I am with you alway, even unto the end of the world.

It is a commonplace of advertising that to be successful one must be sincere. The Pittsburgher’s institutional advertising argues sincerity at least.