Rome Stoops to Conquer (1935)

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The University of Chicago Libraries

GIFT OF

Clarence H. Wentworth

Rome STOOPS TO CONQUER

Rome STOOPS TO CONQUER

by DR. E. BOYD BARRETT

AUTHOR OF "The Jesuit Enigma" "While Peter Sleeps" "The Magnificent Illusion," Etc.

JULIAN MESSNER, INC. New York

Copyright, 1935, by JULIAN MESSNER, INC.

THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO

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CHICAGO, ILL.

Rift of Harcourt , Newbury .

Copyright, 1935, by

JULIAN MESSNER, Inc.

THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO

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BY MONTAUK BOOKBINDING CORP., NEW YORK

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

CHAPTER

I. TWILIGHT REVOLT . . . . . 1

II. CATHOLIC ACTION . . . . . 15

III. WINNING THE WORKER . . . . 32

IV. PUBLIC SAFETY . . . . . 47

V. THE LADY NEXT DOOR . . . . 61

VI. A FIGHTING PRESS . . . . . 77

VII. INFILTRATION OF CATHOLIC THOUGHT . 94

VIII. INTERDENOMINATIONALISM . . . . 110

IX. THE FIGHT AGAINST BIRTH CONTROL . 126

X. THE CHURCH'S AIM IN POLITICS . . . 145

XI. THE STRANGE CASE OF FATHER NORMAN . 158

XII. THE JESUITS AND THE JEWS . . . . 176

XIII. THE CATHOLIC CHURCH AND COMMUNISM . . . . .

FOREWORD

"We must have in this country the right to speak our honest thoughts or we shall perish."

Rome STOOPS TO CONQUER

CHAPTER I

TWILIGHT REVOLT

FROM an insignificant group of 25,000 adherents, shepherded by thirty poor priests, in 1789, the Catholic Church of America has grown to be a congregation of 20,000,000, led by thirty thousand priests. From being propertyless, she has become a rich institution, whose wealth exceeds two billion dollars. From being a despised and scattered flock, she has become the most perfectly organized body in the world enjoying immense influence and power. Bearing in mind her material and spiritual autonomy, her individualism, her close-knit interests and definite aims, her sharp separateness from all other institutions, one must regard her as a unique entity in the nation, an entity whose swift and ceaseless growth indicates a great destiny.

The American people watched with concern and suspicion the development of the Catholic Church in this country. They strove to thwart her growth with contempt and occasional blows. They had little sympathy for her. Wrote Cardinal Gibbons in 1876: "Upon the Church's fair and heavenly brow her enemies put a hideous mask and in that guise exhibited her to the insults and mockery of the public." Fifty years later the same kind of injustice was complained of by Archbishop McNicholas 1 : "The Catholic Church has beer

1 Cincinnati, 1929.

held up to men as an object to be hated and feared. She has been described as anti-Christ; the epitome of evil. She has been scorned as an alien incapable of assimilating American ideals. She is said to await only the opportunity to effect the destruction of American institutions."

But neither animosity nor injury succeeded in stemming the tide of Catholicism. The battle was lost. Irony, contempt and blows failed of their purpose. The "mustard seed" has grown into a mighty tree. Today the American people are silent about the Catholic Church: silent and apprehensive.

The Catholic Church has dug herself securely into American life and her social status has improved from year to year. She is highly esteemed for her good citizenship. In a hundred walks of life Catholics rank as leaders. In the Great War Catholics were as foolishly patriotic as other citizens and as generous in the sacrifices they made. In commercial and civil life individual Catholics mix and mingle and their identity as Catholics is completely submerged until, perhaps, some practical interest of the Church crops up and then their religious affiliation is revealed.

The Catholic Church has gained in the esteem of religious minded and conservative Americans because of two salient characteristics; namely, her consistency in moral doctrine and her constancy of purpose.

The Church has a moral code and has stuck to it. In no serious respect has she deviated from traditional morals. In an age of subversive and bewildering theories she has remained her sober, dogmatic self. With unwavering consistency she has opposed divorce, free love in all its forms, contraception in its modern mechanical forms, godless education and Marxism. On the whole she has been splendidly faithful to her duty of teaching "hard sayings" while other Churches have shamelessly compromised on many moral doctrines.

Her constancy of purpose in pursuing the ambitions which she holds to be legitimate is equally outstanding. From the first she has laid claim to a unique divine mission which entitles her to "teach all nations." She has held and still holds it her exclusive right and duty to teach Americans, "to make America Catholic" (Archbishop Ireland). In holding, as she holds, that she is "the pillar and the ground of truth" and that her teaching is inerrant and indefectible, she is perfectly logical in her conduct. Her ambition to dominate American thought and regulate American manners is self-confessed. "She has no secrets to keep back. . . Everything in the Catholic Church is open and above board" (Cardinal Gibbons). She calls on all Americans to hear her voice and obey her counsels. Error has no rights in her eyes, nor is it ever lawful to hide the truth. No other church shares with her this sublime, if often misrepresented, intolerance.

The Catholic Church in America is strong; stronger than any other group; stronger perhaps than any possible confederation of groups. Her strength does not derive from her property alone, nor from the mere numbers of her children however many they be, but from the enduring cohesion which possesses her organization and from the mysterious, inflammable texture of the Catholic mind.

Her strength has grown apace under the remarkably able leadership of the present Pope, Pius XI. He has given the best of his singular ability to the supervision and direction of the Catholic campaign in America. For him our country is a battlefield on which is being waged the greatest struggle of the Church's history. The conquest of America is the supreme objective at which he aims. He despairs of the Old World with its interminable outbreaks against the Church and the multiplicity of divisions between peoples that entail internecine strife among his children.

Besides, the Old World is in receivership. Pius is well aware that the Catholic Church can never hope again to dominate the civilized world until America kneels, beaten and penitent, at her feet.

It is characteristic of the Pope's strategy in guiding American Catholics that he has launched them on Catholic Action, and that he has taught them to enlarge and remodel the Catholic Press.

