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9 Catholic Action, European Crises, and San Francisco Politics It is a matter of rescuing individual souls, the home, the school, public morals and Christian civilization itself from the blight of the new paganism and the frightful chaos of Communism. —Sylvester Andriano, “The Program of Catholic Action in the Archdiocese of San Francisco,” September 13, 1938 Sylvester Andriano . . . is the “cover” for Mussolini’s fascist schools in California . He is the “front man” behind which the Italian government teaches California born school children to “Believe, Obey, Fight” for Mussolini and be disloyal to democracy and America. —People’s World, October 26, 1938 On March 19, 1937, the local fuel that had fired the Catholic Action anti-Communist campaign since the 1934 maritime and general strikes received a powerful assist from the Vatican 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” is “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 CATHOLIC ACTION, EUROPEAN CRISES, SAN FRANCISCO POLITICS 105 which, according to the Pontifical documents, a Christian Social Order must build.”1 On April 27 the San Francisco county sheriff, Daniel C. Murphy , joined Los Angeles attorney Joseph Scott and Oakland’s former postmaster Joseph J. Rosborough at the podium during a rally against Communism at the Civic Auditorium. Sponsored by the Knights of Columbus and the Catholic Daughters of America, the Catholic Action “mass meeting” drew thousands to the Civic Center, where they heard Scott declaim about the incompatibility of Communism and Christianity. Scott was a popular figure in Knights of Columbus circles who in the mid-1920s had appeared with Sylvester Andriano on programs critical of the Calles government in Mexico. Sheriff Murphy reminded the audience that Catholic Action required agitation for social justice as well as vigilant anti-Communism: “Every man that works is entitled to security for himself and his family.” Postmaster Rosborough deplored the anticlericalism and atheism of the Republican government in Spain and its Soviet and Sovietsponsored volunteer allies in the civil war, but he also stressed, “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, free-thinking 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 that “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 “had such a bewildered look on their faces. The speakers knew nothing at all about Communism.” Kincaid was a veteran of a Soviet Union program that recruited volunteers to move to Russia and devote a year or two to help build socialism under Stalin. She insisted that 106 CHAPTER 9 “there is no such thing as persecution in Russia. And they told 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 was Victor A. Yakhontoff, a political exile who had served as a major general in the czarist army and assistant secretary of war in the Kerensky social democratic government prior to the Bolshevik victory in the Russian Revolution. Yakhontoff...

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