Catholics and american foreign policy from mckinley to mccarthy: A historiographical survey

Diplomatic History

Volumn 4, Issue 3, 1980, Pages 223-240

  Miscamble, Wilson D ^a  

^a NONE

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EID: 84962984546     PISSN: 01452096     EISSN: 14677709     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1111/j.1467-7709.1980.tb00346.x     Document Type: Article

References (60)

1. On the impact of pressure groups in general, see Bernard C. Cohen, The Influence of Non-Governmental Groups on Foreign-Policy Making (Boston, 1959). Further details on the influence of religious groups on and their attitudes toward foreign policy are provided in Cohen’s The Public Impact on Foreign Policy (Boston, 1973); and Barry B. Hughes, The Domestic Context of American Foreign Policy (San Francisco, 1978).
2. Gerhard E. Lenski, The Religious Factor. A Sociological Study of Religion’s Impact on Politics, Economic and Family Life (Garden City, NY, 1961); and Seymour Martin Lipset, “Religion and Politics in the American Past and Present,” in Religion and Social Conflict, ed. Robert Lee and Martin E. Marty (New York, 1964), pp. 69-126. Jews are the obvious exception here.
3. Philip Gleason, “The Crisis of Americanization,” in Contemporary Catholicism in the United States, ed. Philip Gleason (Notre Dame, 1969), p. 30.
4. Andrew M. Greeley, Why Can 7 They Be Like Us? America’s White Ethnic Groups (New York, 1971), p. 85. The literature on the relationship of ethnicity and religion is vast but see in particular Lawrence J. McCafferty’s “Irish Nationalism and Irish Catholicism; A Study in Cultural Identity,” Church History 42 (December 1973): 524-34, which supports Greeley’s thesis.
5. Greeley, Why Can’t They Be Like Us?, p. 82. In the introduction to their edited collection, Ethnicity: Theory and Experience (Cambridge, MA, 1975), p. 23, Nathan Glazer and Daniel P. Moynihan describe “the immigration process” as “the single most important determinant of American foreign policy,” for this process “regulates the ethnic composition of the American electorate” and “foreign policy responds to that ethnic composition.” On ethnicity and foreign policy, see also Louis L. Gerson, “Immigrant Groups and American Foreign Policy,” in Issues and Conflicts: American Studies in Twentieth Century American Diplomacy, ed. George L. Anderson (Lawrence, KA, 1959), pp. 171-92; Gerson, The Hyphenate in Recent American Politics and Diplomacy (Lawrence, KS, 1964).
6. David J. O′Brien, “American Catholic Historiography: A Post-Conciliar Evaluation,” Church History 37 (March 1968): 87.’John Tracy Ellis, “American Catholics and Peace: An Historical Sketch,” in The Family of Nations, ed. James S. Rausch (Huntington, IN, 1970), p. 24.
7. Dorothy Dohen, Nationalism and American Catholicism (New York, 1967).
8. John Tracy Ellis, “American Catholics and Peace: An Historical Sketch,” in The Family of Nations, ed. James S. Rausch(Huntington, IN, 1970), p. 24.
9. Thomas F. O’Dea, “American Catholics and International Life,” Social Order 10(June 1960): 243-65.
10. On the ramifications within the church, see Thomas T. McAvoy, C.S.C., The Great Crisis in American Catholic History, 1895-1900 (Chicago, 1957).
11. On this issue see John T. Farrell, “Archbishop Ireland and Manifest Destiny,” Catholic Historical Review 33 (October 1947): 269-301; and James H. Moynihan, The Life of Archbishop John Ireland (New York, 1953), pp. 162—76.
12. See Frank T. Reuter, Catholic Influence on American Colonial Policies, 1898-1904 (Austin, TX, 1967); and Reuter, “American Catholics and the Establishment of the Philippine Public School System,” Catholic Historical Review 49 (October 1963): 365-81.
