January 25: Our Sunday Visitor

Welcome to the American Catholic Daily Reader podcast. Today is January 25th, and our story is Our Sunday Visitor. If you really were a Catholic priest, could you please prove it by reciting the Our Father in Latin? That request, posed by the young Father John Knoll to anti-Catholic preachers who claimed to be former priests, never failed to bring the preachers up short.

They came to northern Indiana, expecting to find easy prey for their virulent anti-Catholicism. Instead, they found their lies quickly unmasked, and their arguments against the church dismantled by a man no older than 25. By the end of the night, anti-Catholic audiences would ask Noel questions about joining the Catholic Church.

Null, who was born on January 25, 1875, and ordained a priest when he was only 23, tried to never let an argument against the Catholic faith go unanswered. When anti-Catholic preachers came his way in 1898, he rode on horseback to their revivals, and when communist agitators began targeting the church in a series of print publications, he responded to those attacks by founding Our Sunday Visitor, OSV, in 1912. In less than a decade, the circulation for the National Catholic Newsweekly topped half a million, while the communist paper that sparked its founding, The Menace, had folded.

Eventually, our Sunday visitor would reach more than one million Catholics every week. Ordained bishop of the Diocese of Fort Wayne in 1925 and named archbishop in 1953, Archbishop Null went on to help found the Catholic Press Association and the Legion of Decency, which combated explicit sexuality in the media. As well as expand Our Sunday Visitor's reach, publishing magazines and books along with parish giving envelopes, a concept he introduced to Catholics in 1916. All profits generated by the publishing empire went back into the Our Sunday Visitor Institute, which funded missionary and apostolate work in the church at home and abroad.

Noel died in 1956, at the age of 81. Father John Knoll exemplifies the power of using knowledge and reason in service of faith. Faced with misinformation and hostility, he responded with clarity, courage, and a commitment to truth. Knoll's story challenges us to speak truth boldly, even when faced with opposition, and to use our talents to strengthen our communities.

Identify a misconception or injustice you encounter. Take one step to respond with clarity, knowledge, or compassion this week. Thank you for listening to the American Catholic Daily Reader podcast. Join us tomorrow, January 26th, for another story of faith and courage in America.