Looking back, ahead

History is like onions: it can repeat on you. That’s a lesson I picked up reading the June 1, 1895, issue of this newspaper, then called just The New World.

The copy was sent by Geoff Pautsch, director of music and liturgy at St. Mary of Perpetual Help on Chicago’s West Side. It was found in the church’s cornerstone, placed there 100 years ago. The pages are now framed on a wall of the church.

The parish will celebrate the 100th anniversary of the dedication of its church Oct. 25. Also being recognized that weekend is the 75th anniversary of the parish’s historic Austin organ. (A photo of the organ and the celebration will appear in a future issue.)

But back to that remarkable piece of history—ours as Catholics, as Americans and as Chicagoans. Be forewarned: the past may sound eerily like current events.

The 16-page paper then, as now, was the church’s “official” publication. Back in 1895, just three years after the newspaper’s founding, it was distributed statewide by the bishops of each diocese: Chicago, Peoria, Alton and Belleville.

Some of the old news has a remarkably current sense to it. On Page 1, the editor, a layman named William Dillon (there are no bylines anywhere), challenged the U.S. Supreme Court over a decision deemed unjust.

There also was a scathing Page 1 challenge to a play (“fiction!”) with a clear anti-Catholic message. Interestingly, the editors welcomed the appearance in Chicago of a secular newspaper—a Democratic one, at that—to oppose the city’s Republican journals on several topics, mostly having to do with national monetary issues (the historical battle between gold, silver and paper money still raging). The church, apparently, then favored “hard money.”

Newspapers being newspapers, there was a structure not unlike the one you’re reading today: There were social notes, a calendar of sorts, even education briefs (including this: “If it came to a choice between church and school, ... I would say leave us the school. It is in school you make Catholics. In church you keep them so.”).

Noticeably lacking was any acknowledgment of spirituality or doctrine. It offered, in many ways, a more “secular” perspective than a faith-centered one.

Other comments by the editor (and presumably the bishops) cynically pointed out that a former Chicago mayor, a Democrat, was getting abuse heaped upon him by Republicans and others over his administration. The newspaper carefully explained that, though the man was a Catholic, it did not always agree with him. “Yet no one who has any practical knowledge of the ways of City Hall really believes that (the new mayor) will be able to put an end to the stuffing of payrolls in the sense that no man shall draw a day’s wages from the city unless he has done a full and honest day’s work.”

See what I mean about onions—and about the present repeating the past?

The New World then even had its version of our new and occasional feature called MediaCheck: In 1895 the editors saw fit to chide The Chicago Tribune for its response to The New World’s previous columns on monetary policy. And elsewhere in the publication’s pages was a report critical of anti-religion “calumnies” in popular magazines.

Finally, the editors of 1895 understood what we still know today: the advertisers of the newspaper are a strong part of its support. They encouraged readers to patronize them. That’s still good advice. Except, perhaps, for the ad offering “Father Koenig’s Nerve Tonic.”

It’s also worth noting that even then The New World understood the church’s role to evangelize. Then, like now, evangelization meant getting your story to the world.

Thanks, Geoff Pautsch, for a wonderful glimpse into the past.

Tom Sheridan
Editor and General Manager

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