'Get me the powerhouse!'
Brown, Brian
'Catholic News,' R.I.P. 'GET THE POWERHOUSE!' THE DAY THE POWDER KEG EXPLODED LAST MONTH the Catholic News, the official newspaper for the archdiocese of New York, ceased publication after...
...Sister Theresa, also not her real name, was an Olive Oyl lookalike who favored shapeless summer dresses with puffed sleeves, making her frail arms seem even thinner than they were...
...Oh God," Said Gaffney, reaching for the bottom drawer of his desk while telling yet another caller what she could do about her problem...
...For Philomenas and Friday fish-eaters, the church would never be the same again...
...You better get Spelly to make a statement...
...What's your problem...
...Was Father Duffy back on the sauce...
...By any measure the Catholic News was dull...
...Philomena...
...The tapestry was cpmpletely black with the exception of a small white flame in the middle...
...Get me the Powerhouse...
...The News avoided all issues that could be remotely construed as controversial...
...Mac told Gaffney he would talk to Cardinal Spellman and get back to us...
...The works...
...All the phones were ringing now...
...She's having an apparition," I shouted to Gaffney...
...Philomena's bio fell to the floor...
...Phones are ringing off the hook and only me and the kid are here to handle it...
...In those days the News was located on Park Avenue in the lower 30s...
...Why else would Spelly send him to Wappingers Falls...
...The Park Avenue offices were on the second floor...
...own to embroider a good story...
...Mac," snapped Gaffney, putting his other calls on hold...
...Vernon because of the crime in the city, as a press release explained it...
...Each week my mother dutifully taped the Legion of Decency movie ratings on our refrigerator door to remind her what films were permissible...
...The latter was at least spicy since it led to speculation among the clergy and the laity...
...In these accounts, Gaffney was constantly receiving tips from shoeshine boys, bellhops, and especially bartenders, his favorite people...
...For the first time ever, the switchboard was completely lit - electronic candles for St...
...When an apparition came upon her, which they did without warning, she would fall to her knees, lift her arms in a prayerful fashion and cast her eyes to heaven...
...We're sitting on a powder keg here...
...She had that look in her eyes...
...Birth...
...It began innocently enough with a phone call which Gaffney answered in his usual sensitive manner: "Gaffney here...
...We need a statement from Spelly...
...Philomena was a virgin," I volunteered...
...Number of miracles attributed...
...Get me the file on Philomena...
...One young zealot, fresh out of the seminary, had the temerity to remind his smug congregation in a restricted suburban community that "there were no zoning laws in heaven.'' Shortly thereafter he found himself in a decidedly unzoned parish in Spanish Harlem...
...Why the hell didn't she call the Tablet" demanucd Gaffney, referring to our rival publication, the Brooklyn Tablet...
...BRIAN brown (Brian Brown is a New York publicist who has never been known to embroider a good story...
...The phone rang again...
...Nor was any issue of the paper complete without a photograph of the cardinal (then Spellman) shaking hands with some newly-inducted Knights of Malta, or of a bishop turning a spade of earth at the ground-breaking ceremony for a new parochial school...
...he screamed at the cowering nun...
...Did you hear anything about a Vatican announcement...
...The News may have been a cautious publication but no one could fault it for not being an equal opportunity employer...
...I shook my head...
...Fulton Sheen and plenty of classified ads for tours to Lourdes and other religious pilgrimages...
...Diocese," I corrected...
...In any case, Gaffney was on the Catholic News staff only at the intercession of an influential priest friend of Gaffney's long-suffering wife...
...SO THERE we were, we three, on a steaming hot August afternoon with no air-conditioner (better to to burn now than later) and blissfully unaware that we were sitting on a powder keg...
...I want everything you got...
...At the News the truth was whatever the chancery said it was...
...I was sitting on a powder keg," he would tell me as a preamble to a story he broke after the cops dredged up the bullet-riddled body of a labor racketeer found wearing "cement galoshes" in Lake Michigan...
...Beatification...
...It's this Philomena business...
...In the world of the News, parental guidance was not suggested, it was required...
...Never in the course of my tenure at the Catholic News had I received, much less placed, a call to the Powerhouse...
...In other words, like maay other Catholic papers, the News strove for and achieved, a very special tone - dullness...
...It was a lady from Brooklyn explaining that her daughter was named Philomena and that the Vatican had just announced Saint Philomena was no longer a saint...
...Much of the Catholic News was simply representative of the Catholic press in general...
...The announcer repeated the top story, that the pope had pronounced Philomena a non-saint along with a whole number of saints who had questionable credentials...
...While Gaffney counseled the bereaved, I switched on an all-news radio station, the one that offers to give you the world if you give them twenty-two minutes...
...The editorial staff used to take bets on the location and duration of a priest's exile for bad behavior or for speaking out on a controversial issue like civil rights, which was just beginning to concern the secular press...
