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4 “A GREAT REAT TRAGEDY RAGEDY” Catholics, Communists, and the Specter of Fascism S an Franciscans kept informed about and were deeply concerned with, disturbed by, and divided over the political crises that roiled European affairs, from Benito Mussolini’s March on Rome in October 1922 to Adolf Hitler ’s Blitzkrieg against Poland in September 1939. City residents turned out in the thousands for competing Catholic and communist events, especially after March 19, 1937, when Pope Pius XI published his encyclical Divini Redemptoris (On Atheistic Communism). A scathing indictment of “bolshevistic and atheistic Communism, which aims at upsetting the social order and at undermining the very foundations of Christian civilization,” the pope’s message also contained a reassertion of the importance of grassroots Catholic Action workers throughout the world—“Our beloved sons among the laity who are doing battle in the ranks of Catholic Action.” According to the pope, the “task [was] now more urgent and indispensable than ever,” and “militant leaders of Catholic Action . . . must organize propaganda on a large scale to disseminate knowledge of the fundamental principles on which, according to the Pontifical documents, a Christian Social Order must build.”1 On April 27, San Francisco County Sheriff Daniel C. Murphy joined the attorney Joseph Scott of Los Angeles and Joseph J. Rosborough, former postmaster of Oakland, at the podium during a Catholic Action rally against communism at San Francisco’s Civic Auditorium. Sponsored by the Knights of Columbus and the Catholic Daughters of America, the “mass meeting” drew thousands to the Civic Auditorium, where they heard Scott (a popular figure in Knights of Columbus circles who in the mid-1920s had appeared with Sylvester Andriano on programs critical of the government of Plutarco Elías Calles in “A GREAT TRAGEDY” 67 Mexico) declaim about the incompatibility of communism and Christianity. Sheriff Murphy reminded the audience that Catholic Action required agitation for social justice as well as vigilant anticommunism: “Every man that works is entitled to security for himself and his family.” Rosborough deplored the anticlericalism and atheism of the Republican government in Spain and its Soviet and Soviet-sponsored volunteer allies in the civil war, but he also stressed that “if the ruling class in Spain hadn’t been so selfish and ruthless with the human multitude, violence and death wouldn’t now be stalking through that tragic land.” John D. Barry, a local newspaper columnist known for his skeptical, freethinking views, initially feared that the mass meeting would “play communism up as far more important than it really was [and] make it better known.” But he concluded, “The meeting will do good. It’s making communism serve as a challenge to our own short-sightedness and inhumanity.”2 Barry served as the moderator of another “mass meeting” the following evening at the Dreamland Auditorium, this one sponsored not by Catholic organizations but by the American Friends of the Soviet Union. The warm-up address came from Beatrice Kincaid, who used her time to ridicule the Catholic event the previous evening, which she described as “dull and sluggish.” The audience, she said, had “had such a bewildered look on their faces. The speakers knew nothing at all about Communism.” Kincaid was a veteran of a Soviet program that recruited volunteers who moved to Russia and devoted a year or two to help build socialism in one country under Stalin. She insisted that “there is no such thing as persecution in Russia. And they told [us] last night that there is.” Archbishop Mitty’s informant, a professional stenographer named Carmel Gannon, could not resist a touch of retaliatory ridicule: “And the cut of the people at Dreamland: Many of the men before the meeting opened sat with their hats on and thought nothing of it. And the women chewed gum. The man just ahead of me had hair that looked as if he cut it himself, and never combed it.” The main speaker at the American Friends of the Soviet Union rally was Victor A. Yakhontoff, a political exile who had served as a major-general in the czarist army and as assistant secretary of war in the social democratic government of Alexander Kerensky before the Bolshevik victory in the Russian Revolution . Yakhontoff urged the audience to befriend the Russian people in the hope that rivalry between Japan and the Soviet Union would turn Stalin toward the United States, which would lead to a defensive alliance and eventual liberalization of the Soviet regime.3 For Archbishop Mitty and...

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