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| Our Sunday Visitor |
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Nomination: For its role as American Religious Publisher
Our Sunday Visitor was founded more than 90 years ago at a time when ours was an immigrant Church. Then-Father Noll recognized that the twin threats to the faith were the anti-Catholicism of the day and the lack of religious knowledge among Catholics. Our Sunday Visitor strove to meet both of those threats, and its goal was, and is, to help Catholics see the world through the eyes of faith. That is, to help Catholics see that the faith is not something to be kept cloistered in a sacristy, or to be acknowledged only on Sundays. It is instead a call to sanctity, a vision, a way of life that involves our work, our family, our community, our nation, our world.
This impulse led Father Noll to create a weekly newspaper that in turn partnered with and supported diocesan newspapers around the country. He founded The Priest magazine. He began the use of offertory envelopes in Catholic churches, a business that continues to this day. He also created dozens of pamphlets that communicated the faith simply and easily. He wrote and published Father Smith Instructs Jackson, a straightforward work of evangelization that remains in print.
Through the years of his service to the Church, Father Noll was raised to the rank of Archbishop. He died in 1956, but his goals continue to guide our organization. Today we publish not only Our Sunday Visitor weekly newspaper and The Priest, but also The Catholic Answer, My Daily Visitor, Catholic Parent and Grace in Action, a monthly stewardship newsletter. We also publish more than 500 book and religious education titles and we have returned to publishing pamphlets, selling millions of them each year. We are publishers of the Catholic Almanac, a 600 page annual resource that is unrivaled in its encyclopedic thoroughness. We published the first early childhood religious education program, and we publish a variety of sacramental preparation materials for adults and children. We were also selected by the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops to be the primary distributor of the second edition of the Catechism of the Catholic Church.
In all of these efforts, our goal remains the same as Archbishop Noll’s. Today, anti-Catholicism may be either secular or denominational in its origin, but Catholics continue to need apologetic resources to answer objections and assert the true teachings of the Church. And education in the faith remains a vital goal for us. Our mission continues to be clear and simple explanations of what the Church teaches and why.
Finally, we also have the Our Sunday Visitor Institute. Income produced by both the publishing and offering envelope divisions is transferred to this Institute to provide funding for a wide variety of Catholic organizations, ranging from the Pontifical Council for Social Communications and the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops to grassroots organizations in every state and every diocese.
Our Sunday Visitor serves the Church in three ways:- Publishing solid, trustworthy materials to promote the faith.
- Producing church offering envelopes and a wide variety of stewardship materials.
- Returning a portion of its income every year to the wider church community in the form of assistance to local and national projects.
The hundreds of dedicated employees, past and present, take great pride in these contributions, and in the opportunity Our Sunday Visitor provides them to serve the Church. We appreciate the recognition bestowed on these efforts by the St. Bernadette Institute of Sacred Art, and thank them for this honor.
Gregory R. Erlandson
President
Our Sunday Visitor Publishing Division
For more information on Our Sunday Visitor, please visit: www.osv.com
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