The Catholic Miscellany

To market the premiere issue, England 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 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).

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.

The American Catholic Historical Society credited 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, 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."

In 1990, Bishop David B. Thompson returned the diocesan newspaper to its historic roots, renaming it The New Catholic Miscellany and moving the editorial offices to Charleston.

Thompson was presented with the Bishop John England Award by the Catholic Press Association, a group of hundreds of magazines, newspapers and newsletters.

The newspaper was discontinued in June 2021 in favor of a magazine, produced by The Miscellany staff and designed and printed by Faith Catholic.

The Catholic Miscellany magazine is a 32-page, full color publication mailed monthly to approximately 65,000 households across the state of South Carolina.