The Wanderer A Brief History 159 Years . . .
A Look Back And Ahead
Under the editorship of Joseph Matt (the present publisher’s great grandfather),
Der Wanderer was instrumental in promoting the principles of the Church’s
social teaching as set forth in Pope Leo XIII’s great encyclical, Rerum
Novarum. The paper was supportive of labor unions which organized with a
sense of solidarity among their members, who usually belonged to a specific
craft or trade. On the other hand, it was skeptical of the large industrial
unions which often promoted their objectives with appeals to class conflict and
ideology — an approach rejected in the social encyclicals.
In 1931 Der Wanderer was joined by The Wanderer published
in English, and the two journals published concurrently until 1957 when the
German language Der Wanderer ceased publication. During the 1930s and
1940s, Wanderer editors were much involved in the growing liturgical
movement in the United States led by Dom Virgil Michel, O.S.B., of St. John’s
Abbey in Collegeville, Minn
esota.
As the world watched the rise to power in Germany of Adolf Hitler with fear and
fascination, The Wanderer was among the first to denounce Nazism as
totalitarian and antithetical to Christian principles. In September of 1933, the
newspaper was barred from Germany where it reached some 1,200 readers. During
World War II, its editor, Joseph Matt, monitored the course of the war each
week, and published a series of brilliant and penetrating analyses of the long
range geopolitical effects of what he saw as an unholy alliance between the
Western powers and Communist Russia. He rightly predicted the move by Josef
Stalin to expand Soviet hegemony as Nazi power was crushed and the West
hesitated to challenge the Soviets. Not surprisingly, as the war drew to a close
in 1945, the official Soviet newspaper, Pravda, demanded that the U.S.
government suppress The Wanderer “for urging the Allies to make war on the
Soviet Union or expel her from the United Nations.”
Reflecting upon the 125 years of The Wanderer’s history in 1992, Al
Matt Jr. (current publisher’s father) while pondering this journal’s future,
realized that the challenges that lie ahead are no different fundamentally from
those which have marked not only The Wanderer’s past but the two thousand
year history of the Church.
Over sixty years ago, in a commentary appearing in the first issue in
English of The Wanderer, (the present writer’s great-grandfather), editor
Joseph Matt, assessed the mood of society as war clouds gathered and the world
lurched into the Great Depression.
“The present crisis,” he declared, “is not an upshot of a temporary
disarrangement, but the logical consequence of conditions created by wrong ideas
that have prevailed too long and urgently demand a thorough reconstruction of
our social order on the foundation of solidarity, under the lodestars of justice
and charity.”
And what were those wrong ideas? Joseph Matt’s words are as descriptive
of today’s disordered world as they were of the world in 1931:
“Our age inclines to superficiality. It does not care to be bothered
with principles. It does not believe in unchangeable laws and principles. It
prefers to believe with Rousseau in the social contract, in the right of every
age and every generation to set up standards of its own. It is satisfied with
makeshifts, leaving it to posterity to be burdened with the consequences of the
foolishness and stupidity of preceding generations.
“This has been a characteristic of every age since Liberalism came into power.
It has been a characteristic of our own country for many years, no matter what
party had the majority.”
Vatican II And After
The Wanderer‘s long history and “institutional memory” served it well
with the opening of the momentous Second Vatican Council and the generation that
has since followed. Breaking the Church out of what some observers termed a
“siege mentality” into a fresh approach to evangelization and dialogue with the
world, the council unleashed both positive and destructive energies. The
Wanderer itself suffered from the divisions and upheavals following the
council. In 1967 editor Walter Matt left the newspaper over a dispute about the
meaning of Vatican II. He saw it not so much as a reform and a renewal of the
Church but as a revolution that threatened to undermine the Church herself. His
brother, Alphonse J. Matt, Sr. (the present writer’s grandfather), took over the
reins at The Wanderer and reminded its readers that the real intent of
the council was a renewed evangelization of the world for Christ and a personal
renewal of every individual Catholic.
For The Wanderer, the council was not a rejection or an
abandonment of tradition, but a development of that tradition, safeguarded for
2,000 years by the Holy Spirit, to better enable the Church to c
ontinue
to bring the Gospel to all men. The years since the council were turbulent ones
both for the Church and The Wanderer. A spirit of dissent,
experimentation, and innovation pervaded many members of the clergy, religious,
and theologians. The effects on catechetics, liturgy, and traditional Catholic
practices were significant. Even bishops were divided in their views of the
council. The single most divisive issue in the postconciliar Church was that of
contraception (brought into sharp focus with the development of the “Pill” in
the early 1960s), and it created renewed and controversial debates on sexuality.
