By Michael Patrick O’Brien–
In an era when hate and bigotry seem to be on the rise, I think it is interesting that on Sundays, most American Catholics worship, read, and sing along at church using booklets produced by a sentinel organization originally founded to combat such hatred and bias.
The Oregon Catholic Press (OCP), which produces the missals used in about two thirds of American Catholic churches today, was established almost 100 years ago to combat the hatred espoused by the Ku Klux Klan. In the early 1920s the Klan was very active in Oregon and Catholics were one of its main targets. The local archbishop established the Catholic Truth Society of Oregon, OCP’s original name, to counter the Klan and provide accurate information about the Church and its activities.
Continuing its mission to provide helpful information to Catholics, in 1934 OCP started publishing English language missals at a time when Mass was said in Latin. OCP’s books allowed congregants to follow along in church and better understand their own liturgies. OCP also acquired and started publishing The Catholic Sentinel, the official newspaper of the Archdiocese of Portland. Today, OCP is one of the largest publishers, in multiple languages, of Catholic music and liturgical resources in the world.
I toured OCP’s facilities on a recent visit to Portland and spoke with Customer Service Manager Tim Dooley. Tim explained how, in a difficult environment today for publishers of all kinds, OCP has managed to find a niche and not just survive, but thrive. No doubt some of that is due to hard work and good planning.
Still, some of that success also may be due to good karma, flowing from OCP’s origins as a sentinel against hatred and as an advocate for truth and information. In 1927, near the time OCP started its work, Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis wrote, “If there be time to expose through discussion the falsehood and fallacies, to avert the evil by the processes of education, the remedy to be applied is more speech, not enforced silence.”
For almost a century, OCP has demonstrated the truth of the words written by English novelist and playwright Edward Bulwer-Lytton: “The pen is mightier than the sword.”
