Religion 1 
and American 
Democracy 

THE AMERICA PRESS 25 CENTS 



ABOUT THE AUTHOR 

Father George H. Dunne entered the Society of Jesus 
in 1926. After his preliminary studies in classics, science 

and philosophy, he went to China, where he spent some 

years in study and teaching. Returning to the United 

States, he took a doctorate in Political Science at the 

University of Chicago. Later, he taught in the Institute 

of Social Sciences at St. Louis University, and at Loyola 

University, Los Angeles. At present he is stationed at 

St. Francis Xavier Church, Phoenix, Arizona. 

As one devoted to the elimination of racial and religi-

ous prejudice, Father Dunne is well qualified to expose 

the bigotry underlying Paul Blanshard's American Free-

dom and Catholic Power. The keenness of his analysis 

and his power of laying a finger on the weaknesses of 

Blanshard's case stem from his law school days before 

becoming a Jesuit, as well as from his brilliant philo-

sophical and theological studies as a member of the Order. 

AMERICA, The National Catholic Weekly, is published by 
The America Press, 70 East 45th Street, New York 17. For 
information or sample copies address Circulation Manager. 

9th printing 



R e l i g i o n 

and American 

Democracy 
A Reply to 

PAUL BLANSHARD'S 

American Freedom 

and Catholic Power 

by 

GEORGE H. DUNNE, S.J. 

These articles originally appeared in America 

between June 4th and July 30th, 1949. 

THE AMERICA PRESS 
70 EAST 45TH STREET. NEW YORK 17. N. T. 



CONTENTS 

I Preface to Criticism 3 

I I The Great Catholic Conspiracy 10 

I I I The Church and Democracy 17 

IV Catholic Schools 22 

V The Church and Medicine 28 

VI The Church and Science 34 

VII Church and State 41 

Nihil Obstat: John M. A. Fearns, S.T.D., 

Censor Librorum 

Imprimatur: Francis Cardinal Spellman, D.D. 

Archbishop of New York 

September 7, 1949 

The Nihil Obstat and Imprimatur are official declarations that a 

book or pamphlet is free of doctrinal or moral error. No impli-

cation is contained therein that those who have granted the Nihil 

Obstat and Imprimatur agree with the contents, opinions, or state-

ments expressed. 

(This formula is now in general use in the Archdio-

cese of New York) 

Deac td t ö sd 



I: Preface to Criticism 
Paul Blanshard's controversial articles about the Catholic 

Church, which originally appeared in the Nation maga-

zine, have now been published, in extended and revised 

form, as a book (American Freedom and Catholic Power. 

By Paul Blanshard. The Beacon Press, Boston, 1949). In 

this article and others which will follow 1 shall examine 

the book, which the author himself represents as "a rea-

soned and temperate discussion of the place of Catholic 

power in our national life" (Blanshard, op. cit., p. 3) and 

which Dr. John Haynes Holmes recommends as "ac-

curate, sound in argument, objective in spirit—a solid 

piece of work if I ever saw one" (quoted in the advertise-

ments). 

I THINK IT IS IMPORTANT at the outset sharply to 

define the scope and purpose of these articles. I do 

not intend to "answer" Blanshard's charges. This needs 

to be made quite clear, inasmuch as Blanshard's favorite 

rebuttal to any criticism is to boast that his critic has 

not refuted his accusations (cf. Blanshard's letter in the 

Humanist, August, 1948, p. 54). To refute Blanshard's 

charges would require several volumes. A paragraph, a 

sentence, even a phrase suffices to make an accusation. 

A book may be required to refute it. To make a charge it 

is enough to say that the Catholic doctrine on a specific 

moral problem is based on nothing but "arbitrary theo-

logical formulas." To refute the charge adequately would 

require a comprehensive discussion of the precise nature 

3 



of Catholic doctrine, its history, the sources and principles 

of Catholic moral theology. The fomenters of bigotry, 

whether racial or religious, have always taken full advan-

tage of this fact 

The issue with which I am concerned in these articles 

is whether Blanshard's book is, as he and his publishers 

contend, an objective criticism or a contribution to the 

literature of religious bigotry. In examing this question 

I shall, of course, answer some of his charges, but only 

for the purpose indicated. 

Neither shall I be able within the limits of these articles 

to call attention to all the examples of prejudice in 

Blanshard's book. They are legion. Often prejudice lurks 

in a nuance, in the turn of a phrase, in a sly innuendo. 

(For an example of the latter, see his remarks about the 

priest in the confessional: "Particularly when the penitent 

is a woman, her mind in the process of unburdening her 

regrets and worries is delivered, so to speak, wide open 

to the priest." Blanshard, American Freedom, and Catholic 

Power, p. 39.) It is when he employs this technique, as 

he does over and over again, that Blanshard operates on 

the lowest level of religious bigotry and takes his proper 

place alongside the Menace, with which he likes to think 

he has nothing in common (see Blanshard, op. cit., 

p. 266). I shall have to be satisfied to point out the main 

distortions which vitiate the book so completely that even 

the just criticisms and truths which it contains are hope-

lessly compromised by the prejudice of the whole. And 

this is, perhaps, the most unfortunate thing about the 

book. There are serious questions about Catholic atti-

tudes and policies which need to be frankly and honestly 

discussed. The Catholic attitude on the question of the 

union of Church and State is one. Blanshard has so 

poisoned the atmosphere that the possibility of a healthy 

airing of these questions is greatly lessened. 

4 



Certain other preliminary observations are called lor. 

Blanshard and his publishers make a point of the fact 

that his book is well documented. It is quite possible to 

write a book in which, for the most part, the facts, to the 

extent that they are stated, are correctly stated and well 

documented, but which is yet prejudiced and false. 

Let me give two examples of how this is done. The 

first is one, of a great many, taken from Blanshard's book. 

It is possible to cite abundant documentation to estab-

lish the fact that the Catholic Church teaches that "there 

is no salvation outside the Church." This is an indis-

putable fact. If one leaves it there, without adding the 

theological commentary which explains the doctrine, the 

reader is left to infer that Protestants, Jews and pagans 

are necessarily lost. A wholely false impression is created 

upon the basis of a documented fact. The whole truth is 

that the Church teaches that no man is lost unless he 

deliberately rejects God. Those who are in good faith 

and live according to the lights given them are "inside" 

the Church whether they know it or not. Protestants 

might be amused at the notion of possibly belonging 

willy-nilly to the Catholic Church, but they hardly have 

grounds for being furious—as they might well be, if they 

thought they were inevitably assigned to hell by the 

Catholic Church. 

My other example is a little anti-semitic tract I might 

compose in the style employed by Blanshard throughout 

his book, merely by substituting "Jewish" for "Catholic." 

Its effect is produced by mixing facts with bigoted slant-

ings: 

The American Jewish people have done their best to 
join the rest of America, but the rabbis have never 
been assimilated. They are still fundamentally East-
ern European or Near Asian in their spirit and direc-
tives (cf. Blanshard, op. cit., p. 10). 

IS .Special i 



It would be a mistake to judge the power of the 
Jewish community in terms of numbers only. Even 
a minority bloc in the population can make a 
tremendous impression if it is closely knit (cf. Blan-
shard, op. cit., p. 11). 

The Jewish synagogue is an important item in the 
technique of denominational display. The synagogue 
is usually a big synagogue, and often an oversized 
synagogue. 

. . . The big synagogue in the American com-
munity is the Exhibit A of rabbinical power, and the 
Jewish people have accepted it as their symbol of 
success even when it is heavily mortgaged (cf. Blan-
shard, op. cit., p. 12). 

The observer of any Jewish religious ceremony is 
impressed by its foreign character. Even the names 
of their feast days emphasize their foreign prove-
nance: Rosh Hodesh, Rosh Hashanah, Yom Kippur, 
Hanukah, Lag Beomer, Shavuot. They are celebrated 
with elaborate ceremonies in the synagogues, with 
impressive pageantry and a great many chants sung 
by a be-shawled cantor and be-shawled choral 
assistants. These chants sound strange to ears ac-
customed to the traditional American melodies of 
Cole Porter or even though he is a Jew, of Irving 
Berlin. 

These feasts and their ceremonial pageantry, com-
memorating events that happened thousands of years 
ago in a remote and foreign part of the world, annoy 
and disturb non-Jewish Americans, who are likely 
to ask: "Is not such religious observance of servility 
to the historic memories of the Chosen Race utterly 
contrary to the American tradition?" "What good 
American cares about the Bar Cochba Revolt, sixty 
years after the destruction of the Temple in Jeru-
salem?" "How did this Asiatic posturing ever get 
to the United States?" (cf. Blanshard, op. cit., p. 
15). 

I am ashamed to have written this even by way of ex-

ample. It is anti-semitism worthy of Gerald K. Smith— 

or of Paul Blanshard. 

6 



Each of the facta stated, to the extent that it is stated, 

is true and easily documented. Yet the total impression 

created is wholly false. It is not necessary here to analyze 

the technique employed to achieve this misleading result. 

It should be obvious to the discerning critic. What is 

difficult to understand is that otherwise intelligent and 

discerning people (a Norman Thomas for example— 

cf. Nation, May 14, 1949, pp. 560 ff.), are blind to a 

prejudice in Blanshard which they would detect imme-

diately if it were anti-semitic instead of anti-Catholic. 