Catholic Action is not avowedly politics, indeed, in theory is far removed therefrom. It is the share the laity takes in "the apostolate of the bishops"; work done by laymen and laywomen on behalf of the Church under obedience to their pastors. But in fact, a large proportion of Catholic Action partakes of politics, and is a political penetration, an infiltration into the political world of a new force and agency. In writing to the Knights of Columbus, Cardinal Pacelli, on behalf of His Holiness, delicately avowed this aim. He urged on the Knights to a widespread rally of Catholic manhood as necessary for "the practical solution of those problems of social and civil life which put such severe tests on the souls of Catholics."

In teaching American Catholics this new phase of Catholicism, this active phase, and in sanctifying it with his blessing, Pius XI rendered inevitable many significant changes in the life-course of this nation.

Of the new Catholic Press there will be much to say later on. It suffices for the moment to refer to its outspoken boldness and to its remarkable success in stirring up the spirit of the Catholic masses and awakening in them a sense of their immense power. Thanks largely to their Press, a seething energy fills American Catholics.

From end to end of the land they are men of action, united, confident of the future, and militant. Of late they have given many remarkable displays of their mobility as a force to influence public manners. The Legion of Decency was such a display. At the word of the bishops ten thousand meetings were held; a hundred thousand inflammatory pieces were printed in the Catholic Press; ten million Catholics signed pledges. The move was so sudden and violent that a score of non-Catholic bodies were carried along with it and joined ranks with the Catholics. The energy and organizing genius of Catholic Action was demonstrated. No such stupendous social maneuver could be achieved by any other American group.

Writes the editor of the Catholic journal, Commonweal: "The Catholic Church today is positively active on a scale and with an intensity of disciplined energy which is of vital concern to all thoughtful men and women who wish to know something of the great forces which are contending today for the leadership and control of the thoughts and actions of mankind. . . . That the Catholic Church is, to say the least, certainly one of the major forces of the world . . . is generally admitted. Its own claim, of course, is that it is incomparably, uniquely, the supreme spiritual power in all the world."1

This "admittedly major force of the world" is focused today on the problem of the future of this country. The possibilities of the situation provoke deep and enduring interest. To minds that distrust Catholicism, what is called "the menace of Rome" looms greater than ever before. To minds that see in Catholicism the regenerative force of the world, the future is bright with hope.

The importance of mass meetings as well as mass movements in maintaining the morale of their subjects is well known to the Catholic hierarchy of America. No diocese is left long without a well-staged display of numbers and strength. The effect of these demonstrations on the Catholic mind is well illustrated by a story told of a poor woman who attended a vast meeting organized by Archbishop Curley at Baltimore in June, 1934, to celebrate "The Birth of Maryland." There were 70,000 priests, nuns, papal knights and laity present. The poor woman had come a long journey but what she witnessed compensated her for her pains. "When you see all this," she cried, "you can only say that the Catholic Church can do anything."

The purpose of the meeting was avowedly to remind the American people of the contribution which the Catholic Church had made in the person of Lord Baltimore, to the doctrine of religious freedom. The Jesuit editor of America, in commenting, described it as "another of those events which bear overwhelming testimony to the fact that the Catholic Church is bound up with all that is great in America's past, present, and future." His bold claim that America's future greatness already belongs demonstrably to the Catholic Church is indicative of the profound confidence that Catholics feel as regards the future career of the Church in this country.

What is the official view of the Catholic Church about America? What does she think of our moral condition? How does she envisage her duty towards us?

Frankly, the Church has a poor opinion of the social and moral status of the nation. She sees America hastening to destruction and decay. "America is in a sad state today with vast groups of our people clamoring for new gods, new standards of morality, and in their mad desire they are worshipping material wealth and deifying self."

1 The disease she diagnoses as Neo-Paganism. Americans are no longer godly; they are godless; godless in education, in social relations, in industrial relations, and largely godless in government. "The world . . . outside the Catholic Church . . . is almost entirely pagan, completely materialistic in its philosophy and outlook . . . with the breakdown of family life and the sanctity of marriage." 2 This disease permeates every walk of life and corrupts young and old alike. It is the forerunner of something still worse: Communism. Communism is militant bloody Paganism with its sword unsheathed to strike down the Church. "Bolshevism is already battering at our doors," cries Bishop F. C. Kelley.

Officially the Catholic Church sees America in the direst straits in the matter of morals and religion, and sees Catholicism as the only possible way of salvation for the nation. She sees in Catholic Action all that is left of true American Action. She sees herself as the last defender of true Americanism. She claims, for instance, that the banishment of religion from public schools is an invasion of the Constitution and that the endowment of purely secular education is an unrighteous as well as an un-American favoring of atheism.

Having consecrated the slogan "Catholic Action means American Action," the Church no longer regards any "interfering" on her part with American manners and customs as un-American. All that she does is, she claims, done in the best interests of America. Her program, a long and varied one, provides for the reform of theaters; the censorship of books and reviews; the prevention of birth control propaganda; the defeat of the eugenics movement; the introduction of religion into the public schools; the obtaining of State aid for sectarian schools; the reform of industrial relations in accordance with papal encyclicals; the re-establishment of diplomatic relations with the Vatican; the acquisition of a more than presidential veto on legislation and on the policy of the Foreign Office, etc. Even these items comprise but a part of the Church's program.

In general that program constitutes the domination, for the good of America, of American thought, manners, and government by the Catholic Church.

The program, did it remain a mere matter of pious hope and a subject of prayer, would be harmless, but the American Catholic hierarchy is not content with passive Christianity. It is busy mobilizing all its forces to put across its program. It feels assured that it will outlive opposition and will succeed in the end. What are ten or twenty years in the life of the Catholic Church? What is a century for that matter? But confidence in the inevitability of victory does not damp its present ardor for immediate action. Thanks to the present disintegration of American life the hour for action has struck. There is today a Catholic camp where banners float and bugles blare. The great campaign has begun.

