Catholic Anti-Semitism

By J. J. Murphy

This article is from the Converted Catholic Magazine of which former Roman Catholic priest, Leo Herbert Lehmann (also known as L.H. Lehmann) is the editor. It was first put online in PDF format by the LutheranLibrary.org.

The reason I am sharing this article is because I believe most if not all antisemitism comes from Catholic sources, and primarily the Jesuits. And why? Because they are using the Jews as scapegoats and blaming them for what they themselves have done and are doing! The Protocols of the Elders of Zion were written by Jesuits! How can I say that? A quote from this article sheds light on the matter:

The spurious anti-Jewish Protocols of the Elders of Zion, that depict Jewry as the essence of evil and the Catholic church as the essence of virtue, have been spread throughout the country by the followers of Father Coughlin and other Fascist priests.

Who would say the Jews are evil and the Catholic church is the essence of virtue? Not Protestants! Only Catholics could say such a thing!

EVEN A PROMINENT Catholic layman like Dr. George N. Shuster of Hunter College could not deny that the anti-Semitism of his church, rooted in paper pronouncements of the past, is much in evidence in this country. He rightly added, however, that it is “seldom voiced above a whisper.”¹

A good illustration of how a Catholic whispering campaign works is found in the book Under Cover (p. 453) where the author quotes Irish-Catholic Francis P. Moran, Boston Christian Front leader:

“The only thing you can do now, of course, is to talk about Communism and the Jews… A whispering campaign is the best thing now. Mrs. Murphy tells Mrs. Duffy, and she tells Mrs. O’Toole, who tells it to Mrs. Smith… by the time they end up, they’ve got something which everybody believes.”

The Roman Catholic hierarchy is, of course, much too shrewd to come out openly in favor of anti-Semitism. It can work much more safely and effectively behind such stooges as Fathers Coughlin, Curran, Brophy and Duffee. For years these priests and their organizations have carried on anti-Semitic campaigns with the full but tacit approval of the hierarchy, without whose permission they could neither write for publication nor speak in public.

In the re-editing of the Roman Catholic New Testament in English, two years ago, a footnote to Revelation 2:9 was inserted by the American bishops that did not appear in the previous edition that had been in use for many generations. It said that “the Jews are the Synagogue of Satan.” A clearer example of the anti-Semitic policy of the Catholic church is scarcely needed.

Pierre Laval was well aware of this historical and unchanging attitude of the Roman church. Speaking to a group of journalists on September 13, 1942, he justified the anti-Semitism of the Vichy regime as follows: “I am only applying to the Jews the same treatment prescribed centuries ago by the Catholic Church.” To realize how true this statement of Laval is one has only to read “How the Popes Treated the Jews.”²

The spurious anti-Jewish Protocols of the Elders of Zion, that depict Jewry as the essence of evil and the Catholic church as the essence of virtue, have been spread throughout the country by the followers of Father Coughlin and other Fascist priests. But the Catholic hierarchy never protested against this mass calumny organized within their own church. If they were at all interested in stopping this defamation of Jews they could have used their 332 publications to ridicule these vicious Protocols out of existence. They prefer instead to pretend that they know nothing about this libelous Catholic campaign.

As if there were not enough anti-Semitism in this country, several Catholic bishops invited leaders of Catholic Fascism in Mexico, known as SINARQUISTS, to come to the United States to lecture. Chicago was one of the several episcopal sees that sponsored the series of talks. The newspaper PM of last January 3 said:

“In an exclusive interview in Sunday’s PM, J. Ovrum Tapper, a director of the CHICAGO CIVIL LIBERTIES COMMITTEE, said that representatives of the Sinarquist movement spoke in Chicago just before outbreaks against Jews there by Mexicans and Italians. The SINARQUISTS are a Coughlin-endorsed subsidiary of the Spanish Fascist FALANGE and the Mexican equivalent of the CHRISTIAN FRONT.”

A Catholic layman, Emmanuel Chapman, founded in 1939 a layman’s COMMITTEE OF CATHOLICS TO COMBAT ANTI-SEMITISM. Before it got thoroughly organized, a little over a year after its foundation, it was suddenly disbanded — a thing that often happens to “false front” organizations in the Catholic church if they start to become really effective. Similar repression overtakes Catholic laymen, who start to fight strenuously against Fascism or anti-Semitism, as the recent case of Professor McMahon illustrates.

