In 1961 Robert E. Burns, the executive editor of the Voice of St. Jude, told a group of editors at the Catholic Press Association Convention in Vancouver that "the Catholic press has suffered too long at the hands of well-meaning but untrained and unskilled practitioners."

He called for attractive layout, meeting the readers' needs, and "teaser titles" to pull the reader in.

The Voice of St. Jude--which two years later would morph into U.S. Catholic and thereby complete its transformation from a "devotional magazine"--was already on that track. And as the magazine has negotiated to adjust course for each new generation, the goal of reaching out to both practicing and disaffected Catholics--has held it steady.

Fifty years ago, at age 25, the Voice was 52 pages and cost 35 cents; its layout echoed that of Life and of Jubilee, a daring and beautiful journal founded in 1953 that emphasized photojournalism and intellectual challenge. In its last few years as the Voice and after it became U.S. Catholic, the magazine dealt with day-to-day itches and larger pains that vexed average Catholics: pornography, financial aid to Catholic schools, evolution, racial justice, the morality of nuclear war, and why girls, "out of respect for Our Lord," must wear hats.

A 1961 series of the Voice deals with professional men who may not be Catholics but are still "responsible" models for the readers: political cartoonist Bill Mauldin, Chicago Daily News foreign correspondent George Weller, and film director Stanley Kramer. Profiles introduce us to Romano Guardini, H. A. Reinhold, Karl Rahner, and Pierre Teilhard de Chardin.

The turning point

Today American Catholics remember 1968 as a turning point in history: the assassinations of Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert F. Kennedy, the riots at the Democratic convention in Chicago, the escalation of the Vietnam War, and Pope Paul VI's birth control encyclical Humanae Vitae, which effectively alienated a great part of the generation. For U.S. Catholic 1967 and 1968 were strong years.

In December 1967 the magazine, in a blazing three-page editorial, became one of the first Catholic publications to declare: "The war in Vietnam is immoral."

In the same issue, Father Gerard S. Sloyan praises the new Dutch Catechism, which summarized the church's teaching at the end of Vatican II, as the "compendium of Catholic faith worthy of our time." It quotes scripture rather than Vatican documents and concludes that both the pope's and the council's silence on family planning is a sign that the Catechism's teaching that "people must remain free in the matter" had been accepted.

In June 1968 an exhaustive 14-page special report on the "current status on birth control" reaches the same conclusion. When in the following month Humanae Vitae contradicts them, the editors republish an interview with Karl Rahner from the German news magazine Der Spiegel, in which, with lots of circumlocutions and spins, Rahner still says the woman's conscience is to be respected.

A cultural revolution

The transition from the 1960s to the '70s was marked by a change in the cover design, from photographs to multicolored typographical displays shouting the hot topics of the month and "teaser" questions like "Pesticides: Who are we killing?" There are arguments for women priests, instructions on how to use the new rite of penance, and suggestions that we abolish the Mass obligation, Mother's Day, and Santa Claus.

Executive Editor Robert E. Burns, who signs his column R.E.B., laments that the American bishops behave like a men's club, allow a handful to dominate their meetings, and are afraid to lead. Then he publishes articles on the new generation of bishop leaders--Detroit's John Dearden, Chicago's Joseph Bernardin, and Newark's Peter Gerety, who at this writing is 98 and the last one of the group still making the rounds.

The 1973 profile of 45-year-old theologian Joseph Ratzinger offers few clues to the man who will emerge at the turn of the century, except his fear that some theologians have overstepped their bounds in criticizing the structures of the church and his feeling that the liturgy has become "too preoccupied with social involvement."

In contrast to the "company men" American bishops, Robert Johnson in 1978 profiles another model in "Third-World bishops: Blood, sweat, and fear," a tour of bishops who risk their lives to stand up for human rights in Latin America, Africa, and Asia. Where church leaders were once in league with rich land owners and the military, they have been moved by both the mandates of Vatican II, the Latin American bishops' 1971 meeting in Medellín, Colombia, and the 1971 Synod of Bishops, which focused on justice as vital to evangelization.

Because two interviews with Father Eugene A. LaVerdiere, S.S.S. on scripture and Jesus' early life were so popular, the editors bring him back in April 1977 for "Christ Has Died, Christ Has Risen, So?" with a cover depicting just the arm of a cross with a big nail sticking in it. He tells us what we seldom hear in church, that the resurrection of Jesus is not a restoration to a former state of life but a transformation into a new way of being, which is unrelated to space and time. Some priest readers were upset and accused LaVerdiere of breaking with the church.