That the Catholic Church is deadly in earnest in campaigning to "save America from herself" cannot be doubted. It is fully in accord with her traditions and her psychology. In whatever country she may be, the moment she feels herself strong enough to dominate thought, conduct and government, she makes the attempt to do so. "The Church has always done so," writes Hilaire Belloc, "and always will, please God!" She regards it alike as her duty and her divine mission. She is subject to that "expansiveness" or, as it is called, apostolicity which is the characteristic of the Catholic spirit.

The revolt, or revolution, or uprising—whatever it may be called—which she has engineered in our midst is the necessary result of her faith. It is a unique phenomenon in our history because no other church or organization is like the Catholic Church. It could not have happened sooner because heretofore the Catholic Church was not strong enough to make the attempt.

Its coming has been foretold in various terms. Dean Inge, the inveterate hater of the Church, wrote a decade ago: "The determined effort of the Roman Catholic Church to capture the great Republic of the West makes the most interesting chapter in modern religious history." Years later the Catholic poet Theodore Maynard wrote: "The plain fact is that America will soon become the decisive battle-ground of the faith." Maynard did not envisage the struggle as a revolution, though it is difficult to call it anything else. Yet, though a revolution, it is not formally seditious. The Church is under arms against those she considers the enemies of this nation, and so far she is fighting under the forms of lawful civic strife.

To American citizens who are not so profoundly apprehensive about the future of their country as is the Catholic Church, the present turmoil seems unjustifiable. They consider that the Catholic Church is aggressive. Catholics, they say, have not suffered any injustices or hardships. They have been favored if anything, and certainly enjoy the same privileges as other citizens. There is no discrimination against them or against their Church. Their case is not like that of the German Catholics under Bismarck when their rights and liberties seemed to be endangered by the Kulturkampf.

American Catholics, in assaulting the institutions, manners and morals of this country, are not conducting a war of defense but one of attack and aggression. It is from them that threats issue and not from the government or the major portion of the population.

Be that as it may, the revolt is in motion and the question to be asked is, how far is it likely to go? With what additional powers will the Catholic Church be satisfied? What is the ultimate objective at which she aims? Does she intend, should the power be hers, to change and modify the Constitution? Does she mean to discard the American principle of the separation of Church and State? In fine, does she aim at being the established church of the United States?

This last question, a disturbing one for non-Catholics, was authoritatively answered (as it then seemed) by Alfred E. Smith, the Catholic lay leader of America, during his presidential campaign in 1928. He stated more than once and unequivocally: "I believe in the American doctrine of the absolute separation of Church and State." This statement became known as Smith's Credo. It was accepted at once by American Catholics, lay and clerical, as their Credo also. They all said "Amen" to it. And since that time neither the hierarchy nor the laity have repudiated it. Indeed, we frequently find reiterations of Smith's Credo from important Catholic apologists. Thus recently Father Elliot Ross, the Paulist, wrote: "Catholics in the United States yield nothing to their fellow-citizens in their devotion to the American principle of religious liberty and separation of Church and State." 1

Smith's Credo reassured American non-Catholics and silenced for the time being the taunt of "divided allegiance" that has for so long been uttered against Catholics. But Smith's Credo did not solve the terrible dilemma of American Catholics.

It was impotent to wipe out the Roman decrees and encyclicals which establish as Roman Catholic doctrine the desirability of the union of Church and State. In point of fact, Smith's Credo was heresy. Objectively at least, it was a bid to trick and deceive the American people into a false conception of Catholic doctrine on the relationship that ought to exist between Church and State.

A year after Mr. Smith's pronouncement, namely, in 1929, this writer ventured on a prophecy: "Pius XI . . . has no choice but to administer a sharp rebuke to his recalcitrant American Children and assert his authority. No doubt he will wait a little while until the election heat has cooled down. Perhaps too his rebuke will be indirect; there may be no mention of America at all in his encyclical but everyone will know for whom it is intended." 1

On the last day of the following year, Pius XI issued his encyclical "Casti Connubii" in which he definitely repudiated the "absolute separation" heresy of Alfred E. Smith and enlarged upon the desirability of "union and association" between Church and State. He was in fact putting before the American Catholic Church the ultimate objective at which she should aim.

As this recent and really authoritative teaching of the Catholic Church on the burning question of the relationship of Church and State is vitally important, and as it is given the minimum of publicity by American Catholics, it may be well to quote it fairly fully. 2 It has obvious reference, as indeed has the whole encyclical, to American conditions, as viewed from the Vatican.

We earnestly exhort in the Lord all those who hold the reins of power that they establish and maintain firmly harmony and friendship with this Church of Christ so that through the united activity and energy of both powers the tremendous evils, fruits of those wanton liberties which assail both marriage and the family and are a menace to both Church and State, may be effectively frustrated.

Governments can assist the Church greatly in the execution of its important office if in laying down their ordinances they take account of what is prescribed by divine and ecclesiastical law, and if penalties are fixed for offenders. . . . There will be no peril or lessening of the rights and integrity of the State from its association with the Church. Such suspicion and fear is empty and groundless as Leo XIII has already so clearly set forth.

Continuing, and making the. teaching of Leo XIII his own, Pius XI says:

"It is in the interest of everybody that there be a harmonious relationship" between Church and State, and that "if the civil power combines in a friendly manner with the spiritual power of the Church it necessarily follows that both parties will greatly benefit."

He adds:

"The dignity of the State will be enhanced and with religion as its guide there will never be a rule that is not just; while for the Church there will be a safeguard and defence which will operate to the public good of the faithful."

Pius XI then holds up to the American people as "a clear and recent example" the solemn Convention between the Vatican and Italian Government whereby the latter "assigns as civil effects of the sacrament of matrimony all that is attributed to it in Canon Law."

There follows the official Catholic teaching, from the lips of Pius XI, which blasts the Smith Credo and all the equivocal misrepresentations of Catholic doctrine that the American Catholic Church has foisted on the American people. Pius XI says: "This" [the Vatican-Mussolini pact] "might well be a striking example to all of how even in this our day, in which sad to say the absolute separation of the civil power from the Church and indeed from every religion is so often taught, the one supreme authority can be united and associated with the other without detriment to the rights and supreme power of either thus protecting Christian parents from pernicious evils and menacing ruin." (Italics are ours.)

