Veteran news chief: Is there a future for the Catholic press?

The former president and editor-in-chief of Catholic News Service penned an op-ed this week posing the question: Can Catholic publications survive in the instability of the contemporary world?

In his Sept. 15 Angelus News op-ed, Greg Erlandson used the story of Archbishop John Noll, the founder of Our Sunday Visitor, to consider the state of the Catholic press today.

Archbishop Noll, Erlandson remarked, was entrepreneurial. He helped establish the Catholic Press Association and started a business printing offering envelopes for Catholic parishes.

“But perhaps his greatest accomplishment was the establishment of Our Sunday Visitor, a national juggernaut founded in the small town of Huntington, Indiana,” Erlandson wrote in Angelus News. “The weekly paper, founded in 1912, was born in the heyday of anti-Catholicism (a byproduct of fierce opposition to immigration). Then-Father Noll was a pugnacious defender of the faith, quick to confront those — in person or in print — who misrepresented the Church and its teachings.”

However, after more than a century as one of the nation’s pre-eminent Catholic publications, the newspaper ceased print publication in 2024. Erlandson said in his op-ed that the closure was “both unsurprising and deeply saddening.”

“Like publishing companies everywhere, both secular and Catholic, the company has struggled with all the technological and cultural changes that have hollowed out so many traditional news publications,” he wrote. “The drop in Mass attendance, the decline in Catholic marriages and the shrinking of Catholic school and religious education attendance bode ill as well.”

Erlandson said that trustworthy, orthodox Catholic publications are deeply needed today. He pointed to misinformation, political partisanship, and the rise of AI as key reasons that the faithful need outlets they can trust.

In contrast to a time when Catholic Americans trusted Archbishop Noll, Erlandson said that today many sources lack any authority, theological training, and, most importantly, accountability.

However, Erlandson said, all is not lost. There are still Catholic publications working to navigate the difficult waters of the contemporary world. He pointed to Angelus News and the OSV News Service (Our Sunday Visitor’s successor) as examples of such publications.

“Archbishop Noll understood that having the tools to communicate effectively is indispensable to informing the faithful and engaging the world at large,” Erlandson wrote. “Our new world of communication has not yet been fully birthed, nor the old one yet laid to rest. In God’s good time, we will see a renewal.”