What does an editorial written in 1989 capture of the history of Australia? Decidedly more than editorials are likely to capture across Australian journals and news outlets today.
In November 1989, The Bulletin was still running, soon to be surpassed as the longest-running journal in Australia by the affectionately dubbed 'Annals'. Annals Australasia and its former titles, continued undisrupted from 1989-2019, produced over the decades by the Catholic order of the Missionaries of the Sacred Heart. Read the editorial, written by Fr Paul Stenhouse MSC below.
The ANNALS, 1889 - 1989
AFTER The Bulletin, Annals Australia is one of the oldest continuously published magazines, and one of the best-known religious journals in the country. Published by the Missionaries of the Sacred Heart from Randwick, NSW until 1915, and then from the Sacred Heart Monastery, Kensington, NSW, its history is, in a sense, the history of the Catholic Church from 1889 onwards, in Australia.
It reflects that history, and through its wide, especially its country-wide distribution it established and maintained contact, decade after decade, with isolated rural communities and alienated urban communities, in a way that many church personnel could not.
Someone less closely involved with the magazine would perhaps be better placed than the present writer, to assess the history of Annals, and its role in the modern Church. However, until such an independent assessment can be made, the present editor's views may not be entirely without relevance or interest.
The Early Years
The first issue of Annals appeared in 1889 - nine years after The Bulletin, hot off the presses of the Freeman's Journal, first hit the streets. Annals was merely one among dozens of literary, political and religious newspapers and journals that mushroomed in the Australia of the 70s and 80s last century.
Almost everyone who had something to say and could write, was either editing publishing or writing for some new paper.
Australia on the eve of nationhood was an exciting place to be, and social political and religious issues were more on people's lips and pens than today.
Journalism then (if I may quote an ex-editor of a popular mass circulation journal) wasn't, as it appears to be now, at the service of an industry 'where clever marketing and quick returns... totally outweigh truth, integrity or quality'.
Rather, in the 1880s truth and integrity were catchcries, fiercely, if at times inadvisedly, pursued; not a lot of thought was given to libel laws, so-called sacred cows or others' feelings.
Reader of The Bulletin, with its well-known opposition to Asian migration, organised religion, female emancipation, and the monarchy (to mention but a few of the favourite targets of The Bully's editorial writers, cartoonists and versifiers) would have been bemused to say the least by the first issues of The Annals of Our Lady of the Sacred Heart as it was then known.
None more bemused, perhaps, then the present Annals editor's own great-grandfather, John Farrell, poet, patriot and social reformer, whose journalistic career was divided between various country newspapers he owned or edited, The Bulletin to which he contributed verse from its earliest years, and the Daily Telegraph (or the Daily Twaddlegraph as it was irreverently referred to by The Bulletin) of which he was leader writer and at one time Editor. Farrell like many of his literary contemporaries, had little patience for clerical journals, and would not have approved of yet another religious voice being heard around Sydney.
Annals was modelled, in its content and design, on its old-world prototype, Les Annales de Notre Dame du Sacré Coeur. This latter was published from Issoudun, once a Roman camp but in the l880s a sleepy little provincial town-south of Bourges in central France.
The original Annales had been the brain child of Victor Joüet, MSC, a Corsican priest who could never have dreamed how successful his magazine (first established in 1866) could have become, with a circulation today of well over 150,000 copies sold per month in France.
Editions had already (by 1889) appeared in Flemish, German, Spanish, Hungarian and American English, so the Australian edition wasn't unprecedented in the relatively short history of the Missionaries of the Sacred Heart.
An octavo sized monthly of 24 pages, costing 2/- annually or 2d an issue, Annals was printed by O'Hara and Johnson, of 29 Jamieson Street Sydney. It had an elaborate engraving of Our Lady of the Sacred Heart on the front cover, and with its exclusively Catholic news, and hefty dose of mainly French piety - even down to citations from French Bishops - and its interest in the mission to the natives of Papua New Guinea Annals must have seemed anachronistic to the liberal-minded Sydney Bohemians!