To return to the questions asked earlier: Does the Church intend, should the power be hers, to change and modify the Constitution? Does she mean to discard the American principle of the separation of Church and State? In fine, does she aim at being the established church of the United States? One cannot doubt, in view of the present Pope's teaching, which indeed is simply the reiteration of age-old Catholic doctrine, that the answers should all be in the affirmative.

If the aim of Catholic Action is to fulfill the mission of the Church, to dominate and chasten the soul and the manners of America, why should Catholic Action stop short of setting up Catholicism in a position of supreme authority in this country? The uprising that has begun, the strong nation-wide Catholic movement "to save America," the revolt against the Neo-Pagan state of the nation, can have, logically, no other termination than that outlined above by His Holiness.

Translated into strictly Catholic thought and language, the foregoing ideas are well expressed by Michael Williams, one of the lay leaders of American Catholicism.

Having stated 1 that the ecclesiastical statistics for 1934 "amply prove that the Church in the United States is advancing steadily and strongly, practically all along its far-flung front" and that "the epic of Christianity lies concealed beneath the surface of the statistics," he concludes: "Meanwhile all Catholics with even a modicum of imagination cannot fail to be thrilled with the vision of the vast Catholic force . . . the force of the Church in action, permeating the national life, the leaven in its mass, uplifting its ideals, directing its way toward the only road which is consonant with humanity's true nature; the road of Christian civilization."

1 Commonweal, editorial, May 17, 1935.

CHAPTER II

CATHOLIC ACTION

CATHOLIC Action is best described as the new phase of Catholicism. There was always something kindred to it in the Catholic Church, but it is only in recent times that it has become an instrument of social power which obtrudes itself daily on the notice of the public. In America it is a force that has to be reckoned with; a force that is applied here, there and everywhere. It does not always succeed, nor is it always wisely applied, but no thoughtful American can deny its startling significance.

In theory, Catholic Action is the work and service of lay Catholics in the cause of religion, under the guidance of the bishops. In practice it is the Catholic group fighting their way to control America. In this fight they are far from disregarding the noble cause of humanitarianism. Catholics can point to as many constructive works of charity as any other religious group. But the motif latent in Catholic Action is not pure humanitarianism. It is a sterner and more practical purpose.

In medieval times the Church gained supremacy in various countries through her influence over nobles and soldiers. Today she aims at the old supremacy by mass action of her organized subjects, and by systematic penetration of various groupings. Writing of the need of trained propagandists in the "apostolate of industry," the present Pope states: "Undoubtedly the first and immediate apostle of the working men must themselves be working men, while the apostles of the industrial and commercial world should themselves be employers and merchants.

It is your chief duty, Venerable Brethren, and that of your clergy to seek diligently, to select prudently, and train fittingly these lay apostles amongst working men and employers."

Though Catholic laymen as such have no jurisdiction in the Church, they are today the chief agents in the work and development of the Church. They are ready and willing to help the great cause. Priests and bishops mingle with them, guiding and advising them, and taking the lead openly when important issues are at stake. But the heavy work, the spade work, is done by the laity, men and women, to whom "the Catholic Cause" appeals.

There was a time—it is now past—when only pious Catholics took part in the work of the Church. But today many Catholics who cannot qualify as pious are busy about Catholic Action. Catholicism, in America at least, has ceased to be a matter of religious observance. Catholicism now is something that partakes of clannishness, and that is constituted in large part by social and political and "club" affiliations. Among the hundreds of Catholic leaders who are outstanding for their loyalty to the cause are to be found quite a few who have little if any regard for Catholic doctrines or observances. Catholic Action would be a far less serious factor in this country were its only agents pious and devout Catholics. The starting point of the wave of Catholic Action in this country may be traced back to the inauguration of the National Catholic Welfare Conference in 1921. On that occasion Archbishop Hanna declared: "We have co-ordinated and united the Catholic power of this country. It now knows where and when to act and is encouraged by the consciousness of its unity.

We feel ourselves powerful because our reunion has become visible." From that day Catholic strength has grown apace, and Catholic organizations have multiplied.

In no country of the world is there such thoroughgoing organization as among American Catholics. Every class, every cross section of sex, occupation, age and local affiliation is appropriately grouped. From "hello-girls" to dentists, from poets to policemen, Catholics are billeted in their societies and taught to be "Catholic-conscious." There are clubs or guilds or confraternities of Catholic lawyers, nurses, writers, army officers, naval officers, customs officers, stenographers, factory girls, and so forth. Some societies are nationwide, like the Holy Name, with 2,000,000 members; the Knights of Columbus, with 500,000; the Sacred Heart League; the National Council of Catholic Men; the National Council of Catholic Women; and the Catholic Daughters of America, to mention but a few.

New organizations spring into existence every month. Only last May (1935) a "Catholic War Veterans Association" was established under the patronage of Bishop Molloy of Brooklyn. Already it has several "posts" and it aims at becoming not only a nation-wide but an international organization. Women auxiliaries are attached to the "posts" under the snappy name of "Yeomanettes." "I am sure," announced the chaplain, Father Higgins, "that we will have the holy backing of Cardinal Hayes and that the entire hierarchy will likewise approve." Contemporaneously with the Catholic War Veterans, the Catholic College Graduates felt inspired to do more than they were doing for Catholic Action and to set up a new organization, so that their leadership in Catholic life might become more effective. Father Parsons S. J., 1 explaining the new move, writes: "After all the big trends are the result of big men and big influences, and we must not blame the graduate if he himself feels that the tremendous forces that are within him as a result of his Catholic culture have not been released for the benefit of his country and our civilization.

. . . Organize! Pool the intellects and the wills of as many of the graduates as can be got together. Give them a common objective. Fire their imaginations with the vision of a great movement which takes its roots from deep within the traditions that formed our Western civilization. Let them be daring. Let them be even revolutionary if the need be for that," (italics ours).