Irish-Catholic Boston has been one of the worst centers of anti-Jewish terrorism. As in New York the Catholic police force looked on with indifference. Sworn affidavits are on record in Boston where the policemen even arrested Jewish boys for defending themselves against young Coughlinites. Boston newspapers, notorious for their subservience to Clerical pressure, made no mention of these outrages. Finally, this past winter, a New York liberal newspaper forced Governor Saltonstall, an appeaser of Cardinal O’Connell, to reverse his stand and order a State investigation. IrishCatholic Police Commissioner Timilty was made whipping-boy and forced to resign, though the rest of the police force and higher politicians were as guilty as he was. Such hypocrisy promises little or no permanent relief from a disastrous un-American situation.

Anti-Jewish terrorism has occurred only in cities that are centers of Roman Catholicism, such as Boston, New York, Chicago, Providence, Bridgeport, Hartford, etc. In New York during recent months liberal newspapers exposed many hotbeds of anti-Jewish sadism. Everyone of them was a Roman Catholic neighborhood. Not only synagogues were defaced, but also several Protestant churches. No Catholic was molested, of course. New York City Commissioner of Investigation Herlands made a 170-page report on 52 anti-Semitic cases he investigated. It showed that all but three of the culprits attended church, and that all came from areas where Father Coughlin’s CHRISTIAN FRONT had flourished.³

The Rev. Allan E. Claxton of the Protestant Broadway Temple in New York City, which had been desecrated by Catholic youths, was quoted in the New York Post of last December 30 as follows:

“We had a certain amount of vandalism at our church. If Protestant children were desecrating Catholic churches, the Protestant ministers would certainly teach them differently.”

In the same newspaper in the issue of the preceding day, the Rev. Kenneth MacKenzie of the United Presbyterian Church in the Washington Heights district of New York City said in an interview:

“For some time there has been evidence of vandalism around the property of Protestant churches in this neighborhood.”

After describing the desecration of his own church, the Rev. Mr. MacKenzie went on to say of the perpetrators of these crimes: “I assume they are Roman Catholics because the section is predominantly Catholic.”

The same issue of the N. Y. Post quoted the following affidavit of an ll-year-old Jewish boy who was attacked by Roman Catholic ruffians, who betrayed their parochial school training by their familiarity with Roman Catholic doctrine. We quote it in part:

“Then about 12 boys came, first little ones and then big ones. They asked if I am Jewish, and I said I’m not, ’cause once before some different boys started up with me when I told them I was Jewish.

“They began to ask me questions about the Catholic religion. I said I didn’t know the answers because I didn’t go to church… they jumped on me and my friend and began to hit us…”

The most anti-Semitic district in New York City is Police Precinct No. 40, in the Bronx, where only 8 percent of the inhabitants are Jewish. In this district 333 public Coughlinite meetings were held within less than a two-year period, many of them in the open, according to Herlands’ report. There are four parochial schools in this small district. Catholic police captain John Collins, in charge of this precinct, “estimated that 85 to 90 percent of the people there are Catholics,” according to the N. Y. Post of January 11, 1944. The Herlands report observed that this mile-and-a-half area, constituting the 40th Precinct, has 279 bars and taverns and a very high rate of child delinquency.

No lasting security against anti-Semitic terrorism in New York City can be expected as long as Roman Catholics continue to monopolize the police force, especially its key positions. A showy spurt of self-interested activity against street hoodlumism first began among police officers after recent newspaper publicity. It can be expected to last only as long as the publicity campaign that occasioned it.

Algernon B. Black, well-known head of the New York ETHICAL CULTURE SOCIETY, in a broadcast over station WHN on January 2 said:

“But to speak plainly, there are Coughlinites among the police, too. A few years ago it was estimated that there might be as many as 3,000 CHRISTIAN FRONTERS among the police of this city.”

Mayor La Guardia, an inveterate politician, is extremely responsive to Catholic political pressure. He refused for months to make public the report of Commissioner of Investigation Herlands until forced to do so under threat of a City Council investigation. He did nothing about information given him a few years ago by J. Edgar Hoover of the FBI concerning the presence of 1,500 CHRISTIAN FRONTERS that were already on the New York police force at that time.