One of its most popular features was a regular serial - usually on a devout and edifying theme - that ran for years.
In time, the Little Blue Book as it was to become known affectionately to generations of Catholic readers, often surpassed its sceptical and more cynical senior in circulation, and won an assured place in the written but largely unresearched history of Catholic journalism in Australia.
With one exception (the Jesuit Messenger of the Sacred Heart) it alone, of the religious publications of the day has survived into this last quarter of the 20th century. Most of its secular contemporaries, too, although numerous and popular at the time, have returned to the pulp, lead and dust out of which they were produced. Even their names have been largely forgotten. How many today have even heard of, let alone mourn the passing of, The Boomerang, The Illustrated Sydney News, the Picturesque Atlas of Australasia, the Australian Standard, the Lone Hand,the Stockwhip and Satirist, the Express, the Melbourne Star or the Sydney Evening News?
The first editor of The Annals of Our Lady of the Sacred Heart was, surprisingly for the time, a woman. Mary Agnes Finn, a devout member of an old-established Randwick Catholic family was assisted by Father Emil Merg MSC, an Alsatian priest whose English at the time was poor and who was, on paper, responsible for the editing and production of the infant magazine. Because of attitudes prevailing at the time, Mary Agnes Finn was never given the recognition that was her due. Her role as editor was never publicised, and apart from the occasional piece of pious fiction carrying her by-line, she worked in relative obscurity. Yet her role was crucial.
The fairly immediate success of the new journal can be attributed to a number of factors, chief amongst which was the message of hope and love it carried to a Catholic community suffering greatly not just from the physical isolation of the Australian outback, but from the social and economic isolation that automatically followed from being a Catholic in an Anglo-Saxon and Protestant country. Annals brought a world where other Catholics lived, closer to home, and lessened the loneliness and despair that often filled the slab huts and below-stairs accommodation that was 'home' to the over-idealised little Irish mother.
Over the period 1889-1966, Annals was mainly mission-orientated, with special emphasis on Papua New Guinea and the Australian Aboriginal missions conducted by the Missionaries of the Sacred Heart; and because of this it is a unique resource for the religious and social historian.
This was its strength, and the magazine reflected the strong self-image of the MSC over those years. Not that the missions totally dominated the pages of the Annals in those years. Devotion to the Sacred Heart and to Our Lady of the Sacred Heart was a feature, as were the serialised stories referred to above.
After the first World War, Annals increased in size by 8 pages, and the circulation increased as well. Some new features were added: The Question Box, and the Children's Annals.
For a time the Irish Question became a burning issue during the editorship of Father Michael Davitt Forrest, MSC, who wrote under the pen-name of The Wanderer.
During these years devotion to a newly-canonized saint, St Therese of Lisieux occupied a prominent place in the magazine's Children's Page, and a new writer, Agatha le Breton, who wrote under the pen-name of Miriam Agatha, began to contribute short stories and serials.
The Golden Age was probably during the late l920s, when the magazine grew to 64 pages (but cost only 1d more an issue) and was printed on better quality paper, with a more professional approach to lay-out and design. The size of the pages was still octavo, but the quality of editing improved, especially under the editorships of Fathers Eric Dignam, Mortimer Kerins and Thomas Ormonde, MSC (1926-1936). This latter altered the magazine's size from octavo to quarto, and broadened the editorial outlook to include discussion of contemporary issues like the Spanish Civil War.
Internationally known Catholic writers contributed articles to Annals by arrangement with overseas journals: Maisie Ward, G.K. Chesterton, Hilaire Belloc, C.C. Martindale, SJ all appeared from time to time in Annals, as did local writers like Dame Mary Gilmore, Susan Gavan Duffy, Beatrice Grimshaw, Dr Leslie Rumble, MSC, Dr Pat Ryan, MSC, and many others. Frank Sheed made his debut as a writer in Annals.