The rank and file of Catholics realize very clearly the power that comes from union, and the importance of organization. As an example of Catholic insight into the value of standing together, I quote from the remarks made at a Bronx Holy Name meeting by one of the officers. "Catholic men," he said,1 "should unite in order to be able to tell legislatures that they must not introduce bills which are inimical to the ideals of the family or the ideals of the Catholic Church. They should organize so as to be strong enough to insist that school teachers who teach 'pernicious doctrines' be removed."

The words "strength," "power," "organization" are an ever-present refrain in addresses delivered at Catholic society meetings. Speakers harp on these words and stir up in their hearers a sense of solidarity and a fighting spirit. According to Cardinal Hayes, it is "praiseworthy and important" for Catholics "to portray the majesty, the dignity, the power and the growth of Catholic life." To err on the side of modesty in such a matter is less a virtue than a sin.

"We must have great numbers, but they must be intelligent numbers," said District Attorney William F. X. Geoghan at a Knights of Columbus rally in Brooklyn. 1 "It should be realized that with an increase in numbers we shall greatly increase our strength and power for good ... We should bear in mind that in the future we may wish to seek State Aid for our Catholic educational system."

The scope of Catholic Action is so immense and varied that it is quite impossible to deal comprehensively with it in one chapter. It reaches out into every field, from literature to athletics, from interpreting Catholic liturgy to picketing consulates, from training Girl Scouts to heckling Communists. It opposes here; it supports there. It is constructive and destructive; it recompenses and it punishes; it fills mailbags and closes theaters. In later chapters we shall deal with some of its largest manifestations, in reference to Mexico, Birth Control, Neo-Paganism, and other matters. Here we shall deal mainly with its tendencies and characteristics.

As an example of the wide scope of a Catholic society devoted to Catholic Action, we may take the work done by the Catholic Daughters of America for the year 1933-34. During the year the members of the "courts" of this society subscribed 925,124 for educational and "benevolent" activities. Of this sum 20,000 went to Rome for "welfare work"; 21,000, for Catholic Church Extension; and 25,000 to the Knights of Columbus. During the ten years 1924-1934, almost $5,000,000 was subscribed by the Daughters for these and other like objects.

During the year in question, one hundred of the Daughters entered convents; others worked (in 45 states) in Convert Leagues; Social Study Clubs; Catholic Press, Welfare, and Legislation Committees, and other such activities.

Thousands of members devote their time to organizing retreats; giving catechetical instruction; and teaching in religious vacation schools. It was considered by the Supreme Directorate that the annual report demonstrated "the unlimited resourcefulness and marvellous courage of the personnel of the C.D. of A."

Catholic Action is busy, all over the country, about libraries, Catholic colleges, Newman Clubs, vocations, public morals, politics of course, and every form of human activity. "A Catholic bookshelf in the public library is the way Catholics of Dubuque, Iowa, have solved the problem of the dissemination of Catholic literature," writes a correspondent to America.1 Elsewhere the same problem is solved by the surreptitious removal of anti-Catholic books and the demand on the part of Catholics for pro-Catholic books which forces the hands of librarians. When colleges need funds to extend, a meeting of laymen is arranged and a drive for funds is organized. The more prominent Catholic laymen are "selected" by the local Church authorities to lead the drive. Thus, recently, when Seyton Hall, South Orange, needed a new gymnasium (to cost $250,000), one hundred and fifty laymen were "selected" to collect the money. More nuns are required and a group of Catholic ladies open a recruiting office in the Bronx called "The Little Flower Mission Circle" and ship four hundred girls to convents within nine years. At Malvern, Long Island, the Board of Education decided, with reason, that Newman Clubs in public high schools were against the state law and forbade them. The pastor, Father Burke, and a local politician, Major Murray, took up the challenge. Father Burke made the extraordinary claim that Newman Clubs are not "under the auspices of the Catholic Church" and the matter became a political issue in the local elections.

Meanwhile Father A. J. Owen, a Jesuit, writes to America 1 urging Catholics to interfere in the affairs of public schools even though they do not (and of course should not) send their children to them. He finds fault with Catholics for neglecting to watch over the morals and religious interests of non-Catholic children. "This neglect on the part of Catholics in many communities has allowed subversive elements to control schools and has naturally led to abuses which are daily becoming more evident. Such abuses will continue until every Catholic realizes his right and duty to concern himself with the educational system his taxes indirectly and directly support. The exercise of this right and the fulfillment of this obligation clearly come within the scope of positive Catholic Action."

This brings us to the burning topic of Catholic claims and Catholic Action in the field of Education.

Catholics lose no opportunity of denouncing State schools as godless and demoralizing. They insist that there should be religious education given to all. "Education without God," they say, "is Education without Education." They point out that "God is written into the Constitution" and that it is unconstitutional and un-American to exclude the teaching of God's word and the inculcation of divine worship in schools paid for by the citizens. It is to this point of view that Father Owen refers in his letter given above. Another prominent Catholic, Professor F. X. Polo, states the position thus: "An adequate method of bringing the necessary knowledge of God to American youth is the core of the question of including the teaching of religion in the curriculum of our splendid public school system.

It would be an astounding anomaly and a disastrous tragedy in the life cycle of America if we raised up at public expense a youth entirely ignorant of the God who is written very definitely into our fundamental law as the Creator and Author of the laws of Nature and the Source of our inalienable rights."

I dwell on this Catholic policy of "interfering" in the curriculum of public schools in order to contrast it with the definite stand against any interference whatsoever on the part of the State or the public with the curriculum of their own Catholic schools.

The Church has always opposed the setting up of a Federal Department of Education lest it might give Federal authorities the right to meddle with parochial schools or colleges. When Mussolini declared to the Pope that the State was supreme in education and that in this matter he was "intractable," the Pope (giving a lead to Catholic bishops the world over) replied: "We can never agree to anything that restricts or denies the right given by God to the Church and the family in the field of education. On this point we are not merely intractable, we are uncompromising."

