Abp. Cody’s Clarion call: A teaching newspaper

    Carl J. Eberts, a graduate of St. Aloysius High School, was just 27 years old when he heard through the printer’s grapevine that Archbishop John Patrick Cody, whose clerical style might be compared aptly to that of Gen. George Patton, was mapping out a battle strategy to make Catholic newspaper history.
    This was 1962 – one year after Archbishop Cody had been appointed coadjutor to Archbishop Joseph Rummel and six years after Archbishop Rummel had written his landmark pastoral letter, “The Morality of Racial Segregation.” After having led the Archdiocese of New Orleans since 1935, Archbishop Rummel was in failing health and faced with the enormous challenge of racially integrating local Catholic schools.
    Archbishop Cody blew into town in 1961 with the speed and force of NASA’s Project Mercury. He had a clear vision for the future – school integration, parish expansion and central financial control. His agenda basically came with a footnote from Gen. Patton: “Lead me, follow me or get out of my way.”
    The stories of Archbishop Cody’s decision-making on the fly are both legion and legendary. On a helicopter trip over the jungle of undeveloped East Jefferson in 1963, Archbishop Cody simply pointed with his index finger.
    “We’ll put one there and one there and one there,” Archbishop Cody said, giving new meaning to the game kids play with their hands: “Here is the church; here is the steeple; open the doors and see all the people.”
    In the same way, Archbishop Cody examined the Catholic Action of the South, the archdiocesan’s newspaper at the time, and knew he wanted more. He wanted, simply, the best diocesan newspaper in America.
    And he went out and got it. He hired a respected political reporter, Emile Comar, away from the staff of The States-Item, and he pulled photographer Frank H. Methe III away from The Times-Picayune. He paid them for their experience and abilities.
    In those days, the photographic reproduction of the city’s dailies was horrid because those newspapers were being printed on a letterpress, which had a dot pattern so large it could produce only fuzzy images.
    That’s where Eberts came in. Since Archbishop Cody wanted the best reproduction possible, he was told he needed a brand new cold-set, offset press that would create crystal clear images and make photographs jump off the page.
    On the strength of Archbishop Cody’s promise to print 125,000 copies of the Clarion Herald every week – one mailed to every Catholic household – Eberts was able to buy the new German-made, 70-foot Goss press and move it into a huge building at 4422 Toulouse St. in Mid-City.
    “We were local printers, and we had a reputation for quality,” Eberts said. “Archbishop Cody wanted someone to bring the newspaper up to a higher number. The first year, the Clarion hit No. 1.”
    The first Clarion Herald issue was printed nearly 50 years ago – on Feb. 23, 1963 – and Eberts knew how much was riding on this grand experiment. Eberts had a talented staff of pressmen – they were all men in those days – but after the press was installed, he made sure before Archbishop Cody came in to bless the machinery during a test run that everything would run seamlessly.
    “I knew the place would be perfect, but we did a lot of practice runs,” Eberts said. “I wanted to make sure when the archbishop got here we weren’t embarrassed, especially with all the photographers around. I knew when he hit the button everything had to work.”
    It did. Archbishop Cody proclaimed that the Clarion Herald was a vital component of his teaching ministry, a task he understood from the moment he was ordained auxiliary bishop of St. Louis in 1947 when Cardinal Joseph Ritter asked him during the rite of consecration: “Will you teach the people for whom you are to be consecrated?”
    In a statement of policy published in the first issue of the Clarion Herald, Archbishop Cody said New Orleans’ Catholic newspaper would “be in competition with only two things – religious ignorance and moral wrongdoing.” He added that while Catholic schools were critical in passing on knowledge of the faith to children and teens, the best means of continuing adult Catholic education “is a strong, well-edited and instructive locally produced Catholic newspaper.”
    We’ll celebrate that and more as the Clarion Herald turns 50 years old in February 2013.
    Peter Finney Jr. can be reached at pfinney@clarionherald.org.