The News service of the NCWC was a source of Catholic world news and Catholic Action as a subject was frequent and popular.
The Annals and Catechetics
My first association with Annals dates from 1953, when an advertisement for the MSC Minor Seminary at St Mary's Towers Douglas Park, NSW, caught the eye of a 17 year-old linotypist/compositor/reporter working at the time for The Camden News.
Eleven years later, in 1964 I was appointed Business Manager of Annals, thus beginning a career with the magazine that, apart from a five-year absence from 1977-1981, has covered 25 years.
At that time it was edited by Father Aloysius English, MSC, aided by Mr John O'Loughlin of the Lewisham Printing firm. Father English continued the missionary and spiritual emphases of previous editors, adding his own 'light' touch through contributions he included on subjects that ranged from science (biology, botany, astronomy) to biography, theology, history, and (unusual for those days) school counselling and catechetics.
The trend away from religious' journalism in the narrowest sense of that word was really set by Father English's predecessor, Father Leo Dalton, MSC, an outstanding radio broadcaster and a priest unusually gifted in English literature and language.
Numbers of subscribers had started to fall around this time, fluctuating around 30,000; although in its early days the Little Blue Book boasted of a regular 45,000-50,000 monthly circulation.
By the time I became editor for the first time (in 1966) the circulation had settled at 25,000 monthly, and there were some who thought that the Annals had had her day!
Certainly, TV, still at that time a relative novelty in Australia, and the ever-present radio, had captured the market from magazines; the pessimists were predicting that before long newspapers and books would be things of the past.
However wildly short of the mark that opinion may have proved to be, it can't be denied that the print industry was starting to reel under the blows from its sister media, TV and radio. These inexorably attracted eyes and ears from the printed word, no matter how well written or designed, to the magic screen or radio enshrined in what was rather incongruously termed the 'living' room.
Could any magazine, aspiring even to modest editorial or typographical heights, hope to survive such onslaughts, when the mighty Cinema was closing down in suburb after suburb, and printing and postage costs were on the increase? Advertising and at times overt exploitation of sexual and violent themes might keep certain kinds of backyard magazines still on the newsagents' shelves, but what future was there for a religious magazine?
In 1967 the 'old lady', by then 78 years old, looking none the worse for ware (although a little piqued by reports that some readers to the north of Australia enjoyed Annals because the paper was excellent for rolling cigarettes!) shook her skirts and strode into the 70s.
The occasion of this rejuvenation was a chance attendance at a talk given by a visiting Belgian writer on catechetics, Father Marcel Van Caster. Visiting Sydney and lecturing on religious education, Father Van Caster assured his listeners that all would be well in this vexed area when he and his colleagues in Europe had finally unraveled the mysteries and made their conclusions available to a waiting world.
Frank Fletcher, MSC, and I, came away from that talk unconvinced that the promised help would arrive soon, but full of enthusiasm and interest in the urgent needs of Catholic parents and teachers for good, locally produced, catechetical material. From that germ of an idea grew what was to become the major catechetical resource available to students in the top two years of secondary school for almost the next ten years, namely: The Annals Catechetical Supplement.
The first issue of Annals for 1968 carried a new name: Annals 68. The former name 'Annals of 'our Lady of the Sacred Heart' had not been dropped from any lack of regard for our Lady whose magazine it remained, but from a sensitivity to the kind of language that young people were using in those days. If they were to be helped, then they would have to be attracted to read the material presented to them. And a magazine name that seemed to represent an older religious spirit to which they could not relate so easily at that time, seemed to be an additional burden for the newly redesigned magazine to carry.
This seemed especially valid in the light of the fact that the late 6Os and early 7Os were times of extraordinary social and political turmoil, with the so-called 'generation gap' ever widening. Religious and family life couldn't help but catch some of the flak that was thrown up by grass-roots unrest, none the less real for the difficulty most people - parents and children alike - found in articulating it.
The period 1968-1974 was one of phenomenal success for Annals, although it wasn't all plain sailing as anyone growing up at that time will remember.