13. David Noel Doyle, Irish Americans, Native Rights and National Empires: The Structure, Divisions and Attitudes of the Catholic Minority in the Decade of Expansion, 1890-1901 (New York, 1976). On the divisions among Catholics, see also John Bilski, “The Catholic Church and American Imperialism, 1880-1900,” Historical Records and Studies 47 (1959): 140-95, which surveys remarks by churchmen and concludes that “a diversity of opinion existed” over the question of expansion (p. 185). Bilski, in analyzing the motives of Archbishop Ireland in supporting expansion, discovered Ireland’s “feeling that if the United States was welcomed as a world power, the American Church would gradually grow in influence and favor in the Church as a whole” (p. 180).
14. See Reuter, Catholic Influence and Doyle, Irish Americans. On the matter of removing the friars with a minimum of religious and political disturbance, note John T. Farrell, “Background to the 1902 Taft Mission to Rome, I,” and “Background to the Taft Mission to Rome, II,” Catholic Historical Review 36 (April 1950): 1-32; and 37 (April 1951): 1-22. See also Frederick J. Zwierlein, Theodore Roosevelt and Catholics, 18821919 (St. Louis, 1956), pp. 39-208. As a postscript note Richard E. Welch, Jr., “Organized Religion and the Philippine-American War, 1899-1902,” Mid-America 55 (July 1973): 184-206. which found “the reaction of the Catholic Church was characterized by considerable suspicion of American policy” (p. 185).
15. Robert Edward Quigley, “American Catholic Opinions of Mexican Anticlericalism, 1910-1936” (Ph.D. diss., University of Pennsylvania, 1965), pp. 326-27. On the conflict between church and state in Mexico, see Robert E. Quirk, The Mexican Revolution and the Catholic Church, 1910-1929 (Bloomington, IN, 1973), which also touches upon Catholic pressures on the American government. See also John Tracy Ellis, The Life of James Cardinal Gibbons, Archbishop of Baltimore, 1834-1921, 2 vols. (Milwaukee, 1952), 2: 205-21.
16. Dean R. Esslinger, “American, German and Irish Attitudes Toward Neutrality, 1914-1917: A Study of Catholic Minorities,” Catholic Historical Review 53 (July 1967): 214-16.
17. Edward Cuddy, “Pro-Germanism and American Catholicism, 1914-1917,” Catholic Historical Review 54 (October 1968): 427-54.
18. Cuddy’s “Irish Americans and the 1916 Election: An Episode in Immigrant Adjustment,” American Quarterly 21 (Summer 1969): 228-43, explains that contrary to the usual view there was no pronounced Catholic vote and especially no Irish vote against Wilson in 1916. This point concerning the Irish had been made earlier by William M. Leary, Jr., “Woodrow Wilson, Irish Americans, and the Election of 1916,” Journal of American History 54 (June 1967): 57-72, which saw the Irish Americans overcoming their loyalty to the church—presented as generally aligned against the president—in order to vote for Wilson. Cuddy provides an important corrective on this point. He describes how many Catholic leaders in both politics and religion perceived a danger to the church of a “Catholic anti-Wilson movement” and how they developed the theme “the Church is not in politics” during the campaign, thereby assisting in preventing a Catholic backlash against Wilson. On the efforts of the German-Americans as Germans not as Catholics, see Thomas J. Kerr, “German-Americans and Neutrality in the 1916 Election,” Mid-America 43 (April 1961): 95-105.
19. The following studies confirm that the German and Irish Americans who sought to direct Wilson away from a pro-Allied position were motivated primarily by ethnic as opposed to religious considerations. On the Germans see Frederick C. Luebke, Bonds of Loyalty: German-Americans and World War I (DeKalb, IL, 1974); and the older works by Carl Wittke, German-Americans and the World War (Columbus, OH, 1936); and Clifton J. Child, The German-Americans in Politics, 1914-1917 (Madison, WI, 1939). On the Irish see John P. Buckley, The New York Irish: Their Views on American Foreign Policy, 19141921 (New York, 1976); Edward Cuddy, Irish-America and National Isolationism, 1914-1920(New York. 1976).