Whether Blanshard employs these techniques con-

sciously or subconsciously I do not know. That is a ques-

tion that touches upon his honesty. I think it is altogether 

probable that Blanshard is honest in his convictions. An 

objectively dishonest criticism may proceed from a sub-

jectively honest man who is blinded by his own preju-

dices. I suppose it is quite possible for a Blanshard to get 

to heaven hating the Catholic Church. 

One of Blanshard's troubles is that he suffers from a 

delusion of his own infallibility. He does not admit the 

possibility of his being in error. Consequently he does 

not admit the possibility of anyone disagreeing with him 

for reasons of honest and independent intellectual judg-

ment. If you are a Catholic layman and disagree with his 

doctrines, it is because you are duped by "the priests." 

If you are a priest (after a few chapters of Blanshard 

the very name has acquired a sinister connotation) and 

disagree with him, it is simply because you are a dummy 

for a ventriloquist Pope. 

Thus, in answering an article of mine (see Common-

weal, March 12, 1948), in which I discussed his first 

three Nation articles, Blanshard dismisses me contemptu-

ously: "Naturally, my criticisms would be offensive to a 

member of the priesthood because a priest is bound by 

oath to accept and propagate the very policies which I 

7 



hold to be reactionary" (Humanist, August, 1948, p. 53). 

This is a fair example of Blanshard's technique 

throughout his book. Let us examine it closely. It reveals 

much about the hollowness of Blanshard's claim to be an 

impartial and objective critic. To say that he disagreed 

with me, to point out that my facts were wrong, or to 

insist that my argument was faulty for such and such a 

reason, would be fair debate. To dismiss from the start 

anything I might have to say, upon the ground, clearly 

implied, that a priest is incapable of being honest, sincere, 

objective or intellectually convinced, is not fair debate. 

I have not at any time taken an "oath to accept and 

propagate" any policies, nor do I know of any priest 

who has. I am a Catholic because I believe in the truth 

of the Catholic doctrinal position. I do not agree with all 

the policies of every or of any Pope, much less of every 

or of any bishop; nor is there anything in my faith 

which obliges me to do so. (Blanshard constantly con-

fuses policy with doctrine, doctrine with policy, and con-

fuses matters of pious belief, of opinion and of historical 

interpretation with doctrine.) 

If Blanshard had said that, as a priest, I would find it 

extremely difficult and, usually, impossible to express 

public disagreement with the policies of a bishop, he 

would have been on solid ground. I should have agreed 

with him and would be in a position out of my own 

experience to document the charge. But to say, as he 

does, that the only reason I do not agree with his 

criticisms is that "Father Dunne is not permitted to agree 

with me" (Humanist, August, 1948, page 57), indi-

cates Blanshard's inability to admit that on any matter 

upon which he has pronounced judgment there is any 

room for an honest difference of opinion. I scarcely need 

to point out that Blanshard's attitude is immeasurably 

more intolerant than the intolerance which he attributes 

8 



to the Catholic Church and which so infuriates him. 

While the Church regards anyone who disagrees with her 

doctrinal position as in error, at least she admits that 

those who disagree with her may be honest, sincere, in 

good faith and not necessarily fatuous. 

It is true that there is a widespread and dangerous 

tendency in Catholic circles to resent and condemn any 

criticism of Catholic institutions, ecclesiastical policies 

or ecclesiastical personalities. It is not true, as Blanshard 

supposes, that every rejection of his or any other criticism 

is due to this tendency. 

Georges Bernanos, in his Lettres aux Anglais, wrote 

a fiery criticism of the hierarchy and the clergy far more 

caustic, severe, and even violent, than anything Blanshard 

could write. Besides the essential difference that Bernanos 

wrote out of a passionate love for Christ and His Church 

that could not brook in silence her betrayal by ministers 

of mediocrity who consistently sacrifice truth and justice 

to expediency, there is the other essential difference that 

Bernanos was not blinded by prejudice. 

Blanshard believes that as a priest I am bound to find 

offensive any criticism of the policies and attitudes of 

Catholics, especially of the clergy, high and low. It is 

an adequate answer to tell Blanshard and his supporters 

that my favorite author is Leon Bloy, the searing blasts 

of whose volcanic criticisms would curl Blanshard's hair. 

Nothing healthier for the Church in this country could 

happen than the emergence of a Bloy or a Bernanos in 

our midst. If they emerge, they will be anathematized in 

many Catholic circles. They will also be warmly wel-

comed by many other Catholics, who, like myself, reject 

Blanshard's book as an unfortunate contribution to the 

cause of bigotry. 

9 



11: The Great Catholic Conspiracy 

SEVERAL YEARS AGO I delivered a speech before 

15,000 people at an anti-Ku Klux Klan rally in Los 

Angeles. The audience represented a good cross-section 

of the community: predominantly working class and mid-

dle class with a sprinkling of the upper class. There 

were Gentiles and Jews, Protestants and Catholics. Un-

doubtedly there was a minority of Communists in the 

audience, possibly several hundred. The overwhelming 

majority were simply citizens concerned about the pre-

servation of American and democratic ideals threatened 

by KKK terrorism. The chairman of the meeting was the 

Attorney General of California. I was one of eight 

speakers. Another was the District Attorney of San 

Francisco, a devout Catholic. 

There was not a subversive word or an un-American 

word uttered in a single speech that night. There was a 

great deal said about the dignity of man, the inalienable 

rights of man, about justice, about charity, about fair 

play, about the brotherhood of man, about democracy. 

The audience responded with enthusiasm. I came away 

with the exalted feeling that such a demonstration and 

manifestation of the dynamism of democratic ideals in-

evitably arouses. 

Subsequently two reports, one of four pages, the other 

of nineteen pages, were mailed upon stationery marked 

"Confidential" to the Coadjutor Bishop of the diocese, 

to my own superior, to certain parish priests and, I sup-

pose to others. These reports purported to describe the 

meeting in detail. They caused me a great deal of trouble. 

10 



The author of these documents, it turned out, was the 

chief of the private police force of a large industrial plant 

notorious for its anti-union labor policy. His thinking 

and consequently his reports were obviously controlled 

by two assumptions that reflected the bias of his mind: 

labor unions are "Red" and foreigners are "Reds." 

When I read his two reports on the meeting—copies 

of them came into my hands—I was astounded. It was 

impossible to recognize in his description the meeting in 

which I had participated. Yet the curious thing about it 

was that his actual reporting from the factual point of 

view, apart from minor details, was substantially ac-

curate. How did he manage to paint a wholly deceptive 

picture without deviating very materially from the facts? 

By a very simple technique: he began with the assump-

tion, simply stated as a categorical fact in the first para-

graphs of his initial report, that the 15,000 people as-

sembled in the Olympic auditorium were "a subversive 

group." Once that assumption was made, the most inno-

cent details observable at any mass gathering acquired 

a sinister and conspiratorial flavor. For instance: "8:40 

P.M., people began to arrive in the hall . . . 8:45, Father 

Dunne arrives and takes his place on the platform . . . 

8:47, there are small groups of people clustered in the 

vestibule . . . 8:50, some people are going out, some 

coming in. . . 

The conspiratorial atmosphere has been established. 

The mind of the unwary reader, who has himself wit-

nessed exactly the same details at the fights, or the 

wrestling matches, at political conventions, business con-

ventions, Rotary Club conventions, now begins to 

sense something sinister in all these goings on. The 

simple act of someone stepping outside to take a smoke, 

or leaving the balcony to hunt for the gentlemen's lava-

tory, becomes a significant detail in the vast mosaic of 

11 



conspiracy that i3 being built up. The groups of people 

gathered in the vestibule (probably making dates for 

bowling the next night) become furtive, shadowy figures 

discussing in sibilant whispers the master plan for dyna-

miting the City Hall. When Father Dunne called upon 

the churches and the labor unions to spearhead the 

"fight for democracy," clearly he was urging his listen-

ers to seize the weapons nearest at hand and pour out 

into the streets to man the barricades. Since Father 

Dunne is manifestly "an absolute subverter of the Ameri-

can way of life," his very virtues become vices. The 

fact that "he is clear, direct and intelligent in his pre-

sentation," that "he does not use notes, nor read his 

speech, gives the listener the impression that he is con-

vinced of what he is saying. At no time does his audience 

lose the trend of his thoughts." For these very reasons, 

"Father Dunne becomes more dangerous." 

Note the subtle way in which this kind of propaganda 

operates. The supposition of subversive conspiracy once 

accepted, then the very fact that Father Dunne speaks 

with sincerity proves that he is insincere; the fact thet 

he speaks with conviction proves he is merely cunning. 

Then there is the master touch. "Father Dunne speaks 

with a slight accent." Ah-ha! South Side Chicago with 

a heavy coating of Los Angeles, flavored with Chinese 

and French? More probably Jewish or Russian! In any 

event—foreign! The last doubt about his subversive 

character disappears. 

What has all this to do with Paul Blanshard's book? 

A great deal. The technique so effectively employed by 

my friend, the industrial cop, to destroy my reputation 

is the technique employed by Blanshard against the 

Church. I recommend both documents to the political 

science departments of our universities as study material 

for their courses in Propaganda Analysis. 