Our confidence that the underlying optimism and honesty of the youth of that difficult period would conquer attempts to stifle its faith with 'God is Dead' slogans, the cult of drugs, pornography and the revolt against all authority, no matter how moderate, was proven to be well-founded.
In the early decades of the Annals its chief supporters had been priests, nuns and laity who willingly undertook to distribute the magazine among Catholic people, and thereby spread devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus, and to our Lady of the Sacred Heart along with it. This source of generous help in promoting Annals was drying up.
In the 60s most copies of Annals were distributed not through primary schools, as before, but through secondary schools, and via their students to parents, most of whom lived by this time in cities and dormitory suburbs. Many of the topics that were to be discussed in Annals over the next ten years or so, reflected the social pressures caused by the exodus from the country, and the growing feeling of insecurity in a society whose Judaeo-Christian foundations were starting to crumble, or perhaps more correctly, to be whittled away.
Most Catholic secondary schools purchased large quantities of Annals. Many non-Catholic and even some State schools likewise received bulk copies for class use, or single copies for their libraries. Chaplains in non-Catholic schools also welcomed religious education material that was thoroughly Australian in content and design, and while non-polemical, was still unashamedly Catholic.
Month by month enough discussion and resource material was provided for a regular series of religion classes. The topics were selected from ones suggested by feed-back from readers, from Annals surveys carried out in schools in most states, and from ideas that were put forward by the Board that assisted the editor in the production of the Supplements. The topics were ones that Catholic adolescents were already discussing among themselves and others that may not have been commonly discussed, but needed to be.
Annals in that first year offered material for class discussion on the following subjects: Friendship; Drug-taking; The search for meaning in life; the Race War; the Changing Church; war; Where are we heading?; Capital Punishment; The Bible Today; Love. Abortion was presented for the gruesome murder of helpless life that it is (and the Annals got publicly burned for its trouble!) and future issues carried material on social justice; theology; history; morality; relationship questions relevant to adolescents at school at play and at home: with their parents, their peers, and other adults; with authority figures in society, and their teachers; with the Church. Sexual questions that were openly discussed on TV and radio were treated objectively and from a Catholic moral standpoint.
The circulation of Annals climbed steadily in those years, from 25,000 in 1966 to over 58,000 in 1972. Some months saw as many as 70,000 copies being sold.
As well as providing catechetical material for class use by students, a Teachers' Guide was produced every month. This offered advice on teaching methods, background reading, references to Church Fathers and Documents as well as suggested responses to the many questions there were raised in the students' Supplement, so as to ensure that teachers were helped to make the best possible use of the material.
Nothing was haphazard. At the beginning of the school year, parents, teachers and priests were notified of the course that Annals was planning to follow for the new year; and this plan was faithfully followed.
Material was prepared by the editor. Boards, I quickly learned, may be an invaluable aid and be happy to comment on ideas or material already elaborate4 but they are usually too cumbersome to draw up material on a regular monthly basis for a magazine working to a strict deadline.
When the history of religious education in Australia comes to be written, I have every confidence that the contribution of Annals will be seen to have been not inconsiderable.
Looking back on those years (1966-1976) when as Editor of Annals I was associated with many gifted priests, and religious and lay men and women who were completely dedicated to the cause of communicating the faith to post Vatican II Catholic youths, I find myself echoing wholeheartedly the remark made a few years ago on French Television by the Archbishop of Paris, Cardinal Lustiger: 'We are only at the beginning of the Christian era, not at the end.' This was our firmly held conviction in the 60s and 7Os. It still is.
The quest of religious educators then was not for novelty in doctrine, but for effective ways of making the old and perennial truths reach young people's hearts, and fuel their life systems, instead of remaining merely on the surface, to peel off in the heat of tension, or under pressure from temptation, or simply of the unexpected.
