THE REGISTER HAD FEWER CHOICES IN ITS MAKE-UP KIT than the Tely: only white space, two fonts in a few sizes, boldface or italics, thin or wide black borders, and a few graphics. Bill had to read all copy, not merely scan as editors usually do, because items came from both amateur and professional writers in seven dioceses of Ontario, from the news service of the Canadian Catholic Conference of Bishops, and other sources in Canada and the States. He often let American spellings through. Aside from all that, his minimal workforce did not include a proofreader.
Nevertheless, when I scanned issues from the previous two years to get a feel for the paper's style, I saw that he had already made The Register more attractive to look at and to read. I was delighted to help.
On the family page on December 10, 1960, my byline appeared on
"THE 'MONEY STANDARD'
"Death, $$$ and dignity
"Death is inevitable. That simple fact has led to the evolution of countless funeral customs since the first human died. And, as an article entitled 'The funeral business' in the November issue of Jubilee magazine* reports, it also provides a lucrative occupation for morticians (apparently 'undertaker' is no longer correct).
"The article, termed 'a report on the high cost of dying,' says that funeral expenses in the United States add up to more than $900 per death. Commenting on the article, TIME Magazine writes 'There is keen competition among embalming houses to help make the dead look healthier than their mourners.' Indeed if, as the Jubilee article states, 'at the base of the business still is embalming,' then there is something fundamentally wrong, for advertisements about embalming fluid claim 'Nature's own way to soft skin texture,' and a 'cosmetic effect to restore lifelike appearance, thus comforting the bereaved.'
"IT IS OBVIOUS THAT in our day 'it costs money to have death seem like fun,' as the Jubilee article notes, but the helplessness of survivors who must make arrangements for the burial of a loved one arises from the sad fact that the public is poorly informed regarding how to cope with high-pressure sales by morticians, and no one is in a position for comparative shopping when the need arises....
"The Toronto Memorial Society is a group of citizens who decided four years ago to encourage simplicity, dignity and moderate expense in funeral arrangements. It wishes to discourage 'money standard' thinking concerning funerals...".
And thus we launched a war in print, very frank yet remarkably polite by today's standards. Bill summed things up on the front page of January 21, 1961.
"DEPLORES 'PAGAN' FUNERALS
"Delegate decries high cost of dying
"By WILLIAM B. deMEZA [He never cared about the size of that 'd' in his surname.]
"OTTAWA – Canada's funeral directors have been urged to make 'an agonizing reappraisal' of their profession, 'not only of price structures, but also of pagan customs and trappings that have crept into the industry.' The alternative, warns Archbishop Sebastiano Baggio, Apostolic Delegate to Canada, 'may well be that Christian communities, in their dissatisfaction, will set up cooperatives to operate according to the dictates of Christian conscience and to their means.'
"The Archbishop's comments were contained in a letter to James O'Hagan, Jr., executive secretary-treasurer of The Funeral Directors' Association of Canada and managing editor of the Association's national publication, Canadian Funeral Service. Mr. O'Hagan, himself a Catholic, had written to the Apostolic Delegate asking for his views on an editorial in the Dec. 10 issue of The Canadian Register [the same day as my article] because it 'seems to us to be contradictory to the policy of the Catholic Church as we understand it.'...
"Mr. O'Hagan wanted the Apostolic Delegate's views to appear in the January issue of Canadian Funeral Service. He termed the position of The Register 'of extraordinary national (and international) importance' because the newspaper is 'an official Catholic publication, organ of the Catholic Church Extension Society of Canada.'
"Archbishop Baggio wrote Mr. O'Hagan that he subscribed to The Register's stand. 'You have inquired whether or not I approved the general statement of the editor as expressed in this editorial –- and I must say I do,' he said. 'The high cost of funerals is a fact that no one can deny –- and the editor lays the blame for this at the door of the general public itself, in its worldly desire to make a showing before neighbors and friends.'...
"'The Catholic Church has no policy concerning funeral directors -– nor about the prices they charge. But the Church teaches the reality and real significance of death -– it is a penalty for sin, but it is also the gateway to God in heaven.... Death should not be camouflaged by cosmetics or any other device.
"Regarding 'cheaper funerals' and the loss of human dignity, contemporary English distinguishes between that which is inexpensive and that which is cheap, in the sense of being vulgar. Human dignity is never lost when man acts according to reason, with prudence and moderation, and thus according to his faith and his means. There is no loss in dignity because of poverty. Indeed, there is a dignity in poverty that is unequalled by any other dignity of this earth – it was the only earthly dignity chosen by God for his Divine Son.
