People & Apes

To herald the September addition of Hearst's lurid American Weekly to its Sunday edition (circ. 255,002), the Cincinnati Enquirer assigned a task force of staffers to whip up equally lurid blurbs. When her turn came, Columnist Mildred Miller offered readers an enticing sample of the Weekly's wares--stories about female chastity ("Voltaire has declared [it] man's greatest invention"), birth control ("Motherhood in many cases is a wrong against society"), and religion ("After 2,000 years of religious teachings our jails are crowded beyond capacity . . .").

That was too much for Monsignor Edward A. Freking, editor of the official archdiocesan weekly, the Catholic Telegraph-Register. Cried Monsignor Freking: "I could take Mildred Miller's whole column, change 25 words, and prove that people descended from apes." In an editorial in the Telegraph-Register last week, he threatened a Catholic boycott of the Enquirer if the American Weekly ("literary trash and blasphemous views") lived up to its advance billing.

Enquirer Publisher Roger Ferger, who knows that there is no other Sunday paper in Cincinnati for Catholics (or anybody else) to read, replied with a promise to Monsignor Freking: "You'll change your mind about the Weekly after you see it."

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