newspapers

On the morning of July 6, a bride and groom prepared for their traditional Catholic wedding. The photographer and videographer were on hand to document an historic union of two Catholic families. The groom may even have had custom wedding booklets with the ceremonies in Latin and English, to assist the many guests who had never been to such old ceremonies. The year was 1905, and the couple was John Crichton-Stuart and Augusta Mary Monica Bellingham.

Each year, I run searches for the Carmelite martyrs of Compiegne to see where I can find them in the historical record.1 This year’s finding was an issue of the Journal de Paris.2 The Journal de Paris was a long-running daily newspaper in Paris. During the French Revolution, its issues typically began with the section Convention Nationale, with summaries of the sessions (seances) from the day before. There were also occasional sections for Musique, Variete, Commune de Paris, and Municipalite de Paris.

Processions in Africa BURKINA FASO. Crowd watches Corpus Christi processional, Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso, ca.1900-1930. International Mission Photography Archive, ca.1860-ca.1960 (collection), Mission Photographs: Yale Divinity School Library (subcollection), YDS/RG101/007/0000/0036 (file). https://doi.org/10.25549/impa-m12896 MADAGASCAR. Corpus Christi procession, Fianarantsoa, Madagascar, ca.1900-1930. International Mission Photography Archive, ca.1860-ca.1960 (collection), Mission Photographs: Yale Divinity School Library (subcollection), YDS/RG101/005/0000/0073 (file). https://doi.org/10.25549/impa-m12520 CONGO. Celebrating the Feast of Corpus Christi, Lubumbashi, Congo, ca.1920-1940. IMP/YDS/RG101/045/0000/0098 (file), International Mission Photography Archive, ca.1860-ca.1960 (collection), Mission Photographs: Yale Divinity School Library (subcollection).

A collection of photos and clippings of the Chartres pilgrimage, across the 20th century.

We know (or at least debate) a great deal about the Second Vatican Council, but how much do we really know about who was there?

The Monitor, Volume CIII, Number 19, 12 August 1960. https://thecatholicnewsarchive.org/?a=d&d=tmon19600812-01.2.22&srpos=6 The Catholic Transcript, Volume LXIII, Number 23, 6 October 1960. https://thecatholicnewsarchive.org/?a=d&d=CTR19601006-01.2.100&srpos=8 The Catholic Advocate, Volume 7, Number 46, 14 November 1958. https://thecatholicnewsarchive.org/?a=d&d=ca19581114-01.2.109&srpos=43 The Catholic Transcript, Volume LXIII, Number 19, 8 September 1960. https://thecatholicnewsarchive.org/?a=d&d=CTR19600908-01.2.2&srpos=4 The Catholic Advocate, Volume 11, Number 44, 25 October 1962. https://thecatholicnewsarchive.org/?a=d&d=ca19621025-01.2.6&srpos=45 The Catholic Advocate, Volume 12, Number 46, 7 November 1963. https://thecatholicnewsarchive.org/?a=d&d=ca19631107-01.2.185.4&srpos=6 The Catholic Transcript, Volume LXVI, Number 35, 26 December 1963.

In November of last year, I shared a provocative hypothesis: thanks to the discovery of new evidence, it was possible for the first time to confirm that the long-rumored American Turkey Indult directly from the Pope did in fact occur, although not quite the way we thought.

Every year around Thanksgiving, a flurry of social media posts make the rounds in traditional Catholic circles, concerning a mysterious “Turkey Indult” from the 1950s.

The Catholic News Archive (CNA) is a freely available unique digital collection of American Catholic Newspapers. With an impressive range of advanced search options and search filters, and a friendly mobile layout, it encourages serious research as well as easy browsing. Every newspaper page is scanned with optimal character recognition (OCR). The lack of export options is a serious hindrance to heavy-duty research, which is unfortunate given how extensive and interdisciplinary the content is. The uncorrected OCR is counterbalanced by powerful search options, diverse result display options, and user-corrected OCR.

In James Hitchcock’s 1979 work Catholicism and Modernity, there is a quotation that particularly interested me: One of the choicest of all the ironies of the postconciliar era presented itself here, since in its decree on communications, Inter Mirifica, the Council warned severely against precisely those misuses of the media which the conciliar excitement was in the process of inspiring. There developed an almost universal conspiracy of silence about that document.