"Thus for a poor man to choose an inexpensive funeral (if and when such is available) for a loved one, is eminently dignified, for it is in keeping with faith, reason and common sense. When a poor man attempts to make a lavish display – with all the modern trappings of questionable taste – that is obviously beyond his means, it is then that he suffers a loss of dignity and has put on an expensive show that has been cheap and vulgar...'."
"Archbishop Baggio concluded by writing 'In view of the growing public sentiment, as evidenced by editorial comment in various publications, that the cost of dying is getting out of all proportion, it might be well for the association of Funeral Directors to make an 'agonizing reappraisal' not only of price structures but also of pagan customs and trappings that have crept into the industry'."
Articles were contributed to the debate by religious publications in both Canada and the States. I felt sorry for Mr. O'Hagan, caught between his own Catholicism and the industry in which he earned his living. Only a couple of letters to us defended him and the funeral industry.
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Halfway through all that, Bill did something that attracted many more letters. Our publication dates were always Saturdays, but in 1960 he decided to publish a front page on Saturday December 24 reporting Christ's birth as contemporary front page news that had happened during the previous night. All the stories would have the placeline "Bethlehem, Dec. 25" and the assignment was all mine.
Doing the research was easy. I read the four Gospels in a Douay bible and asked Fr. Hanley where to find prophetic verses in the Old Testament. It surprised us how few facts the Bible provides. I studied a map of Bethlehem's environs in Christ's time, and read about the topography. Finally, I sat down and had huge fun, over-lapping stories as if several reporters had covered the event.
(Okay, so that was padding, but there were very few genuine truths to report, and this was not an opportunity to exercise my imagination.)
Bill alerted readers in a boxed item in the upper right corner: "The Register has attempted here to reconstruct the first accounts of the Nativity and its impact as they might have been reported in a newspaper of that time."
Heads on the eight articles were: Census brought visitors, Crowds obstruct census, Birth foretold in prophecies, Eastern leaders on way, Shepherds tell unusual story, Sheep are left unguarded, safe, Girl born blind sees, News of Birth dismays Herod. In the story about shepherds, I wrote that they met the new parents, who "have called their boy Jesus. He is the first born of Mary, who is about 16 years of age. Both mother and child are doing well".
In 1960 that last sentence was standard in Canadian birth notices. Bill congratulated me for my unoriginality and then grinned about it for days.
In the item about Herod I wrote "King Herod was not available to comment on the event. Chief priests here have not commented officially on the child's birth and his qualifications for fulfilling the prophecies concerning the Messias. However, it is reported that one of the priests noted that Isaias ix, 7, refers to an empire and suggests that the Messias will sit upon the throne of David and establish and strengthen it with judgment and justice. The priest is said to have observed that "these things can hardly be expected of a child born to a poor woman in an animal shelter."
The overt skepticism which was the whole point of the page did not please Fr. Hanley. He wanted 'child' capitalized. He added large drawings, put all of Luke Chapter 2 verses 1-20 in one bottom corner and a blurb about contemporary Christmas art in the other. These reduced the overall impact of the whole, but our only alternative was white space, a no-no in those days, so Bill and I didn't argue.
Having done our best, we locked up the page and left. The dear Monsignor, however, worked on into the evening. He crammed a banner across the top of the page, in space we normally left white: "Redeemer, long expected, born in Bethlehem". The next morning, the typesetters and composing room staff put the paper together right on schedule. Before we began our day.
Bill entered The Register in various categories for awards presented annually by a newspaper association in the US. He was gauging his progress with the paper's renaissance. After the presentations for 1960 were made one of the judges, a good friend of his, wrote saying our Christmas front page would have won "best in show" in a cakewalk if not for that banner head. (Bill shared that news only with his wife and me.)
Monsignor Hanley was one of the most extraordinary characters we could imagine to be working and surviving in journalism. Without a drop of printer's ink in his veins, he had spent most of his long life producing The Register because at his ordination he took a vow of obedience, and one day his bishop assigned him to the editor's desk. Unaware that he was a large square peg in a small round hole, he worked incredibly hard at learning on the job, keeping up with changing technology, overcoming the disinterest of the paper's owners, their politics, the feeble pulse of the large Ontario community he served.
All the while he much preferred his role as the crossroads of Newman Club activities across Canada, single-handedly keeping its clubs and chaplains in touch with each other. The man in fact did those two huge jobs superbly well, I still appreciate him years after his death, and I thank God for sending him in to my life.
* Jubilee was a Catholic literary magazine published in the States between 1953 and 1967, with Thomas Merton as an editor, Dorothy Day and the Berrigan brothers as contributors.
CHAPTER 16 of GLIMPSES -- 30