London, GB | Formerly of New York, Buenos Aires, Fife, and the Western Cape. | Saoránach d’Éirinn.

Change in the air at the Catholic Herald

Title will cease to operate as a newspaper and relaunch in magazine format

Britain’s leading Catholic publication, the Catholic Herald, will be relaunching as a magazine before the end of this year. Invites have already gone out to an event celebrating the change to be held in early December.

The relaunch might be interpreted as a move against the Tablet, which styles itself “the international Catholic weekly” and has been nicknamed “The Bitter Pill” by English Catholics for its widely perceived lack of faithfulness to Catholic teaching. The Tablet is associated with the country’s old liberal Catholic elite, counting among its trustees such figures as Chris Patten and Sir Gus O’Donnell. A Herald reader, meanwhile, is more likely to be young, intellectual, and strongly influenced by John Paul II and Benedict XVI.

When told of the news, one young churchman welcomed the change as a good move for the generally orthodox Herald against its looser rival. The Tablet is still viewed as “unimpeachably the Catholic paper of record and that is largely because of its format,” he said. While “sorry to hear” about the change, our young churchman conceded that format was the main problem for the Herald and that “the magazine format of the likes of the Tablet is actually a better one than the full newspaper format.”

So the newspaper format’s loss may be Catholic orthodoxy’s gain.

UPDATED 30 OCTOBER 2014

A friend writes in:

Probably sensible in the era of the iPad and smaller-format newspapers. I used to get the print version, then the iPad version, then cancelled my subscription altogether because I’d usually already heard most of the news via various blogs, and because the iPad’s version’s resolution wasn’t high enough and my complaint about it wasn’t heeded.

Moreover, editor Luke Coppen explains his reasoning for the change in an article for the paper.

Published at 11:36 am on Thursday 23 October 2014. Categories: Church Great Britain Newspapers Tags: , .
Comments

The Catholic Herald is now only marginally better than the Tablet. It remains relatively orthodox, but it is politically Left wing, in the image of its editor. But since most British Catholics are also to the Left, I suppose one cannot be critical of this.
Worse though is its papalotry; since the current pope is a raving lunatic, this is not a position likely to recommend the CH to thinking Catholics.

— L Gaylord Clark 3 Nov 2014 9:27 pm

The comment about the Holy Father is offensive, even to people who are not Catholics but Episcopalians.

— Andrew the Gothicist 13 Nov 2014 1:59 am

Well, Gothicist, it’s either that or Modernist heretic, so take your pick.

— L Gaylord Clark 21 Nov 2014 6:39 pm

I am quite sad about it all. I was drawn to the Catholic Herald precisely because it was a quality broadsheet. It had a counter culture feel about it being a world away from those ghastly diocesan magazines I studiously avoided in church porches. Now as the whole Church seems to be succumbing to misery of the mainstream it seems almost allegorical that the Catholic Herald is modelling itself on The Tablet.

— Daniel 23 Nov 2014 11:48 am

Mr Clark is correct in noting that papolatry is a serious problem in the Church. It is an attitude that is not Catholic and would have appalled some of the Church’s greatest Saints.

— aged parent 1 Jan 2015 6:52 pm
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