Happy birthday to us

Birthdays are important.

They’re especially important to young children, who often have days of festivities and multiple cakes, what with parties for friends, in-school celebrations and family gatherings. They’re also prime gift-giving (or, from the birthday child’s perspective, gift-receiving) occasions.

As children get older, the parties get smaller but the gifts sometimes get bigger, especially with the plethora of hand-held electronic devices available now. The message parents want to send remains the same, though: We love you. You’re important to us. We’re grateful for the gift God gave us in bringing you into our lives.

Adult birthdays are different; families still celebrate, of course, but everything is ratcheted down a notch or several. No one over 6 wears a birthday hat without irony, and gifts often are optional. Parties beyond close family and friends usually are reserved for the big milestone birthdays. It’s more of a time for taking stock than shouting to the world, “Look at me!”

As any regular readers no doubt already know, Chicago Catholic just celebrated a birthday on Sept. 10, and it was a big milestone: 125 years. We’ve changed our name a few times — almost as often as we’ve changed our address.

Because it was a big milestone, we had a party: Cardinal Cupich celebrated Mass for us, and then we had pizza and cake (and balloons!) with other archdiocesan employees at Archbishop Quigley Center.

We also took stock, spending more time reading archives and paging through bound copies of previous years’ papers than we usually do. This paper started around the time of the 1893 Columbian Exposition; during its history, the United States has endured two world wars and the Great Depression in between, sent people into space and seen dramatic changes in civil rights. 

The church has been led by 11 popes, and has seen the changes wrought by the Second Vatican Council.

The newspaper industry is also facing existential challenges, as the information technology revolution has led people to look for easier-to-access, free sources of information. Diocesan newspapers are not immune.

We at Chicago Catholic remain committed to delivering the news of the church, now in print and online. Former editors, some retired and some still active, confirm that while our methods may have changed, our job remains the same.

Former managing editor Christopher Gunty started at Chicago Catholic as an intern and has worked in nine dioceses all over the country. He is now editor and associate publisher at the Catholic Review in Baltimore. He said:

“The regional issues are different, sometimes, from what I first experienced in Chicago. But in many ways, we’re still trying to tell the same story: How does our faith in Jesus Christ affect the way Catholics live, and how do we show the face of Jesus to our readers?”