In order to have complete control of the education of Catholic children, the Church in America had Catholic schools and colleges built, at Catholic expense, and of course with the sole object of accommodating Catholics. The State did not interfere, beyond pointing out that it could not constitutionally support such private sectarian schools with public moneys. To do that would be to endow a particular religious faith and to nullify both the letter and the spirit of the Constitution.

In time, as Catholics grew bolder, they began to make claims against the State, saying: "We educate 2,500,000 American children and save the State $265,000,000 yearly.

In the meantime we pay taxes to support the Public Schools which our children do not attend. This is unfair. We are doubly taxed. The State should aid our schools." Writes Michael Williams1 : "Catholics do call attention to the fact that in justice they have the right to compensation for the expense involved in setting up their own schools and in giving education in citizenship," (italics ours).

In other words, the Church demands that she have the exclusive right to decide when and where and how to erect schools (without any reference whatsoever to taxpayers) and that the taxpayer should be compelled to foot the bill. What in essence she demands is the imposition on non-Catholic citizens of the odious injustice of "taxation without representation."

Is the Church serious about this claim? The answer is to be found in the recent effort made in the Ohio Legislature to have the Davis School Aid Bill passed. This bill was designed to give "emergency aid" to the amount of about 2,000,000 to the Catholic parochial schools of Ohio. For two years the Catholics have prepared for the fight in the House of Representatives. In the elections they secured pledges from nearly fifty members to support the bill. In the Senate the Davis Bill passed, 17 votes for and 15 against. ^2 $However, it was blocked in the House of Representatives, 86 against and 42 for. Says the Catholic News3 : "Bigotry and fear of political consequences combined to deny the Parochial Schools the temporary aid which they sought from the State." Catholics attributed the defeat of what they considered a perfectly just and constitutional bill to the venom and hatred of their enemies.

They lauded a Protestant, Mr. H. H. Root, for printing and circulating at his own expense 75,000 postcards that were used in flooding the mailbags of members of the Houses, in favor of the measure.

A bill which was no less unconstitutional, though less serious in scope, the Kelly-Corbett Transportation Bill, designed to give Catholic schoolchildren the right to use public school busses in going to school, passed both Houses in Albany recently but was vetoed by Governor Lehman to the immense annoyance and disappointment of New York Catholics. Had it received the Governor's signature and become a state law, Catholic Action would have won its first skirmish against the "tolerance" provisions of the Constitution.

Needless to say the Catholic fight for state aid for parochial schools is only in its first phase. Every year, from now on, we shall see the fight renewed until victory is achieved.

Catholic Action is essentially optimistic, bold, and at times reckless. Nowhere is there a braver or more hopeful spirit than among American Catholics. They feel or proclaim they feel on the upgrade. "All is well" all the time with them. Among them critics and doubting Thomases are few and inarticulate. On his seventy-seventh birthday, which he celebrated recently, Mgr. Lavelle of St. Patrick's told reporters: "There has never been a period in our recollection when Catholics were more devoted to their duties and their Holy Faith." Catholics are marching into battle today with cheery songs on their lips. They pay little heed to the few croakers who mourn the "terrible leakages" in their ranks. Their esprit de corps is excellent.

Their boldness in planning is exceptional. Gigantic undertakings are faced without faltering. "We Catholics," writes John Wiltbye, "undertake the most impossible things, and in the current patois, we generally get away with them."

1 Schemes that other organizations would shrink from undertaking are commonplace among Catholics. As an example we may take the March (1935) "Drive for Action" of the Knights of Columbus. This "mobilization" was planned to embrace the United States and Canada, and the two countries were divided up into twenty-six areas. Each area was placed in charge of a distinguished layman, a general, judge, senator, corporation president, ex-mayor or ex-governor. The purpose of the drive was manifold, embracing the chief items of nation-wide Catholic Action, and an increase of membership for the order itself. The mobilization headquarters was located in the Empire State Building, of which the Chairman of the Board, Mr. A. E. Smith, is a leading Knight. The Supreme Knight, Martin H. Carmody, put before the organization the purpose of raising the membership from 500,000 to 1,000,000, and added: "The campaign is not simply for the purpose of getting new members for the Order but to supply a greater and stronger co-operation between the laity and the heads of the diocese and parish."

His Holiness, through Cardinal Pacelli, wrote a long letter expressing "high approbation" of the Knights and keen interest in their work: "It is my earnest hope and fervent prayer that this laudable endeavor to enroll the Catholic manhood of North America in the ranks of the Knights of Columbus may be a brilliant success. . . The need is great: the present challenges to Catholic Action."

In the first week of the "drive" about 10,000 new members were enrolled, which was claimed as a record: "the largest number of new members to join an organization in so short a period in the history of fraternal movements" (Supreme Knight Carmody).

Apropos of the drive, Mr. Michael F. Walsh, State Deputy of New York, speaking in the Columbus Club, Brooklyn (April 1), is reported in the Press thus: "When I appeal to you for increased membership, I hasten to explain that we are not anxious to bring within our ranks a mob thirsty for destruction. If we can attract other men into our organization we will have accomplished Catholic Action."

What is noteworthy about such Catholic enterprises is the speed with which "the call" is spread among Catholics in every corner of the country, and the enthusiasm with which Catholic journals, Catholic broadcasting stations and Catholic pulpits lend support in disseminating suitable propaganda.

We turn now to some characteristics of Catholic Action and consider it first under its punitive or retaliatory aspect. When Catholic sensibilities are "outraged" vengeance in some appropriate form is taken. When remarks made in Mexico by Ambassador Daniels were considered by Catholics here to be laudatory of the Calles regime, he was promptly denounced and a clamor for his recall was raised. Alderman Deutsch was brought to book by Catholics on a like charge. He did not see eye to eye with them about Mexico and he was chastened for it. Dr. Charles L. Fama, of New York City, was appointed to a public office by Mayor LaGuardia and it was recalled by Catholics that in times past he had "attacked" the Catholics. The Mayor was called upon to oust him from office. Alderman Hart, as Catholic spokesman, declared: "There is no room in this country for intolerance; there is no room on the payroll of this city for a bigot." Meanwhile the Board of Estimates withholds Dr. Fama's salary!

