By PAUL A. BARRA

CHARLESTON -- The New Catholic Miscellany is the successor to the first Catholic newspaper ever printed in the United States. On June 5, 1997, it celebrated its 175th anniversary.

The history of The Miscellany is the story of Catholicism in the nation at its beginnings -- a dramatic struggle for survival, replete with national heroes and devastating war. It began in 1822 when the first, great bishop of Charleston was in the second year of his episcopacy.

Bishop John England wrote in defense of his faith and of Irish immigrants from the very beginning of the Diocese of Charleston. Often, he had to buy advertisement space in either the Charleston Mercury or the Charleston Courier to answer nativist attacks. Nativism was a movement prominent in those days that sought to restrict political rights of foreign-born citizens. Irish Catholics were a prime target of nativists in the south. The need Bishop England perceived for a Catholic communications forum in the New World prompted the activist prelate to start up the United States Catholic Miscellany on June 5, 1822.

To market that premiere issue, the bishop laid out a prospectus which was often repeated over the years and which was mailed to friends and potential investors: "Amongst the various wants of the Catholics of these states I do not know of a greater temporal (one) than a weekly paper, the principal scope of which will fair and simple statements of Catholic doctrine from authentic documents, plain and inoffensively exhibited, refutation of calumnies, examination and illustration of misrepresented facts of history, biographies of eminent ecclesiastics and others connected with the Church, reviews of books for and against Catholicity, events connected with religion in all parts of the world, etc."

The new Catholic paper was originally in a magazine format (6"x9") that evolved into an eight-page tabloid-sized paper similar to today's. There were never any photographs published in the USCM. The original circulation was 600 and peaked at 1,030; less than half of the subscribers actually paid the $4 annual subscription rate, according to an article published by the American Catholic Historical Society (the document housed in the diocesan archives bears no citation as to date or authorship). Finances were a continual problem for Bishop England's newspaper.

And it was his paper, especially in the beginning. He wrote most of the articles, signing them either "+John, Bishop of Charleston" or using a non de plume such as "Curiosity" when the piece was not official Church teaching. Bishop England's work was the antithesis of journalistic writing of modern times. He editorialized throughout the paper and his style was the convoluted and stilted form of the nineteenth century. For instance, when he was writing in the July 3, 1822 edition about the duties of pastors with regard to money and marriage, he wrote: "Our 'pious ancestors' were, therefore, sensible as well as pious; they required duties in return for what they settled on the parsons. These parsons were, besides, let it be remembered, unmarried men; and, if we are to impute (and which in justice we ought) the institution of tithes to the piety of our ancestors, we must also impute to their piety the establishing of a priesthood not permitted to marry!" Some of his explanatory articles ran for as many as 20 installments.

Towards the end of Bishop England's long episcopate, editors and writers had assumed many of the writing duties of the USCM — but their style was no less ornate than his. When the bishop died in 1842, The Miscellany reported under the headline, Death of the Bishop: "Our beloved Bishop is no more! After a long and distressing illness, he expired last Monday morning at ten minutes past 5 o'clock, in the 56th year of his age, and 22nd of his Episcopate. We cannot give expression to the feelings of our heart, overwhelmed with grief at this irreparable calamity."

By then there were 1,500,000 Catholics in the nation and other Catholic publications had started up. Bishop Ignatius A. Reynolds continued the United States Catholic Miscellany as a regional newspaper when he was appointed Bishop of Charleston in 1844. His editor was Father Patrick N. Lynch, who was destined to succeed him as bishop in 1858.

Soon after Bishop Lynch's reign began, the clouds of war began scudding into view. South Carolina seceded from the Union in 1860 — and The Miscellany changed its name to reflect its secessionist viewpoint. The banner of the Dec. 29 edition suddenly appeared as "Catholic Miscellany." Starting with the first issue of 1861, the paper was called "Charleston Catholic Miscellany."

The American Catholic Historical Society tried to credit the title change to the paper's smaller range, noting that Georgia had become its own diocese in 1850, but the editor, Father James Corcoran, made no bones about the reason for the change. He wrote that he could no longer tolerate "those two obnoxious words (i.e.: United States), which being henceforth without truth of meaning would ill become the title of the paper." The Miscellany, by whatever name, fared no better than the Confederacy, however. A Dec. 11, 1861 fire swept across the peninsula of Charleston, destroying the Cathedral of St. Finbar, the editorial offices of the paper and its press, along with many other buildings. The Miscellany ceased publication.

Following the War Between the States, Bishop Lynch tried to revive the Catholic paper, but funds to support it were not available in post-bellum South Carolina. It was not until 90 years after The Miscellany went belly-up, when The Catholic Banner appeared in 1951, that the Diocese of Charleston got back into the publishing business.

For a while, The Banner was published as a section of Our Sunday Visitor, a nationally distributed Catholic weekly newspaper. Then in 1960, The Banner became part of a three-diocese consortium, designed and published in Waynesboro, Ga., with some local articles and photographs accompanying national and international copy from a wire service, the Catholic News Service. The editorial offices of The Banner were in Columbia. In 1990, Bishop David B. Thompson returned his diocesan newspaper to its historic roots, renaming it The New Catholic Miscellany and moving it to Charleston.

In March 1995, The Miscellany staff began producing the paper in-house and printing it locally. That same year, the paper won its first national award for excellence.

Last month, Bishop Thompson was presented with the prestigious Bishop John England Award by the Catholic Press Association, a group of 750 magazines, newspapers and newsletters. Named after the founder of the Catholic press in America (and Bishop Thompson's predecessor), the award is "for outstanding performance as a publisher." It was presented exactly two weeks before the 175th anniversary of The Miscellany, the paper that started it all.