The flagship publication of the Pflaum Publishing Company, Young Catholic Messenger provided reading material for children in Catholic schools for the better part of a century: from May 1885 to May 1970. The document above shows the inner pages of a teacher’s edition from one of the final issues. Please read the excerpts below.

Excerpts

Dear Catholic Educator:

For 85 years the George A. Pflaum organization has served Catholic education. We are proud that this distinguished publisher, in discontinuing the Messenger periodicals, has recommended Scholastic’s magazine as their successors in Catholic classrooms.

We are no strangers. Scholastic — with 50 years in educational publishing — already serves more than three-fourths of the nation’s Catholic schools with magazines and book clubs.

In today’s world, Mr. George Pflaum, Jr. believes, distinctively Catholic publications are no longer as effective as secular periodicals in supporting the curriculum in social studies, science, and language arts.

Mr. Pflaum points out, too, that Scholastic publications are built on the same ethical and moral standards that have so long characterized the Pflaum materials.

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• Because Scholastic Magazines have no religious content, they can be purchased with public funds.

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These are but a few of the ways in which a Scholastic magazine helps bring the wider world into your classroom every week, carrying on the honored tradition of the George A. Pflaum publications.

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Sincerely yours,

Struges F. Cary, Publisher

Questions

1. Why might Mr. George Pflaum, Jr. have felt that “distinctively Catholic publications” were no longer necessary in 1970? What changed?

2. How does the ability to purchase Scholastic magazines with public funds relate to the familiar debate over the separation of Church and State?