20. See Jerry Dell Gimarc, “Illinois Catholic Editorial Opinion During World War I,” Historical Records and Studies 48 (1960): 167-84; and Thomas E. Hachey, “British War Propaganda and American Catholics, 1918,” Catholic Historical Review 61 (January 1975): 48-67, which encloses British evaluations of American Catholic attitudes.
21. Michael Williams, American Catholics in the War: National Catholic War Council, 1917-1921 (New York, 1921).
22. Maurice F. Egan and John B. Kennedy, The Knights of Columbus in Peace and War, 2 vols. (New Haven, CT, 1921).
23. See in particular Ellis, Life of James Cardinal Gibbons; and John B. Sheerin, C.S.P., Never Look Back: The Career and Concerns of John J. Burke (New York, 1975).
24. For a discussion of the establishment of the National Catholic War Council and of its successor the National Catholic Welfare Council (soon retitled Conference), see Ellis, American Catholicism, rev. ed. (Chicago, 1969).
25. This suggestion is largely substantiated by the essays in Joseph P. O’Grady, ed., The Immigrants Influence on Wilson’s Peace Policies (Lexington, KY, 1967). See also Louis L. Gerson, Woodrow Wilson and the Rebirth of Poland, 1914-1920: A Study in thelnfluence on American Policy of Minority Groups of Foreign Origin (New Haven, CT, 1953); and I. A. J. App, “German-Americans and Wilson’s Peace Making,” Social Justice Review 56 (June-September 1963): 93-96,107,126-30,166-70.
26. The literature on the activities of Irish-Americans is quite large. For example, see John B. Duff, “The Versailles Treaty and Irish Americans,” Journal of American History 55 (December 1968): 582-98; Joseph P. O’Grady, “Irish-Americans, Woodrow Wilson and Self-Determination: A Re-evaluation,” Records of the American Catholic Historical Society of Philadelphia 74 (September 1963): 159-73; Kenneth R Maxwell, “Irish-Americans and the Fight for Treaty Ratification,” Public Opinion Quarterly 31 (Winter 1967-68): 620-41. Also note the studies of Buckley and Cuddy cited in note 19.
27. ‘‘Misela Zacharewicz, C.S.F.N., “The Attitude of the Catholic Press Toward the League of Nations,” Records of the American Catholic Historical Society of Philadelphia 67 (March, June-December 1956): 3-30, 88-104; and68(March-June 1957): 46-50.
28. Samuel Lubell, The Future of American Politics (New York, 1952), p. 132. For his discussion of the 1936 election, see pp. 142-44. Ray Allen Billington in “The Origins of Middle Western Isolationism,” Political Science Quarterly 60 (March 1945): 44-64, like Lubell, mentions nationality as a factor that he perceives was “bolstered by the religious concepts of the many evangelical sects which flourished in the West” (p. 64) and that inclined to pacifism. He did not mention Catholicism as similarly bolstering isolationist sentiment.
29. Manfred Jonas, Isolationism in America, 1935-1941 (Ithaca, NY, 1966).
30. The studies by Quigley and Quirk cited in note 15 are both of importance here. See also Robert H. Vinca, “The American Catholic Reaction to the Persecution of the Church in Mexico, 1926-1936,” Records of the American Catholic Historical Society of Philadelphia 79 (March 1968): 3-38; Mollie C. Davis, “American Religious and Religiose Reaction to Mexico’s Church-State Conflict, 1926-1927: Background to the Morrow Mission,” Journal of Church and State 13 (Winter 1971): 79-96; and Sinclair Snow, “Protestant versus Catholics: U.S. Reaction to the Mexican State-Church Conflict of 1926-1929,” North Dakota Quarterly 39 (Summer 1971): 68-80.