Pope Paul VI met this challenge and hoped to resolve the problem with the
encyclical Humanae Vitae. The Wanderer was unyielding in its defense of
that encyclical and helped to mobilize support for Humanae Vitae by
joining some other Catholic leaders in organizing Catholics United for the
Faith.
The Wanderer found itself more and more in op
position
to the theologians, clerics, religious, and bishops who used the council as the
pretext for advancing new and untraditional programs. The newspaper was a
vigorous opponent of the Call to Action Program in 1976 which threatened to
loosen the ties of the Church in the United States to the Vatican and to focus
on social change with a leftwing bent. Some new catechisms, liturgies, and
scriptural theories were frequent targets of The Wanderer‘s writers and
editorialists.
Al Matt Jr.’s lengthy tenure with The Wanderer coincided with the era
of dissent following the close of the Second Vatican Council.
The revision of the rite of the Sacrifice of the Mass ordered by Pope Paul VI
after Vatican II created divisions among Catholics. While The Wanderer
did express some reservations about the extent and character of the reforms, the
editors defended the authority of Paul VI over the liturgy. This stance led
thousands of readers to end their subscriptions — not the last time The
Wanderer would lose subscriptions over a controversial editorial position!
The revision of the rite of the Sacrifice of the Mass ordered by Pope
Paul VI after Vatican II created divisions among Catholics. While The
Wanderer did express some reservations about the extent and character of the
reforms, the editors defended the authority of Paul VI over the liturgy. This
stance led thousands of readers to end their subscriptions — not the last time
The Wanderer would lose subscriptions over a controversial editorial
position!
Many of those lost subscribers pointed to widespread abuses in the
liturgy as the reason for their rejection of the Second Vatican Council and the
Novus Ordo. The Wanderer reported extensively on episodes of those
abuses, calling on the bishops to act to end liturgical experimentation and
disobedience. This was a frequent subject of Al Matt’s editorials.
For example, in the May 17, 2001 Wanderer, he wrote an editorial
entitled, “The Bishops Can End Our Liturgical Nightmare,” in which he welcomed
Liturgiam Authenticam, the Vatican’s fifth instruction “For the Right
Implementation of the Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy of the Second Vatican
Council.”
He wrote: “While The Wanderer properly accepted Pope Paul VI’s
promulgation of the Novus Ordo Mass, this journal also accepted the principles
of translation into the vernacular insisted upon by Pope Paul VI and the council
fathers. That these principles have not been followed — even that most
fundamental one that the underlying theology of the Latin texts must be evident
in the translation — has filled hundreds of The Wanderer’s pages during
the last 30 years.”
“Now, The Wanderer is a leader in promoting the reforms of
Summorum Pontificum, Pope Benedict XVI’s 2007 motu proprio allowing
for wider use of the Traditional liturgy. Its many columnists and contributors
are hailing the advent of the new, corrected translation in the United States.”
The newspaper has also highlighted the Pope’s 2009 apostolic constitution
Anglicanorum Coetibus, providing personal ordinariates to enable Anglicans
to enter the Catholic Church, and his 2009 encyclical Caritas in Veritate,
which explains how charity in truth is at the heart of the Church’s social
teaching. Also under Al Matt Jr.’s leadership, The Wanderer has
continually and forcefully defended Catholic teaching and discipline on marriage
and the sanctity of life against the onslaught of critics, whether within or
without the Church. Throughout the pontificates of Pope John Paul II and Pope
Benedict XVI, The Wanderer has espoused those Popes’ magnificent
teachings on these vital issues.
The Wanderer continued its vital role in the Catholic press under
the editorship of Peggy Moen who spent over 30 years as our associate editor. It
was only fitting that she be given the role as editor when editor emeritus Al
Matt Jr., retired in 2014. Because of her able and broad experience she was a
natural to fulfill that role. Her ability to measure the pulse and importance of
the issues of the day was second to none and the Wanderer continued to
fulfill its purpose through her editorship up until her retirement in the Spring
of 2024. To this day The
Wanderer remains the oldest independent national Catholic newspaper in
America. We are loyal to the Magisterium of The Catholic church and committed to
providing our readership with news, commentary, and catechesis without
compromising Catholic orthodoxy.
Joseph Matt – Editor, Publisher
