There are, I have been told, some who do not like the Georgia Bulletin. Some mutter about it, wail and weep over its boldness. What does a publisher who is an archbishop think about it?

I think that if you want a lively, readable journal, you start by hiring the best man you can get. H has to have an instinct for real news, for change, for excitement, for controversy.

Then you try to make sure he has budget enough for a staff and all the things a modern newspaper needs.

Then you feed him to the readers, week after week. You say a daily prayer that this dedicated, sacrificing man will tell it all, amid complaints and cancellations. You back him to the hilt because in 1967 this has become almost a test of courage and stability for a diocese.

A diocese gets just the kind of newspaper its majority of readers, both Catholic and others, want and deserve.

‘Atlanta’ Speaks Up

Last month, the smartest, most sophisticated city magazine in the United States, did an analysis of the Georgia Bulletin and its genial scrappy editor, Chris Eckl. You may know Atlanta, slick paper pungent comment, columns like “Young Man on the Go” and features like restaurant lists. Good articles too, and always Opie Shelton’s wide-open ideas. Betsy Fancher, their regular feature-writer wrote the “personality” on Chris. In her appreciation of our editor of a year, many Bulletin-readers will join. I receive their letters regularly. But those who do not like the Bulletin are vocal too. Good journals are like that –you love ‘em or hate ‘em.

Some of the dissenters prefer the old-type “first-Communion folio” plus lists of parish appointments. Some think the Bulletin too liberal. Some think that unnecessary subjects like contraception and celibacy should not be mentioned. Each is entitled to space, and the Letters to the Editor cover all points of view.

Atlanta sees its colleagues and competitor as the state’s liveliest and most thoughtful weekly.” One reason is Eckl’s brittle witty thrusts:

“Missing during the miracles (in a recent film) was the unusual blast of trumpets and loud music which tell a dense viewer that God is at work in the world.”

I’d subscribe just for a piece of dry-bones’ wit like that.

All This, And…

The Bulletin is intended for the educated, mature, fairly well-read Catholic who cringes when a Catholic paper writes:

NO CATHOLICS DEAD IN TORNADO.

So there is something of world news, especially when that news infringes on our lives in Atlanta. “The Church in the United States” is well-covered, but it might be re-titled “The United States in the Church.”

There is significant news about the archdiocese-a priest in the mountains, a Headstart program in Carrollton, 800 Lutherans and Catholics worshipping together at the Cathedral. “To close the gap between the church and the real world” is the way Chris puts it.

We have given the people of northern Georgia a young, top-rate editor. But we have been slow in giving him the budget he needs, a staff, photographs, time to reflect, resources to put together the kind of Bulletin he wants and the people deserve.

Flesh And Muscle

That’s what Chris Eckl wants to do—“put flesh and muscle on this business of loving your brother.” Obviously the job isn’t easy. It means the leg-work of getting the facts, and the hard work of assembling them. It means the brainwork of priorities and makeup, imagination and routine. Covering “the revolution within the Church” is the way he sees it.

With good Catholic editors losing their jobs because they covered the revolution too closely, we in Georgia are fortunate that Chris and the Bulletin are moving ahead. In a paper that has a tradition of Richard Reid, the Georgia Catholic Layman’s Association; Father Don Kiernan, the fastest draw west of Peachtree; and Gerard Sherry, an outspoken liberal editor—Chris Eckl has struck a new note.

Let Atlanta Magazine have the last word: “The Bulletin is virtually a weekly forum between Protestants, Jews and Catholics.” The “vital young editor” has made it that.

Many besides Catholics are reading it because it reveals this particular moment in history “so poignantly, disturbingly and accurately.” The mystery is how Christians beyond the Catholics read and admire it, while a few Catholics still resent it.

It does reflect today’s Catholicism just as its editor reflects today’s vital layman. Thanks, Atlanta for pointing this out.

Paul J. Hallinan

Archbishop Of Atlanta