The Protestant Defense League tried to interest Senator Borah in investigating "religious persecution in New York" as a preliminary to the investigation of "religious persecution in Mexico" but the Senator declined to act. He is reported as telling the League that the investigation would be a "delicate" matter! The Press of New York displayed little inclination either to take up the cause of Dr. Fama or to back the demand of the Protestant League. What Heywood Broun wrote a few years back is still apparently true: "Every New York editor lives in terror of the Catholic group."

Those who have had the misfortune to deliver lectures or to publish articles critical of some phase of Catholicism have experienced in abundance the punitive character of Catholic Action—shoals of abusive letters, the majority of which are anonymous—offensive remarks over the telephone—cancellation of business deals—and threats of various kinds. No other religious group in America displays so sensitive a concern about "the honor" of its creed as does the Catholic. "Catholics," wrote Mr. H. L. Mencken, "take criticism very badly." He might have said that they do not take it at all; they refuse to take it and hurl it back at the critic's head.

The well-known sensitivity of Catholics to anything that even remotely seems to reflect on their religion brings about ludicrous situations at times. One of these situations is described in a paragraph of the New Yorker entitled "Vegetables." The story has to do with a sister magazine, Vogue, belonging to the Condé Nast organization. It happened that Vogue purchased from Anton Bruehl a picture of a crib made out of vegetables. It was an interesting and quite inoffensive piece of art but a member of the Condé Nast staff expressed horror at the implied irreverence and warned that there would be Catholic reactions if the picture were published.

She, as a pious Catholic, considered it a sacrilege to build a crib out of vegetables instead of ordinary bits of straw and wood. Some of the Condé Nast people sided with her; more thought her view absurd. Back of the concern over the issue was the latent fear of Catholic Action. As a compromise it was decided to consult Catholic ecclesiastical dignitaries on the matter. These accomplished theologians examined the picture carefully and gave it their imprimatur. Also they admitted frankly that only in the United States could such a question and such a situation have arisen.

Sensitivity to the Church's honor, which flourishes in ignorant Catholics as well as in educated Catholics, makes it a perilous matter to give a lecture, however fair and impartial, on a Catholic subject unless one be a priest or a well-known Catholic. An incident will serve to illustrate the point. The present writer, in a public lecture, stated that professed fathers of the Society of Jesus took solemn vows in accordance with their Constitutions. He was at once interrupted by a militant Catholic who declared that it was a lie to say that the Jesuit Order had Constitutions. He added, which was not in question at the time, that he had known Jesuits all his life and that they were all saintly men. It was utterly useless to point out that the fact that there were Jesuit Constitutions was not derogatory to the Order and that the fact could be verified by visiting any important library and inspecting a copy of the said Constitutions of the Society of Jesus. The interrupter, according to the accepted practice of Catholic Actionists involved in a public argument, held his ground in holy contempt of facts.

In her book My Fight for Birth Control, 1 Margaret 1 Page 321.

Sanger gives a comparatively recent example of the sinister in Catholic Action. It happened in connection with the raid on her Clinical Research Bureau on March 23,1929.The police who searched her offices carried away confidential medical case records. When her lawyer protested to the magistrate that such records were "privileged," he ordered them to be restored. When they were returnd 150 case records were still missing and Mrs. Sanger never succeeded in recovering them. Whose records were they?

Soon Mrs. Sanger found out that the missing case records were those of Catholic women who had visited the clinic. Some of them came to tell her that "they had received mysterious and anonymous telephone calls telling them that if they continued to go to the clinic their cases would be exposed in the newspapers." Mrs. Sanger maintains that the raid was engineered by "high Church authorities" for the very purpose that was accomplished, namely, of frightening off from it Catholic clients under threat of publicity. Mrs. Mary Sullivan, policewoman, was the Catholic hero of the fray.

Catholic Action is usually, but not always, unanimously endorsed by Catholics. Once in a while a dissenting minority is vocal among them. This is the case in the Catholic opposition to the Child Labor Amendment. Mgr. John A. Ryan, The Catholic Worker of New York, and a few individual Catholics like Frank P. Walsh support the measure but their influence is inconsiderable against that of Cardinal O'Connell, the dean of the hierarchy, Archbishop Glennon of St. Louis, and the other bishops.

The Catholic case against the amendment is that if it were adopted the authority of Catholic parents over their children would be imperiled. Father Corrigan, representing Cardinal O'Connell, gave evidence against the amendment at a legislative hearing in Boston and said that "if the Amendment became effective Washington authorities could decide whether a child should receive training in the religious faith of his parents."

1 The Catholic Press in general denounced the Amendment as "a practically irrevocable provision granting unlimited power over the youth of the country to Congress." In New York it is recognized that the defeat of the Amendment was due "to the combined forces of manufacturers and many Catholic leaders, political and clerical."

This opposition to a measure which appeals to the enlightened sentiment of the American people is an example of the narrow selfishness of Catholic Action. No matter how great the benefit of the Amendment to the people at large, the possibility of its endangering the Church's influence under some utterly unlikely contingency, suffices to make Catholics oppose it.

In summing up the meaning and significance of Catholic Action in America it would be unfair and ungenerous not to acknowledge the fine citizenship and noble humanity of millions of Catholics who help support Catholic hospitals and charitable institutions; Catholic vacation schools, where 250,000 supplement their education; Catholic rural life bureaus and organizations; Catholic Boy and Girl Scout movements; and a thousand and one other undertakings of Catholic Action that improve the well-being of American citizens.

On the other hand, it is impossible not to see that Catholic Action as a whole is directed to the end of changing America, root and branch, into another people and another culture.

It goes on here, there, everywhere; restless and entirely irresistible; a potent and subtle force shaping anew our national destiny.

Yet there is no one, as it seems, capable of appraising its significance and dramatizing its meaning for the understanding of the people.

