Catholic reading material of your Parents and Grandparents

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For those whose parents were/are Catholics ,what books or programmes do you remember them reading and watching when you were young ?
My parents ,and grandparents read Venerable Fulton Sheen’s books and Fr Peytons amoungst many that I remember.
 
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Mostly reading magazines - Our Sunday Visitor, Maryknoll, Liguorian, Catholic Digest etc. Every year a different order would come to the parish and Mother would buy the magazine of the year or whatever material they were selling to help out the good Fathers, Brothers, and Sisters.
 
I wonder if there were radio programmes allotted for Catholics in the US say before the 70’ ?
 
I believe there was a controversial priest, Father Coughlin, who had a radio show in the 1930s. Some of his sermons are on YouTube, but I refuse to watch them even out of curiosity because he was supposedly anti-Semitic.
 
And the Salesians put out little poetry books - maybe they still do. They were light and uplifting and inspirational. I also remember a Catholic book club, the Catholic Digest, and a conservative magazine/newspaper called The Wanderer. Nice trip down memory lane! Thank you!:grinning_face_with_smiling_eyes:
 
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Greenfields said:
I wonder if there were radio programmes allotted for Catholics in the US say before the 70’ ?
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In the United States, sure. But they were mostly local programs. Radio licensees were supposed to be operating in the public interest, and religious broadcasting was part of it. Every station played religious services, although not all of them Catholic.

Here in Pittsburgh, WJAS played the daily mass at noon from St. Patrick’s Church in the strip for decades. WEDO -the station of nations- had ethnic broadcasting, much of it Catholic, WPIT has had religious broadcasting as well, some of it Catholic.
 
Greenfields said:
Vulnerable Fulton Sheen’
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I know you meant Venerable, but this gave me a chuckle. Perhaps he felt pretty “vulnerable” when Spellman was trying to take the money he raised for the missions and use it for his diocese/ his own expenses.

My mother was the one who brought religious books into the house, though she was not a great reader so I’m not sure if she read all of them. There were a couple Fulton Sheen books which I’m pretty sure she did read. I also remember a little blue Scriptural Rosary book that I’m not sure if she ever read, a book on Garabandal that somebody from church gave her that scared me to death, and the Autobiography of St. Therese of Lisieux which I think was a gift from her sister when she was much younger (could have been for confirmation) and which she used to reference sometimes, so that was another one I’m sure she read at some point.

I also remember a lot of those little Legion of Mary pamphlets with the army on the front.

i don’t remember any religious programs until Mother Angelica got started. Mom used to watch her all the time and try to get me to watch. I wish I had done so but I was in the middle of being a lazy sinner and just didn’t want to deal with Mother Angelica at that point. I know she watched Fulton Sheen when he was on TV because she told me about his show and how he had an angel to erase the chalkboard. I am too young to remember the show.
 
Marette said:
I believe there was a controversial priest, Father Coughlin, who had a radio show in the 1930s.
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There was. I was told by my mom that my grandfather listened to Fr. Coughlin regularly and the kids in the family all had to be quiet and not disturb Grandpa while he was listening to Fr. Coughlin. I doubt that Grandpa was anti-Semitic, and he was also very pro-FDR while Coughlin was initially pro-FDR but then switched to being anti-FDR. So it may have been that Grandpa was just interested in hearing what Fr. Coughlin said rather than rabidly agreeing with him, the same way as I’ll occasionally listen to some pundit today. I would also note that at the time Coughlin was on the air, there was a lot of anti-Semitism in society generally - I have an old Readers Digest from that era that contains an article on how Hitler is really quite a swell fellow. Not saying that made it okay, just that it was a far more widely accepted view at the time than it became later on. There is a book on Coughlin called “Radio Priest” that I am planning to read.
 
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In my parents’ house, the TV and radio were always on secular programs. The only Catholic reading material (besides the Bible and various prayer books) was our archdiocesan newspaper, The Tidings, which came weekly.
 
Sounds like an interesting read. I’d like to read it myself. And you are right about the attitudes back then. It’s very disturbing. I’ve heard that FDR himself was not above it. But in all fairness, our country was really suffering back then. Sometimes hard times make for hard attitudes. Your grandpa sounds like my mother - the house was on hold when Billy Graham was on! We were blessed to have them.
 
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