31. On Burke and the Morrow mission, see M. Elizabeth Ann Rice, The Diplomatic Relations Between the United States and Mexico as Affected by the Struggle for Religious Liberty in Mexico 1925-1929 (Washington, DC, 1959); and Sheerin’s biography of John J. Burke cited in note 23. See also L. Ethan Ellis, “Dwight Morrow and the Church-State Controversy in Mexico,” Hispanic American Historical Review 38 (November 1958): 482505; and Stanley R Ross, “Dwight Morrow and the Mexican Revolution,” pp. 506-28, which pays some attention to the rather mysterious involvement in the matter of Fr. Edmund Walsh, S.J., of Georgetown University.
32. E. David Cronon, Josephus Daniels in Mexico (Madison, WI, 1960), p. 110. See also Cronon’s earlier article, “American Catholics and Mexican Anticlericalism, 1933— 1936,” Mississippi Valley Historical Review 45 (September 1958): 201-30.
33. See Robert Paul Browder, The Origins of Soviet-American Diplomacy (Princeton, NJ, 1953); and the chapter “111 feeling over Russia,” in George Q. Flynn, American Catholics and the Roosevelt. Presidency, 1932-1936 (Lexington, KY, 1968), pp. 122-49.
34. On Catholic attitudes toward Mussolini and Italian fascism, see John P. Diggins, Mussolini and Fascism: The View from America (Princeton, NJ, 1972), pp. 182-97; Diggins, “American Catholics and Italian Fascism,” Journal of Contemporary History 2 (October 1967): 51-68; and William Barry Smith, “The Attitude of American Catholics Toward Italian Fascism Between the Two World Wars” (Ph.D. diss., Catholic University of America, 1969). On Father Coughlin see David H. Bennett, Demagogues in the Depression: American Radicals and the Union Party 1932-1936 (New Brunswick, NJ, 1969), esp. pp. 230-31.
35. J. David Valaik, “Catholics, Neutrality and the Spanish Embargo, 1937-1939,” Journal of American History 54 (June 1967): 74. On the failure of Catholic leadership to unite the majority of the faithful behind them see, pp. 84-85. Valaik refers to one poll that reported only 39 percent of America’s Catholics favored Franco; 30 percent were proLoyalist; and 31 percent opted for neutrality. Valaik examines the American Catholic opposition to Franco and found, however, that the number of active Catholic opponents was not large. See Valaik, “American Catholic Dissenters and the Spanish Civil War,” Catholic Historical Review 53 (January 1968): 537-55. For background on the Catholic attitude during the Spanish civil war, see Valaik’s “American Catholicism and the Second Spanish Republic, 1911-1936,” Journal of Church and State 10 (Winter 1968): 13-28. For an examination of the response of the church to the Spanish civil war, see Allen Guttmann, The Wound in the Heart: America and the Spanish Civil JFar(New York, 1962), pp. 29-51. For a case study of American Catholic response to the war, note Donald F. Crosby, “Boston’s Catholics and the Spanish Civil War, 1936-1939,” New England Quarterly 44 (March 1971): 82-100.
36. Valaik, “Catholics, Neutrality and the Spanish Embargo,” p. 83. In Roosevelt’s decision not to lift the embargo, Valaik also notes that “the resolve of the state department to follow England’s lead, Hull’s position, and the President’s reluctance to embarrass him and possibly alienate southern Democrats” were contributing factors. On Roosevelt’s decision see also Guttmann, Wound in the Heart, p. 119, which saw “the mood of isolation” as important although it was equaled or perhaps exceeded in his view by “the political pressure of the Roman Catholic Church.”
37. Valaik, “Catholics, Neutrality and the Spanish Embargo,” p. 85. On this point see also Richard P. Traina, American Diplomacy and the Spanish Civil War (Bloomington, IN, 1968), pp. 182-83.
