The Catholic Missions

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The magazine Die Catholic Missionen (KM) was the oldest Roman Catholic mission magazine in German. It appeared from 1873 to 1998 (with the exception of 1939–1946). It was published by the Jesuits . From 1919 the editorial office was in Bonn. The magazine was published by Verlag Herder (except 1923–1938). The successor magazine has been the World Church Forum since 1999 .

history

Beginning in exile

On August 12, 1872, the editors of the Jesuit magazine Voices from Maria Laach (later: Voices of the Time ), founded in 1864, received a memorandum from a reader in which he proposed to publish a second magazine with information on missionary developments in the universal Church. The editors took up the suggestion and developed the new Jesuit magazine The Catholic Missions (KM) as the new Jesuit magazine, based on the weekly magazine Les Missions Catholiques, founded in Lyon in 1869 by the work to spread the faith . The first issue was published on July 1, 1873 while in exile in Tervuren (Belgium), since the Jesuit law of July 4, 1872 banned all Jesuit settlements in the newly founded German Empire. In the years that followed, the editorial team had to move its headquarters through the three Benelux countries four times: from Tervuren to Blyenbeck in 1879 and Exaten in Baexem (municipality of Leudal ) in 1895 (both Netherlands), from there to Luxembourg in 1899 and finally to Valkenburg in 1911 (again the Netherlands ) until she was able to return to Germany after the repeal of the Jesuit Law.

Goals and content

The new magazine wanted to raise the awareness of German Catholics that they belong to a growing world church beyond the diverse national problems of the church ( First Vatican Council , emergence of Old Catholicism and others). She reported at a high level about the activities of the Catholic missionaries and their areas of activity, called for donations and motivated people to pray. The reporting was limited to the previously so-called mission countries in Africa, Asia, Oceania and to individual mission areas in South and North America. In an editorial community with the voices from Maria Laach under the joint editing of the well-known exegete Rudolf Cornely SJ and in good cooperation with the French magazine Les Missions Catholiques , the KM developed quickly and reached a circulation of around 16,500 copies in the first year.

Cornely wrote about Europe and Australia, Alexander Baumgartner SJ about Asia, Wilhelm Kreiten SJ about Africa and Franz von Hummelauer SJ (1842–1914) about America. Other high- ranking employees were Gerhard Schneemann SJ and Joseph Knabenbauer SJ (1839-1911), as well as from 1916 the Franz Xaver researcher and Indian specialist Georg Schurhammer SJ (1882-1971).

Additional journalistic activity for the editorial staff

The KM editors were also active part-time from the start, providing information and advice as well as publications in other publications. The second editor-in-chief, the Swiss Jesuit Joseph Spillmann SJ, added a youth supplement to the magazine, which he developed into an independent series of small volumes called “From faraway lands”. They contained - partly novel-like - stories from the mission and cultural history of the countries dealt with in the magazine. The popular series was very well received and by 1942 had 40 titles with a total circulation of 2 million copies.

The third editor, Anton Huonder SJ, known as the “old master of missiology”, created the “Mission Library” book series from 1907 in addition to his editorial work, which by 1925 grew to 15 volumes. It was published by Verlag Herder and contains treatises on specific problems of missionary activity in the so-called “mission fields”, as well as mission history articles and practical handbooks for the promotion of foreign missions at home.

This also included the expansion of the editorial library into a publicly accessible "Jesuit mission library" with books and magazines from Asia and Africa that were otherwise inaccessible. In the end it comprised around 40,000 volumes including the bound journals. In Bonn it was part of the interlibrary loan system in cooperation with the university library. It was an “insider tip” for professors and students at the university.

Return to Germany

After the Jesuit ban was lifted in 1917, the KM editorial team was able to return to Germany. In the meantime she had become independent of the editing of the Voices from Maria Laach , which had moved to Munich in 1916 under the new name Voices of the Time . The order's leadership assigned the KM editorial staff to the restored Jesuit house in Bonn. In 1919 she moved from Valkenburg and stayed in Bonn until it was dissolved in 1998. The editor was Alfons Väth SJ, who had been a missionary in India for 10 years. The existence of the magazine itself was endangered by the war and post-war years. The individual notebooks had become thin due to the shortage of paper. Inflation weakened the magazine's financial base. The circulation sank to 5,000 by 1925, to 3,000 by 1933. In this situation, the KM editorial team became closer to the Aachen Franziskus-Xaverius-Verein , which was raised in 1922 together with the Ludwig-Missionsverein in Munich to the German-speaking branch of the Pontifical Work of Faith Propagation. The KM from then on bore the subtitle “Illustrated monthly of the Association for the Propagation of Faith in the Lands of German Tongue. Published by the central management in Aachen, Munich and Vienna ”. She had to part with the Herder publishing house and was published by the Xaverius Verein publishing house. The Jesuit editorial team was still responsible for the content, including all missions.

Ban by the National Socialists

From January 1938, the editorial team was increasingly exposed to complaints from the Reich Ministry for Public Enlightenment and Propaganda . In a letter dated April 27th (signed Dürr) to the editor Adolf Heinen SJ (1897–1975), the accusation was raised that the article on church, mission and race was “almost a sabotage of the work of the Führer”. The magazine was banned in August 1938. The editorial team broke up. The Jesuit house in Bonn, in which it was based, was confiscated and bombed during the war. The mission library could be saved by relocating it to a doctor friend in Bonn in good time.

