In the Press he found a distinct suggestion from above of a change of methods for elevating men to truth and virtue.  In the spring of 1870, while on his way home from the Vatican Council, he wrote to Father Deshon from Assisi: 

“I felt as if I would like to have peopled that grand and empty convent with inspired men and printing-presses.  For evidently the special battle-field of attack and defence of truth for half a century to come is the printing-press.”

He believed in types as he believed in pulpits.  He believed that the printing-office was necessary to the convent.  To him the Apostolate of the Press meant the largest amount of truth to the greatest number of people.  By its means a small band of powerful men could reach an entire nation and elevate its religious life.

This being understood, one is not surprised at the extent of his plans for this Apostolate.  He was never able to carry them out fully.  Not till some years after the founding of the community could he make a fair beginning, although the first volume of the Paulist Sermons appeared in 1861.  Delays were inevitable from the difficulties incident to the opening of the house and church in Fifty-ninth Street, and these were aggravated by the war, which for over four years bred such intense excitement as to interfere with any strong general interest in matters other than political.  But the very month it ended, in April, 1865, Father Hecker started The Catholic World. Its purpose was to speak for religion in high-grade periodical literature.  The year following he founded The Catholic Publication Society, with the purpose of directing the entire resources of the Press into a missionary apostolate.  In 1870 he began The Young Catholic. In literary merit and in illustrations it equalled any of the juvenile publications of that period, and was the pioneer of all the Catholic journals in the United States intended for children.  And finally, in 1871, he projected the establishment of a first-class Catholic daily, securing within a year subscriptions for more than half the money necessary for the purpose, when the work was arrested by the final breaking down of his health.

The Catholic World was considered a hazardous venture.  At the time it was proposed, such modest attempts at Catholic monthlies as had struggled into life had long ceased to exist.  The public for such a magazine seemed to be small.  The priesthood had little leisure for reading, being hardly sufficient in number for their most essential duties; the educated laymen were not numerous, nor remarkable for activity of mind in matters of religion; nearly the entire Church of America was foreign by birth or parentage, and belonged to the toiling masses of the people:  “not many rich, not many noble.”  And, Father Hecker was asked, whom are you going to get to write for the magazine?  How many Catholic literary men and women do you know of?  Prudence,