12 



In the first paragraphs of his book, American Freedom 

*nd Catholic Power, Paul Blanshard states the premise 

in terms of which all his facts will be interpreted. "The 

Catholic problem," as he sees it, is "the matter of the use 

and abuse of power by an organization that is not only 

a church but a state within a state, and a state above a 

state." From that point on Catholicsim is dealt with as 

a vast conspiracy in which, as in all conspiracies, the 

masses of the people—in this case the Catholic laity— 

are helpless pawns and dupes, held in bondage and 

shrewdly manipulated by a closely knit and well-disci-

plined and extraordinarily efficient Politburo, which is 

the hierarchy, and its political commissars, who are "the 

priests." 

The sole objective of the conspirators is "power." And 

since the "Catholic problem" is "not primarily a religious 

problem" but "a political problem" (Blanshard, op. cit,. 

p. 3), all the goings-on in the Catholic Church are re-

lated solely to the drive for power. If there are huge and 

magnificent Jewish synagogues in this country, as there 

are, and huge and magnificent Protestant churches, as 

there are, these edifices have presumably been built to 

provide fitting and adequate temples for the worship of 

Almighty God. But when Catholics build "a big church" 

the italics are Blanshard's), as they "usually" do (actu-

ally, of course, for every "big" Catholic church in this 

country there are a dozen "little" churches), it is merely 

a "technique of denominational display." "The big 

church in the American community is the Catholic 

hierarchy's Exhibit A of ecclesiastical power" (p. 12). 

These "traditionally showy edifices must be weighed care-

fully in assessing the real hold of the Catholic hierarchy 

•pon the American people" (ibid.). 

In the parish to which I am presently attached a 

rapidly growing community has rendered the formerly 

13 



commodious church wholly inadequate. In addition to 

the six Sunday Masses in the church, we now have four 

Masses in the school cafeteria. I am a daily ear-witness 

to the complaints of the people who do not like being 

shunted over to the cafeteria, or forced to stand jam-

packed in the vestibule or in the nooks and alcoves of 

the church, and who are subjecting the pastor to constant 

pressure to build a larger church. Before long, despite 

his reluctance to add to the parish debt, he will be forced 

to yield. This is how conspiratorial priests impose intol-

erable burdens upon a mass of enslaved and powerless 

lay Catholics for the sole purpose of building huge monu-

ments to ecclesiastical power. 

When tens of thousands of Shriners parade through the 

streets of Chicago, this is simply a colorful and exciting 

spectacle about which no good American need be dis-

turbed. But tens of thousands of members of the Holy 

Name Society parading through the streets of Boston are 

a sight to send cold chills through the spine of every 

patriotic Protestant American (p. 13). The pageantry of 

a Shriners' parade, with thousands of American busi-

nessmen looking oddly out of place in their Arab fezzes 

and baggy pants, is part of the great American tradition. 

The pageantry and ecclesiastical costumes of Catholic 

religious processions "annoy and disturb non-Catholic 

Americans" who ask "how did this medieval posturing 

ever get to the United States?" (p. 15). 

It got here because this country—unlike many Euro-

pean countries, Protestant and Catholic, and now com-

munist—believes in religious freedom. Most Americans, 

whether Protestant, Catholic or Jewish, are determined 

to preserve this freedom—the freedom to build churches 

and schools, to gather in halls or in stadia or to parade 

peacefully in the streets with whatever pageantry pleases 

them, and the freedom for people like Blanshard who are 

14 



annoyed by the Cardinal's "red cloak three yards long" 

(p. 15) to go to the ball game when Catholics parade. 

The busy offices of the Federal Council of Churches or 

of the Protestant Mission Societies or of the Anti-De-

famation League are presumably a legitimate part of the 

American scene. The busy offices of the NCWC become 

a honeycombed nest of conspiracy "full of busy young 

priests, lobbyists, pamphleteers, journalists and lawyers, 

who coordinate the Catholic population of the country 

as one great pressure group when any 'Catholic issue' 

arises" (p. 29). Knowing how discouraged some of the 

people in the NCWC headquarters sometimes get in their 

efforts to bring understanding, to say nothing of accept-

ance, of Catholic social philosophy to the Catholic popu-

lation, lay and clerical, I am sure they will be amazed to 

learn of their success in coordinating the Catholic body 

into "one great pressure group." 

Blanshard lists several dozen Catholic organizations, 

ranging from the National Catholic Educational Associa-

tion to the Catholic Total Abstinence Union (pp. 29, ff.). 

The assumption of conspiracy once made, it suffices to 

compile an impressive list of participating organizations 

to fortify the impression of conspiratorial and subversive 

tentacles reaching out into every cranny of American 

life. My friend in Los Angeles employed exactly the same 

technique in reporting the meeting I addressed. 

To Blanshard it is significant that Catholic Action 

describes itself as "an army engaged in a holy war for 

religion" (p. 31). There is a phrase that should open 

the eyes of the most tolerantly inclined! As one who has 

actively participated in many Catholic Action cells I am 

in a position to reassure Blanshard's frightened readers. 

The nature of this "holy war" consists chiefly in frank 

•elf-criticism of one's own attitudes and behavior pat-

terns in terms of Christian ideals of justice, charity and 

15 



truth, and discussion of how to Christiana« one's enri-

ronment, chiefly by the force of example. 

We are well beyond the point of absurdity when the 

annual selection of a Catholic Mother of the Year is 

described as part of the sinister plot—the hierarchy 

"boldly appropriating" an American idea and perverting 

that idea to its own sinister ends (p. 31). I do not know 

whether the Jewish people select a Jewish Mother of the 

Year, or the Methodists a Methodist Mother of the Year, 

but if they did, I should think it an altogether appropriate 

custom and not at all an act of sabotage. 

By the end of his second chapter Blanshard is so car-

ried away with his obsession about conspiracy that the 

most serious and damaging and sweeping charges are 

presented as incontrovertible facts: "Is it surprising that, 

with such a perfect instrument for the control of conduct, 

the priest does not hesitate to extend the directive power 

of the confessional into the regions of politics, sociology 

and economics?" (p. 39). 

Lacking Blanshard's talent for sweeping generaliza-

tions incapable of proof, I cannot state categorically that 

no priest has ever introduced politics, sociology or eco-

nomics into the confessional. I can state that in forty-four 

years as a Catholic I have gone to confession to literally 

hundreds of priests and have yet to hear anything re-

motely touching upon these matters mentioned by my 

confessor. In twenty-three years as a Jesuit I have lived 

on close terms of companionship with hundreds of priests. 

I think I know what their attitude towards the confes-

sional is, and it is possible to say that Blanshard's charge 

is a grotesque caricature and a base libel. 

Every object seen under water is a caricature. Blan-

shard sees everything Catholic through the aqueous prism 

of conspiracy. 

16 



I I I . The Church and Democracy 

6 6 U N D E R N E A T H ALL its ponderous verbiage, the 

Catholic theory of Church and State is quite simple. It is 

essentially a variation of the doctrine of the divine right 

of rulers" (Blanshard, op. cit., p. 44). 

This is how Blanshard disposes of Catholic political 

philosophy. His "proof" is a truncated text, which 

Blanshard misunderstands, from Leo XIII's encyclical, 

The Christian Constitution of States. 

Certainly the Catholic theory is that the ultimate 

source of public authority is God, not the multitude and 

not—the point ignored by Blanshard—the prince. The 

question in terms of which the doctrine of the divine 

right of rulers is resolved is whether this authority, whose 

ultimate origin is God, rests proximately in the people, 

who may delegate its exercise to prince or president, or 

proximately in the prince, who is then answerable not to 

the people but to God alone. The latter alternative is the 

doctrine of the divine right of rulers. The former alterna-

tive, which vests sovereignty in the people, is Catholic 

political theory. 

Naturally there have been Catholics, as there have been 

Protestants, as there have been atheists and agnostics, 

who have defended the doctrine of the divine right of 

kings. Bossuet, the French orator and bishop (1627-

1704), was one of the more eloqeunt of these. They were 

apologists for a system and were influenced more by their 

own social, economic and political predilections than by 

a rational analysis of the implications of the Catholic 

philosophy of man and society. 

17 



To those of Blanshard's readers who are honestly in-

terested in knowing what Catholic political theory is, I 

recommend The Growth of Political Thought in the West, 

by Harvard's Professor Charles H. Mcllwain (not a 

Catholic), the leading authority in this country on this 

subject, and Heinrich Rommen's scholarly work, The 

State in Catholic Thought. 

In evaluating Blanshard's critique of the Catholic posi-

tion, it is important not only to understand what the 

Catholic position really is, but also to understand what 

Blanshard's position really is. There is no doubt that 

between the true position of Catholics and the position of 

Blanshard there exists a basic conflict. 

Blanshard is a political positivist who regards the state 

as the unique and absolute source of all rights. This is 

essentially fascism. Blanshard will not like to be told 

this. He is peculiarly sensitive on this point (p. 243). 

The fact remains that in its logical consequences his 

theory is indistinguishable from Mussolini's "nothing 

above the state, beyond the state, outside the state." 