In these calmer days it may be possible to say without reopening old wounds that for many older Catholics, the 'old ways' were not entirely successful in providing them with the kinds of faith that could stand up to the rigours of survival in a secularized and materialistic world.
Parents who could long as many did, for the beauty of the Latin liturgy, also looked forward to a return to the Penny Catechism, and to the days when Catholic religious were numerous enough to staff our schools without having to employ others, were echoing the sentiments in many hearts during those years. And when some refused to acknowledge as their son, a young man who refused on conscientious grounds to take an active part in war, it seemed to many of us that a certain perspective had become obscured, and that sympathetic help was required for all concerned in these terrible human tragedies that were striking our Catholic people. Many of us went in search of that key link in the chain of faith, that élan vital which makes faith come alive with God's spirit. We were all searching for something to lessen the heartache that many felt in the confusion of those days, and to arrive at a method of presenting the faith for what it is - not just a series of formulae to which we assent with our minds, but a blueprint for life, that will touch our very being and sustain us through no matter- what difficulties.
Whatever success Annals achieved in those difficult but tremendous years was due to the fact that Annals policy reflected an overall conviction among Missionaries of the Sacred Heart that the Catholic Faith had a supreme relevance for alienated men and women and youth, and that it filled a desperately felt need.
From 1977-1981 the Editor of Annals was the gifted son and stepson of two outstanding Australian newsmen. Geoff Baumgartner's father Charles, and his step-father John Waters, were both Editors of the Melbourne Herald and Weekly Times. Geoff continued the tradition established for Annals in the 60s, but found that the context had changed in the intervening period. His editorship was a time of difficulties, but also one of reassessment.
Annals, Journal of Catholic Culture
Overseas catechesis had become acceptable in the Australia of the 80s in a way that would not have been possible in the 60s and 7Os. This has been achieved chiefly through European and American trained Australian Religious education teachers and catechists. And with this broadening of the catechetical perspective went a regularising of the matter of religious syllabuses in Catholic Schools. By now each Diocese had its own RE programme, unfortunately not always co-ordinated with the syllabuses used by other Dioceses. But the need for the Annals Syllabus was no longer so pressing. As a result, the Teachers Guide and Catechetical Supplement ceased at the end of 1976, with my last issue, to be replaced by up-to-date courses in scripture and theology, for students and parent alike.
By 1981 Annals was still useful and appreciated, but no longer indispensable; and voices were again raised suggesting that the now 92-year-old lady should be pensioned off.
Circulation had dropped dramatically, and a rethinking of the role (if any) that a Catholic magazine could play in Australia of the 80s was called for.
With what I believe to have been a correct perception. Annals was accordingly transformed in November- December 1981, into Annals Australia: A Journal of Catholic Culture; a vehicle for the transmission of Catholic Culture in all its diversity and richness.
The re-designed Annals is aimed at families, at adult-education groups, and at the senior levels in secondary schools.
The need of the 80s and 90s, as I see it, is for a rediscovery of our Catholic identity within a pluralistic society which gives no one marks for standing out or being distinctive. And yet, the past, present and future forms of Catholicism are all inextricably bound together. To have an identity is to know where one comes from; to be someone is above all to stand somewhere!
Cult (worship of God) and, culture are not simply similar sounding words. Culture in its fullest human sense is worshipful, and mindful of God. It embraces every aspect of our lives, and the reality of Catholic culture is as rich and varied as life itself. Exactly what Catholic culture is, and how it should be appreciated, is what Annals Australia is all about.
This isn't all that different from what we have been trying to do for the past 100 years; only the emphasis has shifted, and the magazine is aimed at a broader audience than secondary school students, although their faith-growth is still our concern.
Following on the well-known statement by St Athanasius of Alexandria, 'Christian is my first name; but Catholic is my family name', Annals is becoming more and more a truly a family magazine; for the immediate family, but about the wider family which is universal (Catholic) by definition.
