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Preface

Archbishop John F. Noll

By Michael R. Heinlein

In his sermon at the funeral of Archbishop John Francis Noll in 1956, Chicago’s Cardinal Samuel Stritch said Noll’s “faith was so deep, so real, that it really puzzled him when he saw Catholics who did not live wholly with Christ.” That described everything Noll sought to accomplish in his distinguished career.

Archbishop Noll’s episcopal motto (Mentes Tuorum Visita) reiterated this. The line from the traditional hymn “Veni Creator Spiritus,” calling down the Holy Spirit to dwell within the minds of men, aptly sums up Noll’s mission.

Noll was untiring, effective, and innovative as an evangelist and apologist. Through unprecedented and successful use of the press, Noll defended the Church against many obstacles and threats, and in the face of much opposition. He offered a simple and comprehensible defense of the Church’s teachings for Catholics and non-Catholics alike, and in many ways his visionary methods were ahead of their time.

Noll believed in the connection between knowledge and salvation. A zealous pastor and shepherd who never lost sight of souls, Noll worked tirelessly to help people come to knowledge of the truth that sets us free. Held in high esteem by laity and clergy alike, Noll was also an accomplished churchman recognized nationally for his significant leadership and accomplishments in the United States and beyond.

A priest for people

From an early age, Noll wanted to be a priest. He began studies for the priesthood in Wisconsin at Saint Lawrence Seminary, operated by Capuchin Franciscans, and completed his studies at Mount Saint Mary’s Seminary in Cincinnati. Noll was ordained a priest for service in the Diocese of Fort Wayne, Indiana, on June 4, 1898, in the see city’s Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception. It was the church where his parents were married, and also where he received baptism, first holy Communion, and confirmation — and where he would one day be ordained a bishop.

Father Noll’s early days were consumed with the zeal and creativity of a newly ordained priest. At first, Noll frequently was sent around the diocese to fill in for ailing pastors, often having to make the best of abysmal situations. Whenever Noll saw there was a need, he attended to it.

An account of one late summer weekday in 1898 gives an idea of how he truly lived for others in his ministry. Since Noll had already made a retreat before his ordination, the bishop asked him to fill in at Fort Wayne’s cathedral while diocesan priests were on retreat. After hearing confessions with a religious priest for ten hours, he was summoned to attend to a dying woman some forty-five miles away. He traveled via train to see her, then thought it best to retrieve Communion for her from the local church. Upon arrival at the church after a mile-long walk, he learned that the tabernacle had been emptied for safety purposes before the pastor had left for the retreat. Worn out, exasperated, and famished, Noll had to wait hours for a train back to his temporary parish, where he arrived in time for morning Mass.

As a pastor, Noll often was given charge of a few mission outposts. At one time, Noll had five parishes under his care. Automobiles were a rarity in those days, so rail travel was his normative means of transportation. Because of this, he had plenty of time to read and think as he would wait for the next train to take him from place to place. In addition to his priestly duties, he had no staff of any kind and often served as housekeeper and maintenance man.

Because most of the parishes he served were composed of German- or French-speaking families, Noll was highly attentive to immigrant communities. He also often had success in fostering conversions to Catholicism, in particular with the non-Catholic spouses from “mixed marriages,” which were common among his congregations.

More than once, Noll was sent into situations where the pastor had departed because of various difficulties with the congregation. Noll had a knack for stilling the waters and gained a reputation as a peacemaker. Through his resourcefulness and diplomacy, Noll brought unity and order to fractured parishes. In fact, his first publication arose from such a situation, a small volume called “Kind Words From The Priest To His People.” In it, he spoke from the heart to the average layman in an understandable and intelligible way. And with it began Noll’s apostolate of the written word.

Throughout Noll’s life, anti-Catholicism in America was prevalent at different times. In addition, as a pastor, Noll saw that his people were not well formed in the Faith and often were left unable to defend Church teaching when they faced opposition from friends or family members.

A far-sighted proponent of an informed and engaged laity, Noll was resolved to provide Catholics with the means to grasp the truths of the Faith in easy-to-understand ways. Noll knew that a well-informed and energetic laity was the secret to transmitting the Church’s message to society and to win the world for Christ.

Defender of Truth

With the fortitude and fervor of Saint Paul at the Areopagus, on whose feasts Noll was both born and ordained a bishop, Noll spoke, defended, and laid bare the truth at every opportunity. Like Saint Paul, Noll was armed with common sense, the truth, and a pen.

Beginning in his years as a young priest, Noll engaged with Protestants, hoping to overcome any misunderstandings long held about Catholicism in their communities. Long before Catholics engaged in any formal ecumenical work, Noll’s pursuit of truth enabled him to see the elements of Christian life dwelling among his Protestant neighbors. He was convinced that a dialogue grounded in truth and charity would overcome any of the divisions that led to the bigotry he encountered. Noll also learned from Protestants the usefulness of offering envelopes and, as the first Catholic publisher to provide them, offered a means for increasing parish tithes beyond the standard pew tax system normative in his day.

In Noll’s early evangelization efforts, he utilized Father Thomas F. Price’s publication, Truth, published in North Carolina, which was the springboard for Noll’s foray into the Catholic press. While he found the content of the magazine useful, he did not believe it lived up to its potential as it lacked local material. Noll obtained permission from Father Price to use the magazine’s content, with a new cover and added pages, to create The Parish Monthly. Many neighboring pastors found the publication’s great value, and soon Noll found himself a Catholic publisher. Within a short amount of time, Noll had become one of the founding members of the Catholic Press Association.

