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Chapter 4 The Catholic Church and Interwar Anticommunism In America’s churches, two religious cross-currents were at work in the 1930s. One, a social gospel, had captured the imagination of Protestants like the Reverend Herman Reissig and Methodist bishop Francis J. McConnell, who extended their application of salvation to Spanish relief aid.1 The other current combined Roman Catholic animosity to communism with appeals to Americanism by the American Legion. Not all Catholics were so disposed, but one particularly anticommunist cross-section actively backed Franco. These activists tended to accept the prevailing assumptions of Catholic writers on the benevolent nature of Franco’s regime and endorsed the published criticisms of Spain’s Popular Front government.2 The Knights of Columbus emerged as one visible Catholic force attempting to thwart Loyalist activities. In a place like Cincinnati, for instance, the combined efforts of Catholic reaction and the American Legion constituted the Cincinnati group’s major political opponents. Despite the best efforts of the republican aid movement to reach out to Catholics and liberals nationally, an endorsement of the Republic was as unforgivable as the presence of communists in the movement. The opposition to republican aid in the final analysis foreshadowed later political developments as anticommunism began to spread beyond the communities of Catholics and legionnaires. The Vatican had reiterated its historical position on communism in Pope Pius XI’s 1937 encyclical under the self-explanatory title, “On Atheistic Communism.” Combined with the view that Franco’s army partook in communion every day and so could not possibly “indulge in rapine, mutilation and slaughter,” it was little wonder that the insurgents were the Vatican’s protagonists in Spain, and evidence of their “rapine, mutilation and slaughter” was ignored. The Knights of Columbus, League 78 79 The Catholic Church and Interwar Anticommunism of Catholic Women, and other lay organizations accepted Franco’s anticommunist crusade as untarnished. The Social Action Department of the National Catholic Welfare Conference even formed a grassroots network to track the activities of communists and the Popular Front organizations in the United States.3 To be clear, some Roman Catholics had concerns about fascism, but as Wilson Miscamble has explained, “It was a minuscule movement.” At the same time, this opposition was more rhetorical than practical as many Catholics said nothing. Within the Roman Catholic press, arguably only one publication lacked hostility to the Republic, and its editors voiced an isolationist stance. Dorothy Day’s left-wing Catholic Worker, based in New York City, stated in October 1938: “We do not believe in fighting England’s wars; we do not believe in entering the United Front with Russia as the ‘League for Peace and Democracy’ would have us do. We do not believe that the United States should export arms to any nation, in peace or at war. There is only one purpose for arms—War!”4 Some Catholics undoubtedly shared the sentiments of the layman who wrote to Mussolini that he was “‘very much disturbed’ by the situation in Spain” and urged Il Duce to “send arms to [Franco’s] rebels” who were fighting “for a religious cause.” The writer desired to get “hold of any Loyalists or communists or their like” and “execute them without any mercy as they did the priests and nuns. Make the ones that started this trouble also the ones who burned these beautiful churches rebuild them bigger and better.” (Indeed, Francisco Franco used prison slave labor to build his Valley of the Fallen monument after the war.) There were also clergy like Bishop John Noll of Fort Wayne, Indiana, who “shared an affinity with fascism and feared the same enemies—international Jewry, Masonry, and communism.” With the laity conflating the Vatican’s message , Pope Pius XI attempted in March 1937 to distance the church from fascism in his “Mit Brennender Sorge” (With Burning Sorrow), which denounced Nazism. He reiterated the point within the week.5 With respect to aid to Spain, the Catholic activities and their justifications shared the pro-Republicans’ flair for invective. Catholic opposition to those organizing around the issue of aid to the Republic was fierce. At the local level Catholic institutional leaders activated memberships to respond to the aid movement and to government policies. In Davenport, Iowa, for example, the opposition by the Catholic Church, Chamber of Commerce, and American Legion was so forceful that the NAC found it impossible to form a permanent organization. The ALAWF stepped in offering to sponsor a meeting for the NAC with...

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