That this is Blanshard's position is clear from the 

scandal he takes, and expects all Americans to share, 

in the fact that Catholic political philosophy affirms the 

right and, in some circumstances, the duty of citizens to 

resist the law. Far from being, as Blanshard alleges 

(p. 52), an un-American attitude, this is the theory in 

terms of which the Fathers of the American Revolution 

justified their revolt against England. 

Undoubtedly Blanshard would reply that his insistence 

upon absolute submission to the law, regardless of its 

character, applies only in a democracy and that this 

absolves his theory of any taint of fascism. It is true 

that the probabilities of tyranny are far less where people 

are free to elect their representatives than under a dicta-

torship. But it is infantile to pretend that the possibility 

18 



is non-existent. It is quite possible, for example, that the 

majority of the German people, after years of propaganda, 

would have approved the racist Nuremberg laws. But the 

Nuremberg laws, even if approved by a majority vote, 

would still have been unjust and inhuman. 

Blanshard, who gets quite annoyed when he is held to 

account for the logical implications of his own theories 

(c/. Humanist, August, 1948, p. 56), would probably say 

that he is astonished that I should draw an analogy be-

tween nazi laws and laws which exist or might exist in 

our democracy. Let us stick to the point. The discussion 

is about Blanshard's political philosophy. Does he or 

does he not admit the right of citizens to refuse to submit 

to unjust laws? If he does not, his position leads logically 

to a justification of any tyranny that can mobilize the 

support of fifty-one per cent of the people. Fascism is 

fascism whether political power is monopolized by a 

single fascist leader or exercised by tens of thousands of 

fascist voters. If he does admit the right to refuse to 

submit to unjust law, then let him admit that, contrary 

to his present pretension, the Catholic position in this 

matter is thoroughly American and that the only differ-

ence between him and Catholics is a division of opinion 

about the justice or injustice of certain specific laws. 

The laws which in many of our States require racial 

segregation in the schools and prohibit interracial mar-

riage are unjust and immoral. That they may be opproved 

by a majority of the citizens in these States doesn't make 

them just. TTie Catholic who refuses to submit to these 

laws is the true champion of democracy. 

The real problem in this matter of the Church and 

democracy does not arise, as Blanshard supposes, from 

our philosophy. It arises from our attitudes and policies, 

which often contradict our philosophy. This is not a 

specifically Catholic problem, but it is particularly pain-

19 



ful for a Catholic who believes that as a consequence of 

the Church's view of the nature of man as a free, rational, 

political and social being, Catholics should be everywhere 

the foremost champions of political freedom against 

tyranny, of reasoned obedience to just laws against the 

enforced servitude of blind obedience to dictatorial de-

crees, of the fullest participation by the people in the 

political life of the community against regimentation by 

a "party," and of the positive role of the democratic state 

in promoting the common good against the sauve qui 

peut theory of political negativism. 

To pretend that such is the case would be as objectively 

dishonest as Blanshard's book. It cannot be denied that, 

always with outstanding exceptions, churchmen in Spain, 

Italy, Austria, Portugal, Latin America and Vichy France 

have shown a marked preferential symapthy for authori-

tarian political regimes. In my opinion, representatives 

of the Catholic body in this country have been too un-

critical of these regimes. 

Yet it is manifest, in terms of Catholic philosophy, 

that authority, while necessary in society, stands far 

below freedom in the scale of Christian values. Freedom 

stands so high in the scale of values that God would 

permit men to separate themselves from Him for eternity 

rather than interfere with their freedom. Nor is there 

any way to explain why God permits the vast disorders 

which man has written upon every page of human history 

except in terms of His respect for man's free will. 

The pattern of thinking which supports authority at the 

expense of freedom is shot through with inconsistencies 

and contradictions. This fact alone proves that it is not 

rooted in any integrated political philosophy. Thus I 

have frequently found an excessive admiration for dic-

tatorship abroad combined with sturdy opposition to 

every increase of governmental authority at home. I have 

20 



heard the highest praise of Franco's public-housing 

projects from the same lips that branded every govern-

ment-financed housing project in this country as "social-

ism." There was scarcely a piece of social legislation 

passed or projected during the Roosevelt Administration 

which I have not heard furiously criticized in certain 

clerical circles in which any word in criticism of the 

shackling of political, economic, social and cultural life 

in Spain or Portugal aroused angry resentment. 

The trouble is that most people are opportunists. Ex-

pediency and self-interest shape their thinking and de-

termine their policies far more than philosophy—or the 

Gospels. Few people are true idealists. What most people 

who say they believe in freedom and justice really mean 

is that they believe in freedom and justice for themselves. 

The champion of "white supremacy" can mouth the 

slogans of liberty, justice, equality and democracy as well 

as the next man, and sincerely think he believes in them. 

This is not a Catholic peculiarity. It is a peculiarity of 

people, including "liberals" of Blanshard's persuasion. 

Thus Blanshard can wax indignant at the tyranny of 

Spanish laws which impose severe limitations upon 

Protestant religious activity. This is an affront to 

democracy. But he is singularly undisturbed by Mexican 

laws imposing far stricter limitations upon Catholic 

religious activity (cf. p. 282). 

This is why Blanshard is in no position to single out 

Catholics or their hierarchy for criticism in this respect 

But Bernanos, the Catholic who attacked evils whether in 

the Church or out of it, was in a position to do so. Like 

Bernanos, I do not believe that Catholics have any right 

to be like other people. The implications of their faith 

and of their philosophy about the dignity of man's 

rational and free nature impose upon them the obligation 

of championing freedom, justice and truth everywhere. 

21 



IV: Catholic Schools 

W ^ H E N BLANSHARD LOOKS at Catholic schools, he 

sees a conspiracy of priests to impose unwanted burdens 

upon the helpless, reluctant mass of Catholic laity. (Cf. 

Blanshard, American Freedom and Catholic Power, p. 

62). He "documents" his description by references to 

the prescriptions of Canon Law which define the obliga-

tion of Catholics to send their children to parochial 

schools (p. 64). 

This is like arguing that, since the penal codes of our 

States prohibit the robbing of banks, the masses of the 

American people are in favor of robbing banks. The 

argument assumes that the only reason the average citizen 

refrains from bank robbery is fear of the law. 

The truth is that, in general, laws are effective only 

so long as they meet with the general approval of the 

people. The average Catholic sends his children to 

parochial schools because he is satisfied that the caliber 

of education compares favorably with that given in public 

schools and, in addition, is convinced that there are 

certain important values found there which are not to 

be found in the public schools. 

In our parish school here in Phoenix we have about 

800 children. Last year a new school building was added 

to accommodate the constantly increasing demands of 

parents. Despite this improvement, we were forced to 

turn away some 300 children for whom there was no 

room. The entreaties and expostulations of disappointed 

parents reached such proportions that the distraught 

pastor was almost driven into hiding. I cannot quite fit 

22 



these facts into Blanshard's theory of the tyrant priest 

forcing unwilling parents to send their children to the 

parochial school. 

The total incomprehension of things Catholic which 

disqualifies Blanshard as an objective critic is nowhere 

more in evidence than in his description of Catholic 

teaching nuns. Sometimes this lack of comprehension is 

merely funny; sometimes it is insulting. 

"Although the Church favors unionization for almost 

everybody else," the poor nuns are not unionized (p. 67). 

And—would you believe it—even the poor wages they 

receive must be turned over to the orders to which they 

belong (p. 68)! Now if they would organize they could 

put a stop to all of this, bargain for decent wages, time 

and a half for overtime. Why, a nun could put some-

thing aside every month, buy herself a moderately priced 

car and a little cottage in the country to which to retire 1 

Blanshard seems unable to understand that nuns are 

not paid wages because they do not want wages. They 

have freely and deliberately embraced a life of religious 

poverty in which everything is owned in common and 

nothing is owned personally. The nuns have entered re-

ligious orders because they desired to follow this rule of 

life. It is one of his curious blind spots that Blanshard, 

who apparently has considerable sympathy for the idea 

of socialism, is totally unable to understand people 

voluntarily embracing the ideal of communal living from 

motives of Christian idealism. 

Blanshard is offended by the "unhygienic costumes" of 

the nuns (p. 67). Unhygienic is hardly a word to apply 

to nuns, who are so notoriously immaculate about their 

persons and their houses that the cleanliness which 

surrounds them makes the male animal almost uncom-

fortable. If anyone ever finds a stray "woolie" in a con-

vent, he should offer it to the Smithsonian Institution. 

23 



If Blanshard had said their costumes strike many 

people as outlandish, I should agree. So are Bing 

Crosbys costumes outlandish. If the Blanshards ever 

prevail in this country, we may expect laws telling us not 

only that our children must go to school but what school 

they must go to. We should not only be obliged to wear 

clothes but we should be told what kind of clothes we 

must wear. That would be the end of democracy. In the 

kind of state Blanshard would give us, Bing Crosby would 

have no choice but to put on a collar and tie or go to jaiL 

I am not being flippant. I think the fundamental 

attitude here expressed is extremely important. It reveals 

certain profound weaknesses in Blanshard's conception 

of democracy. He sees a grave threat to democracy in 

the efforts of the Breen office, administering a self-deny-

ing code adopted by the motion picture industry itself, 

to see that the ladies of the cinema do not take off too 

many clothes, at least not under the public gaze of the 

camera. He presumably sees no threat to democracy in 

laws, enforced by the police power of the state, which 

would oblige nuns to remove as much of their clothes 

as the politicos' taste in dress might dictate (Cf. p. 282). 

