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4 Catholic Action Theory and Practice in San Francisco Enroll in this great movement . . . there is no more important outlet for Catholic Action in these distressing times. —Academy of San Francisco Organizing Committee, April 18, 1933 The members of the Academy . . . stood up like men. They have assumed real leadership in the fight for the application of the ideals of Christian justice, probably to a greater extent and to greater advantage than any similar group of Catholic gentlemen in America. —Leader, July 21, 1934 The Pacific Coast maritime strike from May through July 1934 challenged church leaders and lay men and women to confront an ambiguity created by the pope’s September 1931 agreement with the Fascist government of Italy. Pius XI had agreed to shrink Catholic Action by removing it from electoral politics and restricting its remaining activities to diocesan boundaries. But the pope issued no corresponding reduction in the theory of Catholic Action; its scope and limits had in fact expanded with the Vatican’s encyclical of May 15, 1931, “Quadragesimo Anno,” which called for “reconstruction” of the social order. What did this ambiguity portend for Catholics in the United States? Did American bishops, priests, and lay men and women reduce Catholic Action interest group efforts in the fields of education, labor and capital, anti-Communism, and other issue areas, such as birth control and public morals? U.S. bishops responded not by reducing their efforts but by intensifying them, working to create more effective diocesan Catholic Action work nationwide along the lines of the encyclicals of 44 CHAPTER 4 Pius XI. The coordinating agency for this work was the National Catholic Welfare Conference, an interest group that represented American bishops. Although it was based in Washington, D.C., its chairman during this period was Archbishop Edward Hanna of San Francisco. It was in this context that Coadjutor Archbishop Mitty called for a revitalization of Christian practice by means of a robust new Catholic Action initiative. Mitty’s call demonstrated that he and Archbishop Hanna intended to increase, not reduce, faith-based public activism in the city. This decision set the stage for an aggressive assertion of Catholic principles two years later when San Franciscans confronted the tumultuous events of May–July 1934. But even beforehand, Catholic Action work moved steadily forward.1 In September 1932, four months after Mitty issued his call for a Catholic Action initiative to the women of the local branch of the NCCW, New York City laymen organized the Catholic League for Social Justice and sent out calls to their counterparts in cities across the nation to follow suit. Six months later Catholics in fifty-four dioceses in the United States, including New York City, had established branches. Sylvester Andriano and his law partner William R. Lowery took up the call and organized a San Francisco branch called the Academy of San Francisco, which operated out of their office at 550 Montgomery Street in the heart of the city’s financial district. By April 1933 Archbishops Hanna and Mitty had approved the academy’s work and it had enrolled three dozen members, including several judges, numerous attorneys and physicians, and Gordon O’Neill, the editor of the archdiocesan newspaper the Monitor. Each member pledged “to inform myself on Catholic doctrine on Social Justice, to conform my life to its requirements, and to do everything in my power, in my home and religious life, in my social and business contacts, to promote its principles.” They explained that their object was “to mobilize the combined strength of all these existing [San Francisco Catholic devotional and social] societies to enable their members to answer the call of our Holy Father.” Members established committees devoted to specific aspects of public policy, and Andriano agreed to chair the Committee on Catholic Education in California.2 CATHOLIC ACTION THEORY/PRACTICE IN SAN FRANCISCO 45 The San Francisco response to the call for intensified Catholic Action work attracted the attention of the pope’s representative in the United States, Apostolic Delegate Archbishop Amleto Giovanni Cicognani, who praised Archbishop Hanna’s efforts “to prepare laymen for Catholic Action.” “It is becoming urgently necessary,” Cicognani wrote, “to prepare laymen who under the guidance of the Bishops and priests will speak for the Church. Students of our Universities and Colleges should give special attention to the Social Question so that they may assume a lay leadership which is truly Catholic and which will resourcefully make popular Catholic principles . This is but complying with...

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