"Catholic Journalism With Its Sleeves Rolled Up": Patrick F. Scanlan and the Brooklyn Tablet, 1917-1968

“Catholic Journalism With Its Sleeves Rolled Up”: Patrick F. Scanlan and the Brooklyn Tablet, 1917-1968 Patrick McNamara “A World in Itself” F or some, the label “Brooklyn Irish Catholic” is a point of pride; for others, it evokes images of aggressive, confrontational characters, militant in their ethnic and religious loyalties, and intolerant of divergent views. In a 1947 survey of American life, John Gunther described Brooklyn as “a world in itself,” with “a fierce local nationalism, the Dodgers, the Bush Terminal, Coney Island, and the Tablet, one of the most reactionary Catholic papers in the country.” In his 1950 study of Brooklyn’s ethnic groups, Ralph Foster Weld discussed Brooklynites “whose consciousness of their Irishness is acute and ever-present.” Dorothy Day complained about the Brooklyn Irish “who went around with a chip on their shoulder being ‘militant Catholics.’” Father William J. Smith, S.J., who directed a Brooklyn labor school from 1938 to 1952, described the Brooklyn Irish as “belligerent” and “willing to fight at the drop of a hat,” but not so easy to organize.1 Perhaps no individual epitomized the pugnacious Brooklyn Irish Catholic more than Patrick F. (“Pat”) Scanlan, who served as editor of the Tablet, the official organ of the Brooklyn Diocese, from September 1917 to June 1968. James T. Fisher writes that under Scanlan’s leadership, the Tablet’s influence extended far beyond Brooklyn’s boundaries, becoming America’s “most influential diocesan paper.” Few diocesan organs, the late James Hennesey, S.J., notes, “had the spice of the Brooklyn Tablet,” a factor he attributes to Scanlan’s aggressive editorial style. Esther Yolles Feldblum writes that Scanlan was practically a “one-man Anti-Defamation League.” 87 1. John Gunther, Inside U.S.A. (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1947), 554; Ralph Foster Weld, Brooklyn is America (New York: Columbia University Press, 1950), 115; James Terence Fisher, The Catholic Counterculture in America, 1933-1962 (Chapel Hill, N.C.: University of North Carolina Press, 1989), 68-69; William J. Smith, S.J., to Rev. Francis J. McQuade, S.J., November 20, 1947, in “Crown Heights Labor School” File, Box entitled “Xavier Labor School, 1912-1960,” Archives of the New York Province of the Society of Jesus, New York, N.Y. Scanlan’s successor, Don Zirkel, described him as “Catholic journalism with its sleeves rolled up.” In his capacity as editor, Scanlan never hid his opinions on subjects of importance to him: the resurgence of anti-Catholicism in 1920s America; the growth of federal power during the New Deal; the threat of domestic and international Communism during the early Cold War; the breakdown of traditional Catholic life in the postconciliar era.2 Scanlan’s career provides a valuable overview of an era’s beginning and end. A few weeks after he began writing for the Tablet, the American hierarchy established the National Catholic War Council (NCWC), an event Jay Dolan sees as emblematic of a new aura of collective Catholic confidence. When Scanlan retired after a half century, both consensus and confidence had broken down as Catholics split on a variety of issues: sex, Vietnam, race, and the nature of authority within the Church. The widespread closing of Catholic schools, the mass exodus from the priesthood and religious life coupled with a radical drop in vocations, the breakdown of respect for ecclesiastical authority, signaled for many the end of an era, or what Philip Gleason calls the “disintegration of unity.”3 In 1917, Scanlan’s audience was a predominantly urban, working-class population not far removed from the immigrant experience, with a solidarity manifested in closeknit communities. By 1968, however, Catholics had moved into both the mainstream and the suburbs.4 They were less likely than their parents to belong to exclusively Catholic groups, more likely to have a college degree, and less likely to send their children to Catholic schools. David O’Brien notes that postwar prosperity and upward mobility, coupled with JFK’s election and Vatican II’s call for a positive dialogue with modernity, “shattered forever the social and psychological bases of ghetto Catholicism.” At the start of his career, Scanlan represented the mainstream Catholic apologist, but by the summer of 1968 his combative brand...