Catholic Lewis J. Valentine is Commissioner of Police in New York City and a member of Our Lady of Guadalupe parish in Brooklyn. Coughlinite policemen have always been able to rely on him for protection. Last year unquestionable evidence was brought before him to show that Catholic patrolman John Drew was a fellow-traveler of the CHRISTIAN FRONT, and active anti-Semite and a contributor to four organizations now under Federal indictment for sedition. Valentine, after a departmental hearing, dismissed all charges against Drew, and restored him to active service with back pay without even giving him a reprimand. The following day Commissioner of Investigation Herlands publicly denounced Valentine’s action as “contrary to the evidence and to sound public policy.” But Catholic political power, which stood behind Valentine and the CHRISTIAN FRONTERS, never allowed the proceedings of the Drew trial to be published. It was able to laugh at the protests of Jews and liberals. As late as January 16, it “persuaded” Mayor La Guardia to have Drew on the City radio program as his “guest star” to tell the public what a broad-minded fellow he is.

The Catholic hierarchy countered recent protests over anti-Semitism by indulging in the ballyhoo that is usually featured on such occasions. Even Bishop Molloy of Brooklyn, superior over the ill-famed Brooklyn Tablet as well as over anti-Semitic Fathers Curran and Brophy, had the nerve to make an airy protest against anti-Semites! No practical move, of course, was made to remedy conditions through the Catholic press and parochial schools.

The most foreboding fact in American anti-Semitism is that prominent and wealthy Jews, as well as the Jewish organizations they dominate, contribute heavily to organizations that make a deliberate policy of appeasing political Catholicism. THE NATIONAL CONFERENCE OF CHRISTIANS AND JEWS, with its back-slapping interfaith conferences, from which the Catholic church is the sole gainer, is just such an organization.⁴

A Disease With Many Symptoms by Bernard Heller

It is very difficult for a non-Jew to realize the insecurity and the anguish which American Jews experienced after one of Hitler’s anti- Jewish harangues preceding the Nazi invasion of Poland. The American Jew attended to his mercantile or professional duties, strove to give his children ample opportunities for education. rejoiced when they selected desirable life mates. After the Fuehrer’s vindictive address, however, all his strivings and aspirations seemed unavailing. Life became despair.

The recent recurrent outbreaks of hoodlumism in the United States aroused similar emotions. Incidents of hoodlum attacks on Jewish youngsters and adults in New York City appear in a report of former Commissioner William B. Herlands. Reading the Herlands report, alarmed Jews regarded the attacks as omens of a gathering storm — and possible harbingers of the fate which befell their co-religionists in Germany.

Their thoughts can be summarized in words such as the following:

The fiendish course of the Nazis began with acts of hoodlumism against Jewish persons and small Jewish stores. Hitler had come to power and was anxious not to alienate world opinion from his regime. On March 10, 1933, he ordered his followers not to molest Jewish individuals or disturb their businesses. Apparently this order was only for…

From The Humanist, Autumn, 1944 1. “The Conflicts Among Catholics” by George N. Shuster in the Winter 1940 issue of the Phi Beta Kappa quarterly, The American Scholar.↩
2. A pamphlet published by The Converted Catholic Magazine giving lengthy quotations of papal decrees against the Jews that served as a blueprint for Hitler’s anti-Semitism. 15c a copy. 229 W. 48th St., N. Y. 9. N. Y. [Also included in this present volume. —Ed.]↩
3. Mr. Kenneth Leslie. Editor of The Protestant, speaking to more than 100 Protestant ministers in New York City recently branded as sinister the attempt to whitewash the CHRISTIAN FRONT elements in the New York Police Department. Also, for a pointed distinction opposing the anti-Semitism of Catholics and being anti-Catholic see Mr. Leslie’s editorial “Is The Protestant Anti-Catholic” in the January issue of his publication.↩
4. Joseph Brainin in “The American Jewish Committee Betrays Democracy.” (The Protestant, January and March, 1944, 521 Fifth Ave, N. Y.). examines the record of appeasement of that organization in articles that support Dr. Murphy’s contended — Editor.↩