It is impossible to please Blanshard. On one page he 

complains that "even the names of the 259 religious 

orders for women" are "utterly alien to the typically 

robust and independent spirit of American womanhood" 

(p. 67). On the next page, he complains that the mas-

culine saints' names which the nuns often adopt in re-

ligion— "Mary John," "Mary Frederick," Mary 

Matthew," "Mary Emmanuel" and "Mary Thomas"—are 

altogether too robust to suit him (p. 68). 

The simple fact is, of course, that the range of tem-

peraments among the 80,000 teaching nuns in the United 

States (or in almost any convent for that matter) is as 

broad as the range of temperaments of American women 

24 



in general. As any Catholic could have told Blanshard, 

in the convent are all types of personalities—there are 

nuns as robust and independent as any home-run queen 

on a professional girls' softball team (we have a former 

tennis champion in our convent here) and some are as 

shy as the proverbial violet; one may be as vigorous, 

except for a difference in vocabulary, as the toughest top 

sergeant in the army, another as feminine as Lillian Gish. 

Because nuns are celibates, says Mr. Blanshard, they 

are not qualified to teach the young (pp. 68 ff). I do 

not know what the figures are, but from personal ob-

servation I am of the opinion that the number of un-

married school teachers in our public schools is such that, 

should Blanshard's norm of non-celibacy ever be ao-

oepted as a requirement for a teacher's certificate, half 

the schools in the country would have to close. 

Unquestionably there are many soft spots in the 

Catholic educational system. Catholic educators are 

aware of the fact It is from their self-criticisms that 

Blanshard derives much of the "documentation" out of 

which he builds a sorry picture of the low educational 

standards of Catholic schools (C/. pp. 72 ff., 101 ff.) He 

overlooks the fact that the amount and frankness of this 

self-criticism are, in themselves, indications of vitality 

and health. 

By selective documentation drawn from the criticisms 

of Robert Maynard Hutchins and his associates, or sim-

ply from critical articles which have appeared in educa-

tional journals, I fancy I could draw so desolate a picture 

of the low state of education in the American public 

schools that one might easily conclude that the best thing 

for the country would be to turn all our schools back to 

the Indians forthwith. I doubt, however, that Hutchins 

•r the other critics would think the conclusion fairly 

derived from their views. 

25 



One of Blanshards basic fallacies consists in the fact 

that he opposes to the Catholic school, which he sees 

chiefly in its imperfections, an ideal public school which 

never existed on land or sea. He assumes, for example, 

that the principles and ideals of democracy inevitably 

prevail in public schools and cannot prevail in Catholic 

schools. He forgets that the teachers in public schools 

can bring their own prejudices into the class room. 

Recently I was asked by a teacher in a large public 

high school to lecture to each of his five classes on the 

subject of anti-semitism. I learned from him, and from 

personal observation, that anti-semitism, as well as racial 

prejudice, was disturbingly common among the students. 

I also learned from him that there was scarcely another 

teacher on the large staff of this institution who was 

trying to do anything about it, chiefly because most of 

them shared the prejudices of their students. 

This is not an isolated experience. Inasmuch as a 

great deal of my time for some years has been devoted 

to fighting racial prejudice, I have had considerable 

first-hand experience in this matter. On the basis of that 

experience I do not hesitate to assert that, if there are far 

too many Catholic schools which fail in this respect, their 

record is at least as good as that of the public schools, 

and in many cases much better. 

It was not a Catholic school board, but a public school 

board which two years ago in Southern California at-

tempted to segregate all Mexican-American children. It 

is not the Catholic schools, but the public schools, which 

throughout the State of Arizona segregate by law all 

Negro children and, in many localities, all Mexican-Amer-

ican children. It was not the students of a Catholic school, 

but of a public school, who a few years ago almost pro-

voked a terrible race riot in Gary, Indiana. 

My intention is not to draw up a general indictment of 

26 



public schools. I am very much out of sympathy with 

the extreme forms of criticism of public schools in which 

certain Catholic leaders have on occasion indulged. The 

public schools, within the limitations imposed upon them 

by their environment, are doing a good job. The same 

may be said of Catholic schools. Allowing for a certain 

number of incompetents, the men and women who teach 

in the public schools are sincere, able, conscientious, and 

possessed of high ideals. But they are not perfect. The 

same may be said of the teachers in Catholic schools. 

I suppose all I am trying to say is that the best answer 

to Blanshard's criticism of Catholic schools is: "Let him 

who is without sin throw the first stone." I am also 

suggesting that the best place for pamphlets describing 

the public schools as Our National Enemy No. 1 is the 

ash-can. And that is the best place for Blanshard's chap-

ter on "Education and the Catholic Mind." 

As for his chapter on "Public Schools and Public 

Money," I think it can be consigned to the same place. 

The pretension that a program of public aid for private 

schools strikes at the very foundations of democracy is 

little short of nonsense. We can dispense with hysteria 

and look at the facts. 

Only an intolerably narrow provincial would claim: 

1) that the people of England, Wales, Scotland, Canada, 

Holland or Switzerland were less zealous for democracy 

than we; or 2) that democracy did not function at least 

as successfully in these countries as in our own. Yet the 

fact is that in each of these countries public aid for 

private schools has long been taken for granted. As the 

Latin adage has it: Contra factum non valet illatio— 

which, roughly translated, means: The proof of the pud-

ding is in the eating. 

27 



V : The Church and Medicine 

I N DISCUSSING this topic, Blanshard thinks it • 

startling presumption on the part of Catholic moralists 

to pass moral judgment on such matters as therapeutic 

abortion, sterilization, irradiation of the ovaries, con-

traception, abortion, masturbation, artificial insemination, 

sodomy, euthanasia (cf. Blanshard, American Freedom 

and Catholic Power, pp. 107 ff.). The only logical con-

clusion I can derive from this is that, in his opinion. 

Catholic moralists have no right to pass judgment on 

such matters. Blanshard finds it intolerable that Catholic 

moralists "exercise definite authority over the doctor and 

nurse in respect to many aspects of professional life. . . . 

particularly . . . in the special areas of birth, death and 

sexual conduct" (p. 108). In Blanshard's opinion, it 

would seem, the Catholic moralist has no right to inter-

vene in anything that falls within the field of medicine and 

surgery. If words mean anything, any such intervention 

is, in Blanshard's opinion, an indefensible "priestly (in 

the context of his style one may legitimately regard 

'dastardly' as a synonym for 'priestly*) participation 

in medical practice" (p. 108). If all of this is not equi-

valent to denying the right of Catholic moralists to pass 

moral judgment upon anything a physician or surgeon 

chooses to do with knives, I do not know what it means. 

At the cost of repetition let me point out again that, 

in this phase of his discussion, Blanshard is not arguing 

that the Catholic moral position on the subject—let us 

say, of abortion—is unsound morally. He is saying, what 

right have Catholic moralists to discuss abortion? 

28 



I think we can now put Blanshard into his proper 

niche. He is a secularist, pure and simple, who would 

exclude morals from almost every department of human 

activity. 

Secularism is one of the most prevalent, and dangerous, 

intellectual errors of our time. In fairness it must be ad-

mitted that the Blanshards are not the only ones who 

have accepted the premises of secularism. In calling at-

tention to the mote in Blanshard's eye we cannot honestly 

ignore the beam in our own. 

A few weeks ago I gave a brief radio talk touching 

upon certain aspects of labor problems. Among other 

things I expressed some opinions, derived from an ap-

plication of moral principles to these problems, about the 

closed shop, and stated why I regarded the legislative out-

lawing of the closed shop as bad legislation. I had scarce-

ly returned home from the radio station when I received 

a telephone call from a Catholic businessman, who pre-

ferred to remain anonymous, taking me severely to task 

for my presumption in discussing such matters. He did 

not say that my opinion was unsound. He said I had no 

right to express an opinion. He said that I should "stick 

to religion and to the pulpit and not meddle (Blanshard 

would say 'intervene' ) in business." I pointed out to him 

that neither business nor labor-management relations 

were conducted in a moral vacuum and that that fact 

immediately justified me in discussing the moral aspects 

of problems in these fields. I pointed out that the Church 

had a social philosophy and that this fact justified me in 

discussing the social aspects of such problems. His only 

rebuttal was to repeat that I should "stick to religion." 

This is secularism, which would imprison religion and 

morality within the four walls of the church, upon the 

theory that they have nothing to say about what goes on 

in the market palce, in the public forum or in the aca-

29 



demic hall. This is the philosophy which spawned Machi-

avellianism in politics and predatory capitalism in eco-

nomics and which finds its logical synthesis in the ruth-

lessness of communsim. 

Blanshard denies the right of a Catholic moralist to 

intervene in the field of education, medicine, sociology, 

domestic relations and politics. Before taking Blanshard 

to their bosom, American non-Catholics should ask them-

selves whether they wish to identify themselves with a 

philosophy which dehumanizes society. I use the word 

"dehumanize" advisedly, because all human actions are 

moral actions. 

