MacManus' Scheme

U. S. Catholics publish 330-odd newspapers and magazines, with a total circulation of more than 7,000,000. Many owned by dioceses, with editorial staffs appointed by and directly responsible to bishops and archbishops, they range from Father Coughlin's Social Justice to the liberal Michigan Catholic to the conservative New York Catholic News (circulation: 229,000, 40,000, 55,000 respectively).

Once a year Catholic editors gather to discuss their problems. Last week, meeting at Detroit's Hotel Statler for the 30th annual convention of the Catholic Press Association, 150 leading Catholic editors had something to buzz about.

The man that set them buzzing was neither an editor nor a priest, but a diminutive oldster (66) named Theodore Francis MacManus, big automobile adman (retired), longtime friend of Walter P. Chrysler, great & good friend of the late Pope Pius XI, who honored him with two knighthoods.

In his home suburb of Bloomfield Hills, 20 miles outside Detroit, Adman MacManus assembled the delegates in the auditorium of beautiful St. Hugo of the Hills Church (which he and his wife gave to the archdiocese in memory of his two sons). There he presented his big idea: a merging of all Catholic diocesan weeklies into one big national Sunday newspaper, complete with foreign correspondents, big wire services, comics, society and sports pages--''in short, a national newspaper THEODORE MACMANUS Out of many weeklies, one Sunday? edited as Catholic newspapers ought to be edited. . . ."

No spur-of-the-moment scheme was Adman MacManus'. Long had he talked it to leading churchmen and tycoons, now claims backing of $2,000,000. There is much enthusiasm among the hierarchy, says Promoter MacManus, about his scheme.

Less enthusiastic was the reaction of the Catholic editors, in particular such liberal editors as Anthony John Beck of the Archdiocese-owned Michigan Catholic. They suspected that one of MacManus' central purposes might be to crack down on pro-labor tendencies in a large section of the Catholic press.

Adman MacManus' proposed newspaper "would guard against destructive political liberalism which comes in attractive intellectual disguises from universities, and enters sneakingly by way of factory doors. . . ."

Catholic liberal editors admitted that there was not much they could do about it if church leaders should give MacManus the go-ahead. MacManus' self-styled "No 1 Man" is Frank Jacob Mullen, who lately resigned as top ad salesman for the Satevepost to promote MacManus' proposed Catholic newspaper merger. Said he: "It doesn't make a hell of a lot of difference what editors think."

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