By John Norton

OSV readers’ unanimous approval of newspaper redesign

Thank you to all those who responded to my plea for feedback on our new design.

I am gratified to report that so far the letters and e-mails have been unanimously in favor of the redesign. Not many periodicals can say that when they make changes like this! Thank you for the support; and if there are critics out there, don’t hesitate to let me know how you think we could have done it better.

There have been some complaints. I heard from several people disappointed that we’ve discontinued the “This week in Catholic history” segment that used to be on this page (and has been replaced with the “Saint of the week” segment).

As firm believers in the importance of knowing history, and Catholic history, we found this a difficult decision to make.

But a couple of factors swayed us. The history series ran for more than three years, which meant we were approaching exhausting the source we used for the series, “America’s Great, and Not So Great, Catholic Moments Perpetual Calendar,” by Thomas C. Craughwell (OSV, $12.95).

And we haven’t done a series on saints in quite a few years, and thought it was time to reintroduce one. Saints are part of Catholic history, too, and learning about them can be surprisingly powerful sources of grace in our own lives.

Please do let us know the features you like in today’s OSV and those that you’d like to see — we are always looking for ways to improve and make the newspaper more valuable to you.

As always, you can reach me at the mailing address on the masthead below or at feedback@osv.com. Because of the volume of messages I’m unable to reply to each individually, but I can assure you that I read every one.

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Just as with everything else, looks count for newspapers, but content is key.

I think you’ll find the content of this week’s paper particularly interesting and worth your while.

Let me draw attention first to contributing editor Russell Shaw’s deciphering of a slew of statistics and surveys that have recently come out about Catholicism in the United States. He notes that while numbers don’t get at the essentials of faith, they do serve as signposts of deeper religious realities.

Shaw sifts through the data to arrive at some key insights for how we got where we are today and identify where Catholics should be directing their energies to build a healthy Church in this country.

You also won’t want to miss a guest article this week from New York’s Archbishop Timothy M. Dolan (see Page 5). The gregarious and sunny Church historian takes on The New York Times for recent instances of what he calls anti-Catholicism. This article is one that he submitted to the Times, but which the Gray Lady decided not to print. See also our editorial about the archbishop’s observations (Page 19).