It is necessary to say one more word about abortion. 

Any objective discussion of the Church's position is im-

possible unless there is clear understanding of precisely 

what that position is. The fact that Norman Thomas, in 

reviewing Blanshard's book, obviously misunderstand» 

the Catholic position, suggests at least that Blanshard ha» 

not stated it clearly. The Church's position is not, as Mr. 

Thomas says it is, "that, if a choice must be made, the life 

of the unborn child, even the smallest embryo, should be 

preferred to that of the mother" (cf. Norman Thomas, 

Nation, May 14, 1949, p. 561). On the contrary, the 

position of Catholic moralists is that, wherever a choice 

must be made, everything possible should be done to 

save the mother even though the measures taken indirect-

ly result in the loss of the child. The measures which may 

be taken, however, do not include the right directly to 

kill the child in order to save the mother. 

I think that a person of Norman Thomas' intelligence 

should be able to recognize that there is a great difference 

between the two statements and that there is a supremely 

important moral principle involved, and not a mere 

casuistic quibble. 
The Catholic position is based upon respect for the 

30 



individual human life, any human life; upon the prin-

ciple that the direct and voluntary killing of any inno-

cent human being, by the state or an individual, i9 

murder; and upon the principle that the end, however 

good and desirable in itself, does not justify the means. 

Once these values are repudiated there is no moral limit 

to the crimes that can be committed against the human 

person. A rigorously logical path leads from abortion to 

euthanasia and the gas chambers. A logically satisfying 

case can be made out for the extermination of all Jews. 

Without Jews there would be no Jewish problem, (though 

other scapegoats would be found to take their places). 

The extermination of all Catholics would be a logically 

satisfying solution to the problem that haunts Paul Blan-

shard—the Catholic problem. Once we claim the right 

directly to kill one innocent person in the name of a 

greater good there is left no moral ground upon which 

to protest the killing of tens of thousands of innocent 

persons in the name of a greater good—unless morals is 

a mere matter of numbers. 

If the fetus is not a human being, then, of course, the 

Catholic position is based upon an erroneous premise. 

It would seem, however, that the burden of proving that 

the fetus is not a human being rests upon those who 

deny it and that they should assume this burden before 

proceeding to disembowel the fetus or to crush its skulL 

It is impossible, within the limits of these articles, to 

discuss each of the innumerable distortions which mark 

almost every page of Blanshard's discussion of the Church 

and sex, marriage, divorce and annulment. Fortunately 

it is not necessary to do so. It is enough to understand 

from what point of view Blanshard discusses these ques-

tions. 

Before accepting Blanshard as an impartial critic of 

Catholic doctrine, much less before embracing him as a 

31 



champion of their own ideals, American non-Catholics 

Would be well advised to discover his opinions on the 

•object of sex and marriage. 

In 1926 Blanshard, after a three-month visit to Soviet 

Russia, published an article on "Sex Standards in Mos-

cow" (Nation, May 12, 1926, pp. 522 ff.). It could be 

regarded as a straight reportorial job which did not com-

mit Blanshard himself. However, there is enough internal 

evidence in the article itself to indicate that the ideals 

which he found prevalent in Moscow in 1926 reflected his 

own ideals. At the very least, there is little room for doubt 

that he regarded the standards which he describes as 

soundly progressive. 

It is well known, of course, that, presumably made 

wiser by experience the makers of policy in Soviet Rus-

sia have made an almost complete about face in this 

field since 1926. But if they have changed their ideas, 

there is nothing to suggest that Blanshard has changed 

his. 

Blanshard describes a discussion meeting in which 

some six hundred young people between the ages of 18 

and 25 participated. "Sex experience was taken for 

granted as a normal thing inside or outside of marriage. 

. . . The young people discussed sex relations, abortion 

and love with the candor of obstetricians." Blanshard 

calls this a "robust attitude." 

I am reminded of Aldous Huxleys' Brave New World 

in which love, stripped of all its nobility, dignity and 

meaningfulness, is reduced to the level of a mere muscu-

lar tumescence which young people discuss with the clin-

ical coldness of laboratory technicians. 

"Marriage is an agreement between two people to have 

each other; there is no legal compulsion to register mar-

riage; there are no laws against people who live together 

without marriage." Well, that makes it pretty plain. Mar-

32 



riage seems reduced to the same level as prostitution or 

concubinage in as much as the only essential element u 

common to all three: an agreement between two people 

to have each other, not "for better or for worse," but for 

a night, or several nights, or until they tire of each other. 

Since to Blanshard the sacramental view of marriage 

is reactionary {cf. idem, p. 522) , it is safe to assume that, 

in his opinion, this casual attitude towards marriage is 

progressive. 

In Moscow in 1926 grounds for divorce were not 

needed. "The causes of divorce are matters of private 

concern, and, if the line is not too long, man and wife can 

•till get a divorce in Moscow in fifteen minutes, provided 

both parties sign the application. Marriages and divorce» 

for the Moscow area are granted in the same little upper 

room of the court building, by the same clerks." 

He is surprised to find "almost no birth control move-

ment in Russia." But he seems gratified that "the Gov-

ernment has turned to legalized and regulated abortion." 

O Brave New World! Blanshard can have i t Ap-

parently even the Russians no longer want i t The ques-

tion is, do American non-Catholics want it? If they do, 

Blanshard is their champion. If they do not, they will 

repudiate Blanshard as an objective critic of Catholic 

marriage concepts. 

33 



VI: The Church and Science 

M r . BLANSHARD'S EFFORT TO PROVE that the 
Church is the implacable foe of science may be dismissed 

as old hat. Inevitably he introduces Galileo and evolu-

tion. 

It has always seemed to me that the case of Galileo is 

one of the strongest bits of corroborative evidence that 

the Church is not the bitter enemy of science her un-

friendly critics would like to think she is. If she were, 

one would suppose her critics could easily cite dozens 

of striking examples to support their thesis. The fact that, 

every time the charge is made, Galileo is the only witness 

they can call upon rather rebuts their whole argument. 

One, or even several, blunders in almost 2,000 years con-

stitutes a remarkable record of open-mindedness towards 

scientific endeavor, one that few universities and few 

scientific or medical societies in their much briefer span 

of history can equal. 

As for evolution, I should imagine that most scientists 

would be grateful for the attitude of reserve adopted by 

the Church in the face of the exuberant certitudes of 

nineteenth-century evolutionists, most of whose theories 

have since been rejected by science itself. It is true that 

many churchmen were panicked by the early wave of 

evolutionary doctrine, partially because so many early 

evolutionists, being bad philosophers, had the absurd 

notion that evolution dispensed with the necessity for a 

First Cause. The real attitude of the Church (sometimes 

badly represented by churchmen who lack faith in their 

own beliefs is that any fact certainly established by 

34 



science as true will prove reconcilable with any fact 

certainly revealed as true. 

St. Thomas Aquinas discussed evolution briefly and 

serenely in the thirteenth century. The concept did not 

frighten him. He thought it a more grandiose conceptioa 

of the way in which God operates in the universe thaa 

the conception of immediate creation. However, as a 

true scientist, he rejected the theory because the scientific 

data available in his day were not sufficient to give it 

plausibility. Unfortunately, not all churchmen—or all 

scientists—have the serenity of judgment, the detach-

ment and the single-minded devotion to truth of St. 

Thomas. 

There are great mysteries surrounding the origin of 

life, including human life. Revelation has thrown a 

little light on the subject, enough to make man aware of 

his nature, his dignity and his God. Science has also 

shed a little light on the subject, a very little. The rest 

is still in darkness. When all the evidence is in and 

properly interpreted, it will be seen that there is no con-

flict between revelation and science and that truly "God 

is wonderful in His works." Until then, priests and 

scientists can profitably tend to their knitting with pati-

ence, tolerance, modesty and humility. 

Blanshard, quoting Professors Lehman and Witty, cites 

the dearth of Catholic scientists in this country as an in-

dication "that the tenets of that Church are not consonant 

with scientific endeavor" (American Freedom and Catho-

lic Power, p. 239). The logical hiatus is obvious. If the 

conclusion were implicit in the premises, the same dearth 

would be found in other countries, inasmuch as the tenets 

of the Catholic Church are everywhere the same. Any 

Catholic book of apologetics can supply Blanshard with 

an impressive, though not exhaustive, list of Catholics 

who were, and are, outstanding scientists. 

35 



The dearth of American Catholic scientists is due to 

other causes than the tenets of the Church: the lack of 

funds available for scientific research (few Catholic uni-

versities are endowed); the scarcity of well-equipped 

Catholic graduate schools; the cultural immaturity of the 

Church in this country, which was still within this gen-

eration a missionary Church. Undoubtedly there are other 

causes as well, and these more serious. They are the same 

as those which are responsible, at least in part, for the 

relative dearth of real Catholic lay leadership possessed 

of initiative, independence and courage in other fields of 

human endeavor. It is outside the scope of these articles 

to investigate their nature. 