38. Valaik, “Catholics, Neutrality and the Spanish Embargo,” pp. 83-84. Valaik specifically challenges Guttmann’s view, in Wound in the Heart, p. 120, that Catholics “were determined to keep the embargo until General Franco’s ends were accomplished.”
39. Traina, American Diplomacy and the Spanish Civil War, p. 185.
40. Traina, American Diplomacy and the Spanish Civil War, p. 183. The church’s stance on the Spanish civil war also revealed the hatred and antagonism toward opponents of which some Catholics were capable, although this was by no means a one-sided process. On the Catholics see Valaik, “In the Days Before Ecumenism: American Catholics, Anti-Semitism and the Spanish Civil War,” Journal of Church and State 13 (Autumn 1971): 465-77.
41. Alfred O. Hero, American Religious Groups View Foreign Policy: Trends in Rank-and-File Opinion, 1937-1969 (Durham, NC, 1973), p. 12. Hero found however that ethnic differences and regional factors were at least as important as religion.
42. The one identifiable group that was pacifist was the Catholic Worker Movement, which is discussed and contrasted with the Catholic Association for International Peace in Patricia McNeal, “Origins of the Catholic Peace Movement,” Review of Politics 35 (July 1973): 346-74. See also John Leo Lebrun, “The Role of the Catholic Worker Movement in American Pacifism, 1933-1972” (Ph.D. diss., Case Western Reserve University, 1973). The absence of any significant pacifistic sentiment among Catholics or even Catholic participation in the peace movement over the period considered is confirmed by general accounts of this movement. See C. Roland Marchand, The American Peace Movement and Social Reform, 1898-1918 (Princeton, NJ, 1972); Charles Chatfield, For Peace and Justice: Pacifism in America, 1914-1941 (Knoxville, TN, 1971); and Lawrence S. Wittner, Rebels Against War The American Peace Movement, 1941-1960 (New York, 1969).
43. George Q. Flynn, Roosevelt and Romanism: Catholics and A merican Diplomacy, 1937-1945 (Westport, CT, 1976). For insights to American Catholic attitudes toward Britain, Nazi Germany (to 1937), and Russia, consult Thomas E. Hachey, “Anglophile Sentiments in American Catholicism in 1940: A British Official’s Confidential Assessment,” Records of the American Catholic Historical Society of Philadelphia 85 March-June: 48-58; F. K. Wentz, “American Catholic Periodicals React to Nazism,” Church History 31 (December 1962): 400-20; and chaps. 2 and 3 of Ralph B. Levering, A merican Opinion and the Russian Alliance, 1939-1945 (Chapel Hill, NC. 1976).
44. On Lucey and Ryan see Flynn, Roosevelt and Romanism, p. 85. On the efforts of the America First Committee, see Wayne S. Cole, America First: The Battle Against Intervention 1940-1941 (Madison, WI, 1953), pp. 86-89.
45. See Raymond H. Dawson, The Decision to Aid Russia, 1941: Foreign Policy and Domestic Politics (Chapel Hill, NC, 1959). Dawson observes that Roosevelt “exhibited deep interest in making his course of action palatable to Catholics or, at least, in preventing any dangerous opposition from developing” (p. 147).
46. George Q. Flynn, “Franklin Roosevelt and the Vatican: The Myron Taylor Appointment,” Catholic Historical Review 58 (July 1972): 171-94. Flynn spoke of Roosevelt waging a “campaign to force American Catholics into his foreign policy consensus,” in Roosevelt and Romanism, p. 84. For an account of Myron Taylor’s activities, consult John S. Conway, “Myron C. Taylor’s Mission to the Vatican, 1940-1950,” Church History 44 (March 1975): 85-99.
47. R. J. C. Butow, The John Doe Associates: Backdoor Diplomacy for Peace, 1941 (Stanford, 1974). See also John H. Boyle, “The Drought-Walsh Mission to Japan,” Pacific Historical Review 34 (May 1965): 141-61.
