The Press: Gospel–By Other Means

The title is singularly misleading. The Catholic Digest is not really a “digest” at all: C.D. originates more than 75% of its material (mainly by planting articles in other Roman Catholic magazines). Although it is run by priests, the magazine is not a church property; it is a tax-paying private corporation that grosses $5,000,000 a year. Its contents are preponderantly secular, right down to the ads: in C.D.’s pages, an advertisement offering a $6.95 rosary containing “earth from catacombs of Rome” competes with a suggestion from the Christian Brothers of California to serve their newest wine “well chilled at cocktail hour.” One in seven of C.D.’s readers is a non-Catholic-and that one is repeatedly urged to write in and challenge church dictum on everything from bullfighting to Evangelist Billy Graham.*

In 25 years of publication—a birthday observed with a silver anniversary issue last week—the monthly Catholic Digest has become the least ecclesiastical, and the most widely accepted, publication produced under the auspices of the Roman Catholic Church. Its paid circulation of 751,178 is surpassed among Catholic magazines only by Columbia (1,070,361), published largely for the Knights of Columbus, a fraternal order for Catholic laity. C.D. is printed in five languages and ten international editions (for Britain and Ireland, Belgium, The Netherlands, India, Italy, Germany, Austria, Switzerland, France and the Philippines), and it is the only Catholic publication with a national newsstand sale (15,000 a month). C.D. is the most successful magazine of the largest periodical publisher in the U.S.: the Roman Catholic Church (535 newspapers and magazines, with a total paid circulation of 28,867,774).

“All That Is Pure.” C.D.’s approach has not always been secular. Born in 1936 in the cellar of the chancery of the Cathedral of St. Paul, Minn., the Catholic Digest of Catholic Books and Magazines, as it was then called, took its inspiration and format from the Reader’s Digest, its contents from other Catholic magazines, and its charter from St. Paul (Philippians 4): “All that rings true, all that commands reverence, and all that makes for right; all that is pure, all that is lovely, all that is gracious in the telling.”

The words of St. Paul still grace C.D.’s masthead, but the Rev. Louis A. Gales and the Rev. Paul C. Bussard, the magazine’s creators, quickly discovered that “sermons don’t sell.” The magazine opened its pages to reprints from the lay press; it has accepted advertisements—thoroughly screened—since 1955. Says Father Bussard, now C.D.’s publisher: “We decided to be Catholic with a little c as well as a capital C.”

Balanced Diet. C.D. maintains its balance by limiting undisguisedly religious material to 15% of editorial content—and many of the religious articles themselves take a general-interest approach, e.g., “Those TV Priests,” a reprint from Today magazine concluding that on television, priests apparently come in only two styles: “Father” Bing Crosby and “Father” Barry Fitzgerald.

By purveying its varied reading diet, Catholic Digest has grown into something resembling big business. Besides its two creators and its present editor, the Rev. T. Kenneth Ryan, 56, the magazine employs a fulltime staff of 100, with correspondents and offices all over the U.S. and Europe. Like the Reader’s Digest, it has its own book club (56,000 members), from time to time also publishes profitable hardcover anthologies drawn from back issues. Next year it will begin publishing a FORTUNE-sized magazine geared to the $4 billion Catholic trade market in the U.S.—schools, churches, hospitals, monasteries, convents and the like. But for all its concessions to secularism and mass appeal, C.D. has not lost track of its religious foundations. “Our primary purpose,” said Father Bussard last week, “is not to make money, but to extend the influence of the magazine. Publishing in the Catholic Church is only an extension of preaching the Gospel.”

*On Billy: the Roman Catholic Church does not disapprove, but advises Catholics not to attend his services, which are non-Catholic. On bullfighting: no church law against it, although in some places clergymen may be forbidden to attend.