Myopic political observers who smoke thoughtful cigarettes in editorial watchtowers wax excited over symptoms of passing political currents in the Middle West, but have neither the vision to see nor the art to interpret the most momentous thing that is happening today. Even the depression itself, great as are the effects that it has produced, and great as will be, in all likelihood, its further effects, is a matter of less consequence to the destiny of America than is the ever-deepening surge of Catholic Action.

CHAPTER III WINNING THE WORKER

THE Catholic Church, since her emergence as the most powerful society in America, has until recently been singularly inactive in the field of Social Justice. Although a large percentage of her followers belong to the laboring classes, the Church has taken little interest in their problems. Her policy has been to side with the moneyed and privileged class and to frown upon the proletariat. Some of her most conspicuous leaders, such as Cardinal O'Connell, for instance, have been mouthpieces for the principles of the bankers. Very few have consistently advocated industrial and social reform.

It is true that the Church has been shrewd enough to pay lip service to elementary principles of Social Justice. Thus in 1919 the bishops, in a pastoral, declared: "The laborer's right to a decent livelihood is the first moral charge upon industry." Catholic preachers and Catholic journals have from time to time referred to the social program of Leo XIII and his encyclical on Labor. One journal, America, 1 boasts that for a quarter of a century it has advocated "collective bargaining, the right of labor to organize, decent working conditions and a living wage for all." But though there be a few pastorals and paragraphs to the credit of the Church's interest in Social Justice, there was never a drive of Catholic Action to curb the capitalist or defend the exploited worker.

Such drives are reserved for objectives that the Church considers more important.

American labor, Catholic and non-Catholic, has not been blind to the indifference, and indeed the hypocrisy, of the Catholic Church. Here was a Church, wealthy and powerful, that professed to be "the friend of the poor" and that preached charity and justice, and yet favored the oppressor and neglected the oppressed. Workers beheld cardinals, bishops, monsignori gorgeously attired, ceremoniously waited upon, sumptuously banqueted, palatially housed, transported in limousines, sedulously careful not to hurt the feelings of their millionaire patrons and friends, and yet pretending at the same time to have the interests of the poor at heart! Their real interest was to safeguard the status quo in which they throve, to defend the social order that made the rich richer and the poor poorer. No wonder the Church, with her harsh denunciations of Socialism, became an eyesore to the American workers.

Pius XI, referring to the fact that so many Catholics have "deserted the camp of the Church and passed over to the ranks of socialism," alleging, as their reason for doing so, that "the Church and those professing attachment to the Church favor the rich and neglect workingmen," admits that "some" Catholics were unjust to their employees. "Such men," he added, "are the cause that the Church, without deserving it, may have the appearance and be accused of taking sides with the wealthy and of being little moved by the needs and sufferings of the disinherited." How many American Catholic workers would agree with Pius XI that the charge against the Church which he recapitulates is undeserved?

The answer that the Church makes, in this country and elsewhere, to the charge that she has neglected the cause of the poor is to point to her hundreds of hospitals and charitable institutions, and her organizations (such as the St. Vincent de Paul Society) for distributing relief.

But this answer is not to the point. In fact, it is no answer at all!

No one in his senses would condemn the Church for her works of mercy. So far as they go they are entirely admirable. But they do not even touch the fringe of the social problem. What comfort is it to the tens of millions of exploited workers to know that there is a Catholic food and clothes dole awaiting tens of thousands who are in uttermost distress? It would, on the other hand, be a comfort to them to know that the Catholic Church was fighting with all her might, tooth and nail, against the conditions that produce hunger and nakedness; that priests and bishops, with their coats off, were united in a mighty drive, at the head of their followers, to insist that justice be done to the workingman. But the Church never espoused the cause of the poor in the only manner that was worth while, either in this or in any other country.

The Catholic Church in America has been as cold and indifferent to and as neglectful of the worker as of the Negro. She is ready to admit, and actually does admit, her shameful neglect of the latter but not of the former. Yet everyone knows that the colored man and the grimy, toil-stained man have been treated by her with like indifference.

If it be true, as the most loyal of American Catholic apologists, Dr. James J. Walsh, writes, that "Cardinals represent the spirit of the Church," we have in Cardinal O'Connell's attitude towards capital and labor an insight into that spirit. The Cardinal, as we shall see later, is the epitome of old-fashioned snobbishness and conservatism; an unfailing friend of the aristocrat, the capitalist and the banker, and an unwavering opponent of the cause of labor.

He has preached in his cathedral against the workers and lauded the rich. He had the effrontery, in 1930, to preach in the presence of Mr. Green and other officials of the A.F.of L.of the "interest of the Church in labor." The message he gave to the A.F. of L. was to surrender, or as he put it, to "co-operate with Capital."

Cardinal O'Connell, as dean and ranking leader of the hierarchy, for twenty years has guided the policy of the Catholic Church here. That policy has been to conciliate the rich and to milk the poor. The Church, which insists on "sharing the wealth" of all her children, looks askance at workers who teach socialistic doctrines of distribution of unearned riches.

Writes a Catholic who professes his readiness to die for the Church or the Pope 1 : "We find no solid union of Catholics fighting against the present immoral capitalistic system. We find no solidarity of the faithful in an attempt to bring to this earth the City of God. No, we find only harmless 'clean-movie' drives! What kind of [Catholic] action is it that allows textile mill operatives to be treated like slaves? What kind of Catholicism is it that softly closes its eyes at the diurnal exploitation of the proletariat on the part of the capitalist overlords? You know what kind of Catholicism it is. It is that of which the Marxist can well say, 'religion is the dope of the people.'"

The writer, a student of Columbia University, quotes effectively in his letter from great Catholic theologians who taught that poverty was a source of temptation and an evil state from which one should try to escape. He contrasts this teaching with that of Cardinal O'Connell and with the practice of the Church in America, and winds up: "Do not chide Father Coughlin.

Raise up twenty Coughlins. Instead of one fighting priest let us have twenty fighting bishops. That is what Catholicism means today!" It would be easy to quote from scores of Catholic correspondents remarks similar to those of the Columbia student. It is evident that there is widespread shame among thoughtful Catholics over the conduct of the Church in regard to labor. 1

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