48. On the Protestant missionaries and foreign policy see, for example, Paul A. Varg, Missionaries, Chinese and Diplomats: The American Missionary Movement in China, 1890-1952 (Princeton, NJ, 1958); and Joseph L. Grabill, Protestant Diplomacy and the Near East: Missionary Influence on American Policy, 75J0-/927(Minneapolis, 1971). For one example of the ramifications of Catholic missionary endeavors on American foreign policy, see Frederick B. Hoyt, “Protection Implies Intervention: The U.S. Catholic Mission atKanchow,” Historian 38 (August 1976): 709-27. See also Thomas A. Breslin, “American Catholic China Missionaries, 1918-1941” (Ph.D. diss., University of Virginia, 1972).
49. For the exceptions see Patricia McNeal, “Catholic Conscientious Objection During World War II,” Catholic Historical Review 61 (April 1975): 222-42. For Catholic support of the war effort, see Flynn, Roosevelt and Romanism; and the contemporary essay by Thomas T. McAvoy, C.S.C., “American Catholics and the Second World War,” Review of Politics 6 (April 1944): 131-50. Rita LeBille Lynn, “The National Catholic Community Service in World War II” (Ph.D. diss., Catholic University of America, 1952), describes Roman Catholic efforts on the home front.
50. “Levering, American Opinion and the Russian Alliance, p. 177. John Lewis Gaddis, The United States and the Origins of the Cold War, 1941-1947 (New York, 1972), pp. 5255, has a brief but pointed discussion of Catholic opposition to the Soviet Union during the war.
51. For the British observer, consult Thomas E. Hachey, “The Influence of Roman Catholics and Their Church in American Politics: A British Analysis in 1943,” American Benedictine Review 25 (March 1974): 123-36.
52. Robert Leckie, American and Catholic (Garden City, NY, 1970), pp. 310-12.
53. David J. O’Brien, American Catholics and Social Reform: The New Deal Years (New York, 1968), p. 96.
54. Nathan Glazer and Daniel P. Moynihan, Beyond the Melting Pot, 2d ed. (Cambridge MA, 1970), p. 271.
55. On Catholicism as a legitimate form of American religion, see Will Herberg’s classic study, Protestant-Catholic-Jew, rev. ed. (Garden City, NY, 1960), pp. 38-39. For a discussion of the impact of the Cold War on religion in general, see Merlin Gustafson, “Church, State and the Cold War, 1945-1952,” Journal of Church and State 8 (Winter 1966): 49-63.
56. Robert A. Divine, Foreign Policy and U.S. Presidential Elections, 1940-1948 (New York, 1974), p. 274.
57. Donald F. Crosby, S.J., God, Church and Flag: Senator Joseph R. McCarthy and the Catholic Church, 1950-1957 (Chapel Hill, NC, 1978). On the church and McCarthy-ism, see also Vincent P. DeSantis, “American Catholics and McCarthyism,” Catholic Historical Review 51 (April 1965): 1-30; Crosby, “The Catholic Bishops and Senator Joseph McCarthy,” Records ofthe American Catholic Historical Society of Philadelphia 86 (March-December 1975): 132-48.
58. Crosby, “The Politics of Religion: American Catholics and the Anti-Communist Impulse,” in The Specter: Original Essays on the Cold War and the Origins of McCarthyism, ed. Robert Griffith and Athan Theoharis (New York, 1974), pp. 20-38. See also Robert Gannon, S.J., The Cardinal Spellman Story (New York, 1962); and Fulton J. Sheen, Communism and the Conscience of the West (Indianapolis, IN, 1948).
59. For a case study of Jewish influence on American foreign policy, see John Snetsinger, Truman, the Jewish Vote and the Creation of Israel (Stanford, 1974).
60. This conclusion is supported by the findings of the study, based on data from public opinion polls, by Ralph B. Levering, The Public and American Foreign Policy, 1918-1978 (New York, 1978), p. 27.