Happy 101st Birthday, Brooklyn Tablet!

The first issue of The Tablet, the official newspaper of the Diocese of Brooklyn, appeared on April 4, 1908 (seen here). It wasn’t the first attempt at a diocesan newspaper. Previous attempts were The Brooklyn Catholic (1869-1870), The Catholic Examiner (1881-1887), and The Leader (1890-1892). (From 1869 to 1872 Most Holy Trinity parish in Williamsburg had a daily paper in German.) By 1908, Bishop Charles E. McDonnell, Brooklyn’s second Bishop (1892-1921) felt the time was ripe to act. The Diocese had expanded tremendously since its founding in 1853, and its population was approaching the one million mark. The Diocese, which covered all of Long Island, desperately needed a chronicler.

Bishop McDonnell gave the paper its name, after the London Tablet, then the preeminent Catholic periodical in the English-speaking world. The frst editor was Monsignor Jmes J. Coan, Pastor of St. John’s Chapel (now Queen of All Saints) and future Chancellor. Earlier attempts at a diocesan paper had no institutional backing, i.e., financial. Bishop McDonnell’s decision to support the paper ensured its success.

Until 1940, the paper had a priest editor and a lay managing editor who oversaw the daily work. In October 1917, a former seminarian and schoolteacher named Patrick F. Scanlan took a temporary job with the Tablet when Joseph Cummings, the managing editor, went into the army during World War I. Cummings never returned to the paper, and Scanlan remained in the job for 51 years. (Three of his brothers were priest for the Archdiocese of New York. Monsignor Scanlan High School in the Bronx is named for his brother Arthur, who served as Rector of St. Joseph Seminary, Dunwoodie, during the 1930’s.)

Under Scanlan’s leadership, the paper achieved national renown. Dr. James T. Fisher of Fordham University describes it as “the most influential diocesan paper in America.” Few papers, wrote the late Father James Hennesey, S.J., “had the spice of the Brooklyn Tablet.” Scanlan’s aggressive writing style attracted attention nationwide. Another scholar describes him as a “one man anti-defamation league.” In 1923, when the Ku Klux Klan was active on Long Island, Scanlan and members of his Knights of Columbus council infiltrated a Klan meeting and turned the tables on them, voting for their expulsion from Floral Park.

Scanlan is famous for his political conservatism: his opposition to the New Deal, his anticommunism, his support for controversial characters such as Father Charles Coughlin and Senator Joseph McCarthy. But Brooklyn was his main priority. Scanlan recalled that Archbishop Thomas E. Molloy (1922-1956) gave him only three tasks for the paper:

1) Complete dedication to the Magisterium.
2) No attacks on fellow Catholics; these created division, and Molloy believed the primary purpose of the Catholic press was to promote unity among Catholics.
3) Emphasis on promoting vocations; priests’ funerals should be given close coverage.

Scanlan was a “Churchman” in the classic sense, an intensely loyal son of the Church. While he supported the work of the Second Vatican Council, as he got older he found it difficult to accept the rising dissent and confusion that accompanied the postconciliar era.

After the division of the Diocese in 1957, the Tablet continued to cover Long Island until the creation of the Long Island Catholic in 1962. In June 1968, Scanlan retired, and was succeeded by Don Zirkel, who had worked for the paper since 1948. During his editorship (1968-1985), Zirkel’s goal was to highlight and promote the Council’s teachings as it applied to the modern world. Among his major accomplishments were the Bright Christmas Fund and the establishment of a separate Spanish newspaper, El Nuevo Amanaecer (1981-1994).

Ed Wilkinson succeeded to the paper’s editorship in 1985. A graduate of Cathedral College, he started working for the paper in 1970 as a reporter. Among his major accomplishments as editor was organized a meeting of Catholic Press editors with the late Pope John Paul II during the Holy Father’s visit to Aqueduct Racetrack in 199. He has also overseen the Tablet’s movement into the electronic age, with the birth of the paper’s website. From 1989 to 2007 he hosted a weekly television program, The Tablet Week in Review. Among the topics he has focused on as editor are the pro-life battle, immigration, and fighting anti-Catholic bigotry.

At The Tablet starts its second century, it continues to serve the same purpose for which it was founded: to present the Church’s teachings in their proper context and so to correct popular misconceptions, to promote the Good News, to serve as a source of unity for the People of God in Brooklyn and Queens, and to chronicle the many happenings in a Diocese of Immigrants that continues to grow and flourish.