“I pray that you will keep up the apostolate of the pen,” a priest wrote in a letter to then-Father John Francis Noll. “There is, we both know, a grave need for such work.”
The priest wrote the letter in response to a query that Father Noll had sent to every pastor in the country. Father Noll was offering a pamphlet he had written and was inquiring if these pastors would be interested. He laboriously copied, with the help of assistants, every name and address from The Catholic Directory and mailed them across the country.
The response was overwhelming. He printed thousands of copies from his Huntington press, realizing that pastors and the Church in the United States were in dire need of his work, a need that he was able to fulfill. They wanted something more.
No medium was beyond him. He went from pamphlets to newspapers to books to radio, adapting, transforming, launching, naming and creating. He delivered countless homilies and speeches. He never rested, his pen ready at every turn.
When Archbishop Noll celebrated his silver episcopal jubilee, the celebration was led by Chicago’s Cardinal Samuel Stritch. On that occasion the cardinal preached, “Many with the information which he has had at hand would have been tempted to pen words of hate and words of bitter bitterness.” He continued, “You will find none of this in the activities of Bishop Noll.”
Continuing to champion the Church
I first read a biography of Archbishop Noll as a seminarian. Having grown up in Fort Wayne, I was taken with the archbishop as one of our local heroes. (I was catechized through OSV religion textbooks, but didn’t know what that meant at the time.) I particularly admired Noll’s passion for evangelization, his creativity and his love for the Catholic Church. Even then, I knew that I wanted to be a priest like him.
I did not plan on entering Catholic media. The first thing I ever published was an article for our diocesan newspaper. I was told I had a gift for writing, and I’ve since worked to hone the craft. That was a painful thing to learn to draft and edit, receive corrections gracefully and to constantly be ready to change. (Archbishop Noll handled it all quite nobly.)
And after I joined the Order of Preachers, I never expected to find myself assigned to Our Sunday Visitor. For me it was a homecoming, a service to a place and organization I’d long loved.
It is bittersweet to write this column for the final issue of Our Sunday Visitor. Our fine publication has won countless honors, forming minds and touching hearts for decades.
But we are not setting down our pens. We are adapting our publication precisely because we believe it is what our founder would do. Archbishop Noll would see the needs of Catholics today and fearlessly forge ahead, ready to set out and try something new.
We want to continue to support you, our readers, in ways that dynamically nurture your faith. We have prepared a print magazine that I hope you’ll love. (And I hope you’ll invite others to love it, too!)
Our apostolate of the pen might be changing, but we won’t be setting our pens down. Archbishop Noll’s project of evangelization endures because he was a man of constant innovation and transformation. Together, inspired by the vision of Archbishop Noll, in this next phase of Our Sunday Visitor we will continue our work to champion the Catholic Church!