In his day, it was not unheard of for itinerant preachers to gather crowds to hear the “truth” about the “papists.” Noll was known to attend these gatherings to challenge the speakers and in turn invite attendees to a public lecture on the truth of Catholicism. Some of these false prophets claimed to be former priests who revealed the truth about the Catholic religion. Noll might respond with a question only a priest could answer to catch them in a lie. Others went door to door with tracts or mailed out publications filled with vitriol and divisive content, attacking Catholicism or advocating for oppressive and unjust political structures. Noll picked up his pen to rebut them point by point.

Publishing pioneer

The masterpiece of Noll’s apostolate was Our Sunday Visitor, which he founded in 1912. On its first issue Noll expressed its motto: “TO BE PRACTICAL and TO DO GOOD.” Since the apostolate’s founding, one is hard-pressed to find a moral issue of the age which has not been editorialized in its pages. As editor, Noll was intent on allowing the truth to shine through everything that kept souls from Christ, from anti-Catholicism to racism, or birth control to socialism.

Noll gained an international reputation for his pastoral ingenuity and zeal for souls. By the time he turned fifty, he had caught the attention of Rome and was named bishop of his home diocese by Pope Pius XI in 1925. But it seemed that, more than anything else, Noll would have been more content with busying himself with the work of Our Sunday Visitor for the rest of his life.

“A bishopric does not appeal to me,” Noll said in an interview following his appointment as bishop. “But there is one mitigating circumstance, and that is the bishopric to which I have been appointed is Fort Wayne. … And I feel that I can keep closer supervision on my work here in Huntington than I could if I had been appointed to some other diocese.”

Noll maintained an active role in Our Sunday Visitor’s ministry until his final days. Through his witty and personable style and his simple and straightforward writing, Noll became a household name for more than a million American Catholics.

In addition to the weekly newspaper, Noll’s publishing powerhouse also churned out what seemed like endless resources, including pamphlets and books. In 1924, Noll began what became known as The Priest magazine to instruct, assist, and renew parish priests in their mission. And there were Noll’s numerous and enduring catechetical works like the dialogue-style compilation of columns Father Smith Instructs Jackson, which sold millions of copies. Within a few years of his death, Our Sunday Visitor was the largest religious publisher contained under one roof in the world.

“To serve the Church”

Noll’s mission for the products and services of Our Sunday Visitor was simple: “to serve the Church.” When he began Our Sunday Visitor, he invested one dollar in a printing press and charged only one cent apiece for its newspaper. Because Noll knew his work was God’s, so, too, were the profits. And he put the earnings to God’s service. Managed directly by Noll, the profits of the nonprofit organization were used to finance a host of important Catholic endeavors both locally and nationally. This was a time for expansive growth of Catholic institutions throughout the country, and Our Sunday Visitor has left a major mark on its progress. Over the years, more than $75 million has been given away for ecclesial purposes.

Not long before he died, Noll wrote to the priests of his diocese in which he recounted the extensive financial assistance Our Sunday Visitor provided to the Fort Wayne diocese, where funds were applied toward expanding the local church’s educational and charitable efforts and paying off debts of parishes. Beyond that, Our Sunday Visitor financially supported many rural and poorer dioceses throughout the country, especially through Noll’s membership on the board of the Catholic Extension Society. Our Sunday Visitor offered its services to these dioceses to publish their own diocesan newspapers. And it was a major benefactor to the Missionary Sisters of Our Lady of Victory, who served as catechists in many American missionary dioceses, offering them land and financial assistance.

National leader

Organization and competence were chief among the talents that peers appreciated about Noll. Time and again, he was called on in positions of leadership at the national level. Noll was a key figure in organizing the National Catholic Welfare Conference — the precursor organization to the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops — and for many years held the position of its secretary.

As the challenges faced by the Church changed according to the times, Noll’s brother bishops called upon his courage. He was instrumental in forming the national Legion of Decency in 1933, a watchdog and lobbying arm of the American bishops which had the objective of forcing Hollywood filmmakers to produce more wholesome and decent productions. Catholics would have faced pain of mortal sin if they viewed certain films which the Legion screened and found morally objectionable. The Legion offerred their own ratings system. The idea was that filmmakers would want to avoid alienating nearly 20 million potential Catholic viewers.

With the backing of Our Sunday Visitor, Noll was instrumental in the construction of two landmarks in Washington, D.C. The first was the statue of “Christ, Light of the World,” which was initially at the headquarters of the National Catholic Welfare Conference. The idea began with a letter Noll received from a Kansas woman who lamented Christ’s absence amid all the statues and monuments in the nation’s capital. Noll threw his support behind the idea and attracted assistance and funding from the readers of Our Sunday Visitor. The statue’s title is shared with one of the hallmark documents of the Second Vatican Council. Although he died six years before it began, Noll embodied in advance so much of the Council’s work throughout his ministry, particularly in the areas of building up the laity and ecumenism.

Also, although he did not live to see its completion, Noll was a tireless advocate for completion of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception in Washington, now a minor basilica. Started in 1920, the shrine’s construction came to a halt during the Depression and World War II. It stands today as the largest Catholic church in North America, in no small part thanks to Noll’s interest, support, and vision. Noll is remembered as the “apostle of the National Shrine,” and a bust memorializes him in the shrine’s crypt level.

On behalf of a grateful Church, Pope Pius XII honored Noll in 1953 by granting him the personal title of “archbishop.” Three years later, about one-third of America’s bishops attended his funeral, including two cardinals and then-Bishop Fulton J. Sheen, a Catholic media pioneer who used radio and television as much as Noll used the written word. Bishop Michael Ready, then chairman of the press department of the National Catholic Welfare Conference, summed up Noll’s mission “to serve the Church” aptly when he wrote in memoriam: “The whole Church in the United States is greatly indebted to him. The fruits of his great works and zeal greatly enriched our country.”