Catholicism is not a sect. People who try to turn us into a sect use terms like Roman Catholic which implies that we are simply non-Uniting Church, non-Anglican and so on. This is an impossible distortion of the Catholic identity, and when people don't truly understand the nature of Catholicism they naturally become confused and (if teachers, or parents) confusing. There is nothing limited about our Faith. We should be universal in our belief; in our acceptance of others, in our appreciation of the total picture. Partial reality, like partial truth, should be distasteful to us. We belong to the most culturally and linguistically diversified group in the world. We are heirs to traditions which, if properly understood would enrich not just our own lives, but the lives of our fellow citizens.
Annals Australia is convinced that a Sense of identity is crucial for survival in a society like ours which is dangerously paternalistic, accepting newcomers (and oldcomers) on condition that they don't rock the boat, and that they blend comfortably into the all too-often bland and anonymous background that we call Australian Society.
Too many Catholics these days look, sound and act just like everyone else. While this makes for comfortable living it also leads to a loss of a sense of personhood, with a resultant weakening of initiative and loss of freedom.
If we have no past, or at least are unaware of it or disinterested in it, then we have no present, let alone a future; and we are nobody!
To quote Cardinal Lustiger again; from his interview on French Television recently: 'I think that it is only in our day that humanity has really come face to face with itself: it is only now that we know all the peoples of the earth; we appreciate only now the terrifying and fascinating power and capability of human intellect it is only now that the human race has articulated certain moral problems to which Christianity alone is able to give an answer.'
That answer cannot be given in or from a vacuum.
To be able to respond, as we should, to the deepest cries of humankind, Catholics must know who they are, and where they have come from.
In the 8 years that it has been produced in its present form, Annals has built up a circulation of 20,000 most of which goes to homes around Sydney, and especially in the Eastern Suburbs. The response of Australian Catholics to the as-yet limited promotion has been encouraging.
But we would need a circulation of at least 30,000 to be able to survive the crippling inflationary, costs associated with magazine production. The 2d issue of 1889 cost only 3d in 1925, 1/- in 1966, 4Oc in 1976, but $l.0O in 1984 and $2 in 199O!
The problems facing magazines like Annals, and indeed every newspaper and journal that cannot afford to be distributed through the newsagents, are still enormous. To sendone bill to 20,000 single subscribers involves a cost of $8,200 simply for the postage stamps required! So billing subscribers becomes a financial impossibility, and other ways have to be found to encourage readers top resubscribe voluntarily.
Do you have impostor syndrome?70
Even some Catholic firms hesitate to advertise in Catholic newspapers and journals, often for the very good reason that the typographical and journalistic standards are simply not high enough, but sometimes also out of an unwillingness to be associated with a religious journal! Fortunately Annals has been supported by numerous advertisers whose wares and services Annals is happy to recommended to subscribers.
Annals has always found that an unwillingness to compromise in matters of sound typography, enhances the effectiveness of the magazine. And in the past, our then printers (O'Loughlin Brothers of Lewisham) would regularly win prizes for their printing of Annals, at the Sydney Royal Easter Show.
What the future holds for Annals Australia remains to be spelled out. However, I am convinced that it continues to have a critical role to play in the growth in cultural self-awareness of Australian Catholics. To have done useful work in the past is, I know, no reason for being confident that a magazine will still flourish in a world that is aeons away from the one into which it was born. But to have helped mould that future world, to have promoted a love of what is true, good and beautiful in our Catholic tradition, this carries with it a certain confidence that Annals will survive to be read by future generations of Australian Catholics.
In a poem of Dame Mary Gilmore's 'By the Roadside', printed for the first time in Annals (December, 1926) we can find a crystallising of the aims of this most Australian of Catholic Magazines:
'Wonder is dead you say! Wonder can never die. Not while within a shining pool A man can see the sky'
It is as a shining pool reflecting the wonders of God and his creation that Annals should be remembered. Age can do little to mar the image that it reflects.
This editorial first appeared in Annals Australasia, issue 10, November 1989. Reproduced with permission of the Missionaries of the Sacred Heart, Australia.