When Blanshard directs his attention to the subject of 

miracles, his disability as an objective critic immediately 

betrays him. To him, Catholic doctrine about miracles is 

a kind of "primitive deception" which "the educated 

Catholic must scorn" (p. 211). As evidence that the 

educated Catholic does indeed scorn the doctrine, he in-

accurately summarizes a passage in Moon Gaffney, by 

Harry Sylvester, a Catholic novelist: 

A sensitive and cultured young Catholic, afflicted 
with paralysis, is shipped away to Lourdes by his 
devout parents on the assumption that he can be 
cured by some magic power in waters that flow from 
the spot where the Virgin Mary spoke with Bern-
adette Soubirous in 1858. The young man is secretly 
so infuriated by the superstitions of his father that 
he prays fervently that no chance circumstance will 
cure him. He would rather not be cured at all than 
have his cure associated with such superstitions. 

Blanshard understands the young man's rebellion as a re-

volt against the idea of Lourdes and of the miraculous, 

when, as a matter of fact, the exact contrary is true. The 

measure of the young man's anger, as of Harry Sylvester's 

anger, is precisely his respect for Lourdes and for the 

36 



miraculous. His rebellion, as that of his literary creator, 

is against the materialistic attitude of his pompous ass 

of a rich parent, who no more understands the true 

significance of Lourdes than does Paul Blanshard, and 

who thinks his wealth, which has bought him a Knight-

hood of St. Gregory and the fawning adulation of a few 

equally materialistic-minded clergymen, can buy him the 

favors of the Lady who had appeared to the humble, 

simple, child of poverty, Bernadette. The young man's 

rebellion is not against Lourdes, but against the terrible 

prostitution of Lourdes; it is not against the Church, but 

against the servants of Mammon, secularism and mate-

rialism who betray the Church. 

That is the whole point of the passage in question. 

And that is the whole point of the novel. Elsewhere 

Blanshard describes Moon Gaffney as "the most penetrat-

ing novel that has been written about [the] Church in 

many years" (p. 190). Yet it is clear that Blanshard 

does not understand what the novel is all about. The first 

prerequisite of a critic is that he understand what he is 

criticizing. 

In view of such total incomprehension it is not sur-

prising that Blanshard's discussion of Catholic doctrine 

falls to the lowest level of bigotry, characterized by the 

employment of such loaded words and phrases as "fetish-

ism," "sorcery," "superstition," "the relics industry." 

It is not my purpose to defend here the Church's 

doctrine with regard to miracles and relics. The rationale 

of her position is exhaustively explained in countless 

volumes dealing with theology and apologetics. Or, if 

Blanshard regards any Catholic authority as suspect, I 

recommend for his reading C. S. Lewis' study, Miracles 

(The Macmillan Company, New York, 1947). The Catho-

lic position is a reasonable position if one believes in 

God, the Divinity of Christ, the supernatural order. Cath-

37 



olics do. Blanshard evidently does not. That is the dif-

ference. If Blanshard were willing to state the difference 

in these terms, he might establish more plausibly his 

claim to be an honest critic. Nowhere does he even 

discuss the premises of the Catholic position—and this 

is characteristic of his whole book. Instead he assumes 

that those premises are ridiculous. And, of course, if 

the premises are ridiculous, the conclusions derived from 

them are ridiculous. 

There ia no doubt, of course, that relics have been and 

are abused. It cannot be denied that too often the venera-

tion of relics slips over into the twilight zone of supersti-

tion. Within the past few years the Holy See was con-

strained to call attention to and condemn certain excesses 

in this respect. 

If Blanshard were a bishop, no doubt he would easily 

dispose of this abuse. Possibly he would simply forbid 

the veneration of relics altogether. Probably, however, 

he would soon discover that his problem was not so 

easily solved. People would in all likelihood find other 

relics to venerate—the mummified corpse of Lenin or the 

sword of General MacArthur or the shaving mug of 

Justice Holmes. 

After Blanshard, as bishop if not confessor, had dis-

posed of the relics, what would he do about the millions 

of devotees of astrology in this land, most of whom are 

products of the enlightened public schools on which Blan-

shard pins all his hopes, many of whom are college 

graduates, some of whom probably majored in science? 

As far as the multiplication of identical relics in cer-

tain cities and churches in Europe is concerned, tolerance 

for the foibles of humanity combined with a sense of 

humor (something which, by the way, he seems utterly 

to lack) would not necessarily prove that the people of 

the Middle Ages were more gullible than the people of 

38 



today, but that they were more pious. Today we have 

learned how to divert gullibility to other ends and to 

exploit it for more materialistic purposes. A billion-

dollar advertising industry testifies to the fact. 

As for miracles, there are abuses here too, though less 

serious. There are some people who are constantly on 

the watch for miracles. Inevitably they find them, just 

as people constantly on the watch for Communists in-

evitably find them under the bed and behind the books 

on the bookshelf. 

I could point out to these people that, as C. S. Lewis 

has said, "God does not shake miracles into Nature at 

random as if from a pepper-caster." But they would prob-

ably regard me as a confirmed skeptic. In any event, I do 

not see that their credulity has anything to do with the 

Catholic faith or with science or with anything else of 

much importance. These people are built that way. If 

they did not believe in these "miracles," they would be-

lieve in others. They would probably believe that Duz 

Does Everything! Because people like this find miracles 

where none exist, it does not follow that none ever exist 

Blanshard, as bishop, would, it is true, have certain 

advantages in dealing with the problems created by 

miracles and apparitions. This is because Blanshard 

seems to have most of the qualities he critically attributes 

to the Church: he is intolerant, infallible and unscientific. 

A bishop confronted with the claim that there has been 

an apparition or a miracle is faced with a difficult prob-

lem. His awareness of the gullibility of people makes him 

skeptical. His understanding of people makes him re-

luctant to deal harshly with their probable illusions. His 

awareness of his own limitations makes him hesitant to 

condemn out of hand. His respect for the scientific 

method inhibits him from pronouncing apodictically upon 

the natural or preternatural character of the phenomenon 

39 



until all the revelant facts have been established beyond 

doubt and all the possible casual relationships examined. 

He knows that others in his position have made whop-

ping mistakes, usually on the side of skepticism. He re-

members Joan of Arc and Bernadette. In short, he is an 

unhappy man, very much annoyed by the miracle or ap-

parition, whether real or spurious, and inclined to be 

cautious and noncommittal. 

Blanshard, as bishop, would suffer from none of these 

inhibitions. He is intolerant, and so has no patience with 

gullible people. He is infallible and omniscient, and so 

can brush aside the testimony of authoritative medical 

scientists, Catholic and non-Catholic. He is unscienti-

fic, and so can pronounce categorically upon the psycho-

somatic character of all miracles without regard to the 

considerable body of evidence which seems to establish 

that many of the attested miracles of Lourdes and other 

shrines cannot be thus explained. Because modern science 

has shown that some disabilities are psychosomatic in 

character, Blanshard concludes, with riotous logical 

abandon, that all disabilities cured at Lourdes are psy-

chosomatic in character. 

10 



VII: Church and State 

B E F O R E CONCLUDING THIS SERIES OF ARTICLES 

I should say something about the fearsome picture 

that Blanshard paints for the benefit of his Protestant 

readers about what will happen to the free institutions of 

this country should it ever fall under "Catholic cultural 

and moral control" (American Freedom and Catholic 

Power, Chapter 12). 

A Constitutional Amendment would do away with the 

separation of Church and State and establish Roman 

Catholicisms as "the sole religion of the nation." Non-

Catholic faiths would be tolerated, but their "public 

ceremonies and manifestations" would not be permitted. 

Public schools would be allowed to exist only upon 

condition that religious instruction, exclusively in the 

Catholic faith, were introduced into the curriculum and 

that every other subject taught were "permeated with 

Catholic piety." Co-education, except in the lower 

primary grades, would be forbidden by law. 

These are only a few of the sweeping changes which 

Blanshard says would be introduced into American life. 

Manifestly such a prospect would be profoundly dis-

turbing to American non-Catholics. It would be no less 

disturbing to the vast majority of American Catholics. 

The first thing that must be said is that the question 

here raised by Blanshard needs to be honestly faced. It 

is no good merely to say that no American non-Catholic 

has reasonable ground for being concerned when he reads 

such statements as that quoted by Blanshard from Civiltà 

Cattolica: 

41 



The Roman Catholic Church, convinced through 
its divine prerogatives of being the only true 
Church, must demand the right of freedom for her-
self alone, because such a right can only be possessed 
by truth, never by error. As to other religions, the 
Church will certainly never draw the sword, but 
she will require that by legitimate means they shall 
not be allowed to propagate false doctrine. Con-
sequently, in a state where the majority of people 
are Catholic, the Church will require that legal 
existence be denied to error, and that if religious 
minorities actually exist, they shall have only a de 
facto existence without opportunity to spread their 
beliefs. . . . In some countries, Catholics will be 
obliged to ask full religious freedom for all, resigned 
at being forced to cohabit where they alone 
should rightfully be allowed to live. But in doing 
this the Church does not renounce her thesis, which 
remains the most imperative of her laws, but merely 
adapts herself to de facto conditions, which must be 
taken into account in practical affairs. . . . The 
Church cannot blush for her own want of tolerance, 
as she asserts it in principle and applies it in practice. 

