The FBI and the Catholic Church, 1935-1962 (review)

Steve Rosswurm, professor of history at Lake Forest College, writes: ". . . this is a book about men and power — or, more broadly, about gendered values and institutional authority" (2). He focuses on the collaboration between J. Edgar Hoover (1895-1972) and the Federal Bureau of Investigation, of which he was the director, 1924-1972, on the one hand, and the American Catholic Church, including several of her best-known clerics, on the other. Together, Rosswurm argues, they sought to defend "patriarchal authority in society and family" and other shared civic and religious values. Russworm is at his best when detailing the history of labor movements. His past publications give ample evidence of his expertise in these fields. When he seeks contemporary and specifically Catholic analysis of his themes, he relies on authors such as Rosemary Radford Ruether and Garry Wills, hardly orthodox or neutral sources.

The first chapter seeks to lay the groundwork by explaining the shared values of the Catholic Church and Hoover's F.B.I. in the period under discussion. The "thick description" of the seminary formation of the period (with special emphasis on the Jesuits) might prove tedious to some readers. Rosswurm concludes that both F.B.I. agents and Catholic priests were trained in the kind of "homosocial" culture that Hoover and the hierarchy of the church themselves experienced and advocated. The second chapter highlights the working relationship between Hoover and five prominent Catholic bishops: Michael Curley, Richard Cushing, John Noll, Fulton Sheen, and Francis Spellman. Edward Tamm, a Catholic layman and the third-ranking F.B.I. official for much of the period under discussion, is the focus of chapter three. The next chapter is devoted to the work of Father John F. Cronin, S.S., an important figure in the history of anti-Communism in the American church and politics. Rosswurm has done important research here and has contributed to putting this priest's active role into context. A less well-known figure, Edward A. Conway, S.J., and his work with the National Committee for Atomic Information, is the principal subject of the fifth chapter, wherein with his scrupulous use of F.B.I. files, the author has reported much more than was needed to prove his thesis.

Though clearly with an affinity for liberal intellectual trends, Rosswurm, refreshingly, has little patience with those who would assert that there was no real danger in Communist infiltration of the American labor movement during the mid-twentieth century. His reference to archival research done in Russian archives is convincing. The last chapter, on Charles Owen Rice, the C.I.O., and the F.B.I., sometimes reads like a journal, in as much as the author's personal relationship to Rice and his passion for labor history is so much in evidence.

Forty-six pages of detailed endnotes provide ample evidence of the author's research as well as helpful indications for scholars who wish to pursue almost any point mentioned in the work. The author has consulted numerous manuscript collections and has personally interviewed significant voices in the history explored. The F.B.I. files are well explained, documented, and utilized. The index is a solid reference, though it might have been even more helpful if it had included authors mentioned in the text and notes. The book is often densely written, and only those familiar with many of the persons studied might find the whole volume captivating. But various chapters should be of interest to both graduate and undergraduate students as well as to the general reader.