58 years ago

This week, our attention turns to the leading role he played in the Cold War that followed, one that has earned him praise as a defender of American values but one that also made him the focus of sharp criticism for some of the stands he took in the name of anti-communism.
The onset of the Cold War shocked and terrified America. Fear of communism, socialism, and related radical ideologies had long been a staple of American culture, reaching back into the mid-19th century. This fear reached a new level, however, in 1917 with the Russian Revolution and subsequent creation of the Soviet Union, the world’s first communist state. Still, as late as the 1930s the far greater concern was the rise of fascist governments in Germany, Italy, and Spain, so most Americans accepted the necessity of an alliance with the Soviets during World War II. Indeed, some even clung to the hope that the alliance would lead to a warming of relations after the war and an opening of the Soviet Union.
Those hopes were quickly dashed by the events in 1946 and beyond. Stalin, with his Red Army in firm control of Eastern Europe, refused to allow (despite his promises at the Yalta conference) democratic elections in countries like Poland. Soon, post-war euphoria was replaced by Cold War gloom, a mood captured in Winston Churchill’s famous speech that year I which he coined the phrase “Iron Curtain” to describe the split between free and communist Europe. It would grow more pronounced in the next few years with the Berlin blockade (1948-49), the Soviet detonation of their first atomic bomb (1949), the fall of China to Mao’s communist rebels (1949), and the outbreak of war on the Korean peninsula (1950).
In this tense crisis, the American Catholic Church in general and Cardinal Spellman in particular emerged in the public eye as major opponents of communism both at home and abroad. From pulpits and podiums, op-ed pages and books, Spellman broadcasted blistering attacks on communist ideology, condemning its totalitarian sins in Russia, Eastern Europe, and Asia and warning against its advances in America.
An article he penned for the Catholic periodical America was typical: “They [communists] try to seduce us into believing that Americans can be Communists, but a true American can neither be a Communist nor a Communist condoner, and we realize that the first Loyalty of every American is vigilantly to weed out and counteract Communism and convert American Communists to Americanism.”
But like many anti-communist leaders in this era, Spellman’s call for weeding out communists occasionally went too far. For example, he joined with many conservatives in denouncing the Congress of Industrial Organizations and its affiliated labor unions for allegedly being dominated by communists. In 1949, he leveled this charge against the leaders of the union that represented the gravediggers of the church’s cemeteries. When the gravediggers eventually went on strike, Spellman replaced them with seminarians. The union presently gave up the strike and was forced by Spellman to switch its affiliation to the more conservative American Federation of Labor.
Soon Spellman threw his enthusiastic support to a rising star in the anti-communist crusade, Sen. Joseph McCarthy of Wisconsin. Initially this stance was in line with most Americans’ views as McCarthy appeared to be the only public figure bold enough to speak honestly about the communist threat. But as McCarthy’s accusations grew more sensational and his tactics more reckless, he quickly lost credibility with the public. But Spellman maintained his support for the embattled senator, even as his career crashed and burned in the wake of a censure by his Senate colleagues in 1954.
Despite his reputation as a staunch conservative, Spellman embraced a number of progressive causes. He fought against racial discrimination in New York’s public housing, for example, and promoted ecumenical cooperation between different religious denominations. When the Second Vatican Council convened in 1962, Spellman used his considerable influence to block a movement to discourage biblical scholarship by laymen and to ensure adoption of a “Declaration on Religious Liberty.”
Spellman’s progressiveness, however, went only so far and he remained best known for his consistent conservatism. He railed against Hollywood for what he considered the immoral content of its films and openly supported censorship efforts. He lobbied for federal funds for parochial schools and accused Eleanor Roosevelt of being anti-Catholic when she opposed the idea in her weekly newspaper column. He was equally vehement in denouncing the evils of divorce, homosexuality, and interfaith marriage. At the time, these views were shared by a wide spectrum of Americans. But posthumous revelations about Spellman’s personal life have led some biographers and historians to accuse him of rank hypocrisy.
Spellman’s conservatism served him well in the 1940s and ’50s but it ran up against the tide of radicalism in the ’60s. Nowhere was this more apparent with his outspoken support for the Vietnam wWr. In his mind, Vietnam was simply the next chapter in the story of America’s global struggle with the godless forces of communism. In a reprise of his World War II tours, he spent Christmas with the troops in 1964 and ’65. When the war began to go badly and the anti-war movement emerged, Spellman stood firm in his support for the war. It was a position that dismayed many of his fellow priests and bishops, prompting one of them to say in frustration, “It looks as if Cardinal Spellman is in Vietnam to bless the guns which the pope is begging us to put down.”
Cardinal Spellman died on Dec. 2, 1967 at age 78, just as the war he supported entered its most deadly and divisive phase. In testament to his influence and popularity, hundreds of thousands of mourners filed past his coffin as he lay in state in St. Patrick’s Cathedral and his funeral drew dignitaries from around the nation, including President Lyndon B. Johnson and Sen. Robert F. Kennedy. In the public commentary that followed his death, many alternated between criticism for Spellman’s excesses and praise for his genuine humanity and concern for the unfortunate. The lead editorial of the New York Times captured this dual legacy most succinctly: “If the Cardinal could create an unhappy impression as a controversialist, the priest and private man were yet another story. His personal kindness was unfailing, his twinkling good humor a delight, and his manner simple and unaffected. His zeal never flagged and even at an advanced age he gave of himself unstintingly — Francis Spellman was always faithful to his duty as he saw it — a man of fixed convictions, strongly expressed.

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