p. 8 | Catholics and the Theater

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · May 21, 1908

Catholics and the Theater

A LEADING Roman Catholic paper of Chicago declares that “the Catholics of New York City spent a million and a half dollars upon the drama and opera” last season, and complains bitterly because the theater managers do not advertise liberally in Catholic papers. From a paragraph printed wholly in italics, we take the following:—

Do the Catholic managers of some theaters that make a specialty of catering to Catholic theatergoers advertise their attractions in this journal or any other local Catholic publication?—They do not, and everybody knows they do not. At a low estimate the two million Catholics of Chicago and its littoral expended between six hundred thousand and eight hundred thousand dollars attending dramas and operas during the season just closed, and it is a fact susceptible to proof that the managers of the theaters and opera-houses so favored did not spend one hundred dollars, all told, in advertising in the Catholic press.

The frankness of this criticism is equaled only by its materialistic basis. Not a word of censure on the large sum of money worse than wasted, and not a suggestion of the evil influence exerted through this wholesale patronage of the theater, but indignation in abundance because this paper did not share with others in the benefits of the advertising. Incidentally this article emphasizes the fact that the Roman Catholic Church makes no warfare upon the theater.