Communism was never popular in America, and no American group was more fervently anti-Communist than the Catholics. The American bishops, like the Vatican, had condemned Marxism before 1900 for its atheism, its violation of natural law principles, and its theory of inevitable class conflict. They condemned the Russian Revolution of 1917 that brought Lenin and the Bolsheviks to power. They condemned American Communism in the 1930s for its adherence to the Moscow party line, its frequent about-turns of policy, and its support of the anti-Catholic Republicans in the Spanish Civil War.Even in the Second World War, when America and the Soviet Union were allies against Nazism, Catholics kept their distance. Archbishop Francis Beckman of Dubuque, for example, warned in 1942 that "the Christ-haters of Moscow and their international brethren… may well take note of the Church Militant when she becomes aroused." And even as victorious American and Soviet troops shook hands at the River Elbe in early 1945, Catholic Mind reminded its readers that although "during the war there has been much wishful thinking about the transformation of the Soviet system… the reality remains unchanged." It added that "the war has given the dictatorship a stronger, more penetrating grip on the country than it ever had before." But it was in the twenty years of the "high" Cold War era, 1945-1965, that Catholic anti-Communism reached its climax, affecting every Catholic at home, at school, at work, in politics, in church, and even in devotional life.
The "culture wars" of the 1970s and 1980s contributed to the fragmentation of American Catholic culture, which enjoyed little of the certitude that had held it together in the 1950s. Marxist Communism as an atheist ideology had lost virtually all its radiance by the mid 1970s though it began to show up in religious dress, much modified, in elements of liberation theology. Still, the old anti-Communist verities lived on in the mind of Pope John Paul II. Annealed to political-religious struggle in Cold War Poland, he recognized no essential change in the situation, however much his American flock might be experiencing second thoughts. The events of 1989 vindicated him, enabling Catholic anti-Communists everywhere to rejoice. Their own view of the world had prevailed while its greatest rival of the century had degenerated and then died.
Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Holiness (Paul Ryan)
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