One final highlight

Father Josef Albert Otto SJ (1901–1981), who had been a member of the editorial team until 1939, worked as editor in 1945 for the restoration of the magazine. At first he worked in the ruins of the old house, and by 1952 he achieved a new building in the Bonn Jesuit House, which housed the newly established editorial office and the mission library, which had grown to 15,000 books before it was banned. After intensive negotiations, KM was taken over again by the Herder publishing house. The Priest Missions Union adopted it as a membership gift for priests and pastoral workers and the Papal Work for Propagation of the Faith (later Missio ) offered it again as an alternative to its own membership magazine Weltmission .

In terms of content, entirely new topics were to be dealt with, such as the catchphrase “Germany mission country” or the right allocation of the proclamation of faith and social development, of “church planting”, inculturation , dialogue, ecumenism and finally the understanding of missions of the Second Vatican Council . The restriction of reporting to the "mission areas" in Africa, Asia and Oceania was retained. The material was divided into the headings: Current Information, Thematic Articles, Country Reports, Book Reviews and Printing of Important Documents. The thematic contributions were generally requested from authors in the respective countries. All other contributions, especially the country reports, were written by the members of the editorial team who were each responsible for a geographical area, for Africa JA Schweizer SJ and W. Hoffmann SJ, for South Asia Ludwig Wiedenmann SJ, for Southeast Asia, East Asia and Oceania W. Hunger SJ and F. Hamma SJ. They obtained their information from trips to “their” areas, through correspondence, visitors, conversations, news services, etc. The individual issues were planned in weekly editorial conferences.

The magazine appeared again from 1947, initially in individual issues, and from 1948 every two months with an initial print run of 20,000 copies. It reached its maximum circulation in 1968 with 86,000 copies.

The editorial team also resumed its activities alongside the magazine. It again became the information and advice center on questions relating to the universal Church. The individual editors gave lectures and published in other organs. There were also services and sermons on the so-called Missio Sundays in the congregations. There was also advertised for the purchase of the KM. The editor held block lectures and a seminar on the Council's understanding of missions at the University of Innsbruck and the Philosophical-Theological University of St. Georgen in Frankfurt . He took part in the World Mission Conference in Uppsala in 1968 and became the liaison between the Catholic and Evangelical Mission Councils in Germany. At the invitation of the President of missio in Aachen , he committed himself to a special additional activity . In 1968 he took over the management of the main awareness-raising department of Missio and from 1973 to 1988 the management of the Missio Institute for Missiology , both activities - in Bonn and Aachen - on a part-time basis.

The end

The KM were always a Jesuit magazine. In the last decade of its existence it became apparent that the order could no longer guarantee the continued existence of the editorial team due to a lack of staff. At the end of 1997 the decision was made to give up the magazine. The last issue was issue 3 (May / June) 1998, 125 years after KM was founded. The editorial team was dissolved, the KM archive transferred to the general archive of the German Jesuit Province in Munich, the picture archive to the Völkerkundemuseum in Frankfurt am Main, the mission library and the library of missio Aachen merged under the name MIKADO , the Paulushaus of the Jesuits, seat of the editorial office in Bonn, was sold. After a short interlude, the Herder publishing house and missio Aachen founded the follow-up magazine, Forum Weltkirche .

Editor

literature

  • The Catholic Missions. 50 years 1823–1873, anniversary issue , year 51, 1922/23 pp. 129–150. In this:
    • Alfons Väth SJ: “The Catholic Missions.” A look back. Pp. 129-133.
    • Gustav Lehmacher SJ: The "missions" and the missionaries. Pp. 134-136.
    • Alfons Väth SJ: What were the “Catholic missions” of the homeland? Pp. 136-138.
    • Alfons Väth SJ: From the editors and their work. Pp. 138-141.
    • From the editor: The “Catholic Missions” and the Herdersche Verlag. Pp. 142-144.
    • A. Heinen SJ: The mission library. P. 144.
    • A. Heinen SJ: A walk through the museum. Pp. 145-146.
    • Secretary General Dr. PJ Louis (Aachen): The first meeting of the Central Council of the Faith Society. Pp. 146-150.
  • Ludwig Koch (1878–1936): Jesuit encyclopedia. The Society of Jesus then and now . Verlag Bonifacius-Druckerei, Paderborn 1934, columns 1212-1213.
  • Klaus Schatz SJ: History of the German Jesuits (1814–1983) . 5 volumes. Aschendorff, Münster 2013, ISBN 978-3-402-12964-7
  • Ludwig Wiedenmann: "100 years" The Catholic Missions ". 1873–1973". In: The Catholic missions 92, 1973, pp. 111–112.
  • Ludwig Wiedenmann: "Father Josef Albert Otto SJ 1901–1981. A life for world mission." In: The Catholic Missions 100, 1981, pp. 154–157.

An overview of all articles in the journal can be found in the Mikado library (online)

Web links