...The most embarrassing day in the history of the paper had to be October 22, 1960 when, through some printer's error, an edition of the News appeared with an editorial cartoon sharply critical of President Eisenhower, provoking, I'm sure, a call from "the Powerhouse," as Cardinal Spellman's chancery was widely known in those days...
...While I dialed the Powerhouse, Gaffney banged his desk bell for Sister Theresa...
...The News was printed upstate which meant that on Wednesdays the editor and the assistant editor would go there leaving the paper in the hands of me and a hard-nosed, potato-faced Chicago newshound whom I will call John Gaffney, which was not his name...
...Maybe the powder kegs eventually got to Gaffney, who developed an undue fondness for drink...
...Continued employment was dependent upon Jack staying off the booze...
...At the time of its death, the News was selling a measly 20,000 copies but at the turn of the century its circulation was as high as 150,000 and even in the early 1960s it was required reading for some 80,000 Catholics living within the archdiocese...
...To reach that lofty elevation, one had to climb up a rickety staircase to the landing where a visitor was greeted by a large tapestry stretching from the ceiling to the floor...
...Sure enough, before she got to Gaffney's desk, she fell to her knees, arms outstretched, eyes toward heaven...
...Divorce, contraception, and abortion did not exist in the minds of the editors .Asa reporter there in the early sixties, I covered ordinations, anniversary Masses, Communion breakfasts, Knights of Columbus dinners, baptisms, funerals, confirmations, Catholic Charity Drives, the Bishop's Relief Fund, and parish transfers...
...said Gaffney to the nun, who retreated in the direction of the morgue...
...This he did, with the notable exception of Wednesday, when he would have more than a few unsupervised nips from a bottle of Jack Daniels that was stashed under the copy paper in the bottom drawer of his desk...
...Once a saint, always a saint," snarled Gaffney, slamming the phone back in the cradle...
...Maybe she was upset...
...After a dozen or more rings someone at the Powerhouse picked up the phone...
...Check it out...
...Editorials urged blind obedience to all ecclesiastical utterances...
...She was on health leave from her order because she was suffering apparitions...
...Gaffney looked at me with a startled expression...
...See if the publisher has it...
...GET THE POWERHOUSE!' THE DAY THE POWDER KEG EXPLODED LAST MONTH the Catholic News, the official newspaper for the archdiocese of New York, ceased publication after ninety-five years and 4,925 successive weekly editions...
...Conversely, Father Duffy's return from upstate might indicate that he was off the sauce and this led to even further speculation that Duffy could make monsignor if he kept his nose clean...
...There she would remain transfixed until the vision passed away, at which point she would pick up whatever she had dropped in her moment of ecstasy and carry on as if nothing had happened...
...I hope they bug the Tablet," said Gaffney, who then directed me to call our printer in Albany and alert the managing editor to the crisis...
...Everyone got used to Sister Theresa suddenly dropping to her knees, except Gaffney who by his own admission was "spooked" by her apparitions...
...We didn't know it then, but in terms of psychological impact this may have been the opening shot of Vatican II...
...Gaffney would regale me with hold-the-press stories from his journalistic past - of grisly homicides, gang warfare, arson, and the like...
...Gaffney hit his hold buttons but the mothers of Philomena had disappeared...
...As I headed for the front office, I passed Sister Theresa coming back from the morgue with Philomena's file...
...That was already one more phone call than we ever got on a Wednesday...
...A virgin saint," I amended...
...barked Gaffney...
...It later moved to Mt...
...Fortunately for us it was Cardinal Spellman's administrative assistant, McGuire or McGovern or some such name...
...To read the Catholic News from first page to last earned you a plenary indulgence and the guaranteed presence of a priest at your deathbed...
...There was an obligatory column by Msgr...
...Gaffney was cradling a phone in each ear...
...She threw herself off a cliff to protect her virginity...
...Before taking a belt, Gaffney would piously bless what he called "the sacred substance" contained in the bottle...
...No doubt it was read out of that same sense of devotion which made people stand stock-still during the Palm Sunday Gospel or make multiple visits to church during Forty Hours...
...that is, she was seeing visions of Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, individually and sometimes collectively...
...The other member of our Wednesday staff was the copy boy who was in fact a copy girl, and to be more exact, a nun...
...he shouted...
...On top of that she's in the wrong precinct...
...Whenever Sister Theresa fell to her knees, Gaffney would reach for his bottle, forgetting at times even to render his obligatory blessing...
...It was another mother of a Philomena...
...At the time I assumed these two developments were related, but now that I know more about the mysterious relationship between alcohol and reportorial performance, as well as the arbitrariness of hiring and firing, I realize this wasn't necessarily fair...
...What's the number ?" I asked...
...At the bottom was a caption: "Catholic News - Beacon of Truth...
...He also lost his jobs at the Chicago Trib, the Sun-Times, and a whole string of mid-western dailies...
Vol. 108 • September 1981 • No. 17