On the face of it, such a brutally frank statement seems 

to put American Catholics in the same boat with 

American Communists, who are accused of demanding 

in the name of democracy the full enjoyment of all the 

civil rights which they would themselves immediately 

deny to others should they once come into power. If 

the statement quoted above means anything, it means 

that only so long as Catholics are a minority will they 

demand full religious freedom for all; but once they 

have achieved a majority they will impose strict limita-

tions upon the freedom of all other religious groups. 

Do American Catholics subscribe to this statement of 

policy? It is my opinion that they do not. 

The late Very Rev. Franz Xavier Wernz, S.J., one-

time head of the Jesuit Order, is recognized as one of the 

42 



outstanding authorities on Canon Law. To his discussion 

of the theory of the relationship of Church and State he 

appends a note about religious freedom in the United 

States, After pointing out that in this country, where 

Church and State are separated, the Church has enjoyed 

a marvelous growth, he remarks: 

Wherefore American Catholics, preferring to rely 
upon the freedom granted by law equally to all and 
upon their efforts, have not the slightest desire to 
substitute for these advantages that "protection" by 
the State which in Europe has so often meant the 
oppression of the Church (Wernz: Jus Decretalium, 
Vol. I. "Introduction." Ed. 3, Prati, 1913, Tit. I, No. 
5, n. 41). 

It should be noted that Father Wernz was not writing 

for the benefit of non-Catholic readers. His comment 

appears in a technical work addressed to Catholic special-

ists in Canon Law. Because of his recognized pre-

eminence in this field, he speaks with incomparably 

greater authority than the author of the perfervid state-

ment which appeared in Civiltà Cattolica. 

The attitude of American Catholics of his day, which 

he correctly describes and implicidy approves, is still, 

I think, the attitude of the overwhelming majority today. 

They are sufficiently familiar with history to know 

that whatever the theory, in practice the union of 

Church and State has in every recorded instance been 

productive of far more evil than good. In the long run, 

the evils have weighed more heavily upon the Church 

herself than upon any other. American Catholics have 

no desire to imitate such unhappy experiences. 

The free institutions—and, more important, the at-

mosphere of freedom which characterizes this country— 

have been created by the joint efforts of Catholic and 

non-Catholic Americans alike who, respecting each other's 

43 



sincerity in their attachment to their own respective 

beliefs, have proved it possible for people to achieve 

freedom for themselves without destroying the freedom 

of their neighbors. For having enabled Americans, 

Catholic and non-Catholic, to avoid the pitfalls of 

tyranny, biterness and discord into which other nations, 

Catholic and non-Catholic, have fallen, American 

Catholics are grateful to Divine Providence. 

It would be a great tragedy for this country, and for 

the world, if Americans, Catholic or non-Catholic, were 

to lose sight of the inestimable blessings of their heritage. 

Could such a thing happen here? It could, because there 

are extremists in both, or in all, camps. Probably the 

danger is remote. But it must not be forgotten that 

eternal vigilance is the price of liberty. And the watch 

must be kept not only over others, but over ourselves. 

I think Catholics would do well constantly to remind 

themselves that the more "they rely," to use the words 

of Father Wernz, "upon the freedom granted by law 

equally to all and upon their own efforts," the better off 

they and the Church are. The more they tend to rely 

upon the State to implement their moral or dogmatic 

beliefs, the worse off they are. It is true that error has no 

rights against truth. But it is also true that men are free 

to embrace error rather than truth, though they must 

suffer the consequences for so doing. That is the human 

condition. As St. Augustine pointed out: "Faith is an 

act of the will, not an act of constraint." 

It is with this theory as with the theory of the Man-

chester School in the field of economics. The economic 

theory of the Manchester School is entirely sound qua 

theory. On paper, in the speculative order, it suffers from 

no logical weakness. To attempt, however, to translate it 

into a policy is disastrous. The reason is that the theory 

ignores the human condition; specifically it ignores the 

44 



fact of original sin. Much the same may be said of 

Marxist economic theory. No one can deny the theo-

retical superiority of a society in which what St. John 

Chrysostom called "that cold word, mine and thine" is 

unknown. But because the theory ignores the fact of 

original sin, the attempt forcibly to translate the theory 

into practice in the context of fallen human nature 

inevtably leads to the destruction of all human values. 

This is to say that a theory which ignores or prescinds 

from the human condition, however sound or attractive 

as theory, is not a practical guide to conduct. In the 

subject I am here discussing, the human condition is that 

of men who are free to embrace truth and achieve their 

salvation or to espouse error and destroy themselves. As 

I pointed out in an earlier article, God places so high a 

value upon this freedom with which He has endowed us 

and which defines our nature that He will not forcibly 

interfere with it even to save men from their own folly. 

All of the arguments that are advanced to justify the 

suppression of religious error by the use of force fall to 

the ground in the light of Christ's example. The world 

of His day was as filled with false leaders, false prophets, 

false doctrines as the world today. Millions of people were 

being led astray. No one who believes in the 

Divinity of Christ can doubt that He could, had He 

chosen, have silenced the teachers of error and suppressed 

the dissemination of their doctrines. He did not do so. 

All American Catholics need ask is the entire freedom 

to announce "the sweet yoke and burden of Christ" 

without hindrance. The human mind and heart can be 

won only by the inner dynamism and beauty of truth. 

That dynamism is destroyed and that beauty obscured 

whenever and to the extent that force is substituted for 

truth's own persuasiveness. The result is that men con-

ceive a horror of the truth, as the Saxons conceived a 

45 



horror of baptism. To this, as much as to other causes, 

can be attributed the extreme hatred of Catholicism that 

has been almost a characteristic phenomenon in those 

once Catholic countries where the Church came to rely 

upon the State to suppress error and defend truth. 

I think, however, there is a much graver and more 

immediate threat to American democracy implicit in the 

philosophy of Paul Blanshard and those who agree with 

his point of view. The essence of our democracy and its 

genius is that it achieves unity while preserving diversity 

—E pluribus unum. It is dedicated to the proposition 

that fundamental political and social unity can be 

achieved in the community without destroying the cul-

tural autonomy of groups within the community. 

Implicit in Blanshard's book is the thesis that unity 

can be achieved only by destroying diversity. This, 

fundamentally, is why he is opposed ot Catholic schools. 

They are elements of diversity, therefore "divisive" 

influences. This is why he is angered by Catholics march-

ing in Holy Name parades, building churches, organizing 

their own professional and scholarly societies, insisting 

on Catholic moral standards in Catholic hospitals, etc. 

The task of achieving unity without sacrificing 

diversity is admittedly not easy, but the only alternative 

is imposition by political power of a monolithic culture. 

That means the end of freedom and of democracy, 

whether the content of that culture be determined by a 

single tyrant or by a dominant majority. Yet implicit 

throughout Blanshards book is the acceptance of this 

alternative: the urge to impose upon Americans a nation-

alistic kind of religion completely subservient to 

American mores as interpreted by Blanshard. To him 

every moral problem is a poltical problem and the norm 

of morality is the rule of the majority. Apparently it 

matters little to him that, as I pointed out in an earlier 

46 



article and as Albert Guerard pointed out in a recent 

review in the Nation, laws "even passed by the most con-

stitutional means and with an overwhelming majority, 

may very well be tyrannical" (Nation, June 11, 1949, p. 

664). The ultimate consequences of Blanshard's social 

philosophy are totalitarian, namely, the imposition upon 

society of a politically determined system of morals. 

It is interesting, though not surprising, to observe the 

close analogy between Blanshard's philosophy and that 

of the present Spanish political regime, which he abhors. 

It cannot be denied that the dominant culture of Spain 

is Catholic and that Protestants comprise an insignificant 

minority of the population. Blanshard would be the first 

to protest should Spanish authorities suppress neutral or 

Protestant schools or should they refuse to permit a 

group of "liberals" of Blanshard's persuasion to maintain 

a hospital which insisted upon observing the code of 

morals peculiar to them. Yet Blanshard would impose the 

same and many more restrictions upon American Catho-

lics in the name of a supposed right of what he assumes 

to be the dominant culture of this country (in reality it is 

simply a projection of his own ideas) to impose con-

formity upon dissident minorities. 

The unity which Blanshard would impose upon this 

country, whether he realizes it or not, is the unity of the 

slave-state. The only bulwark against it is the preser-

vation and strengthening of the rights and liberties of 

minorities and, to use the words of Albert Guerard, 

"decentralization, regional and functional, voluntary 

associations, and a spiritual domain locked and barred 

against all 'crats'—auto, demo, aristo, pluto and theo" 

—and, I would add, "libero" (Nation, p. 665). 

Before bidding Mr. Blanshard a not altogether un-fond 

farewell, I must return to the point made in the second 

article of this series. Apart from the erroneous assump-

47 



tions of his own philosophy, what Blanshard suffers from 

chiefly is a lack of perspective. The distorted vision which 

results is sometimes very funny. 

A characteristic example is found in his chapter on 

censorship. Harry Lorin Binsse, in a book review, ob-

jects to the representation of an angel "as a material 

being with about the same qualities, let us say, as a 

humming-bird." Blanshard, oblivious of Binsse's light 

satirical touch, regards this with dreadful seriousness: 

Why must a sophisticated Catholic journal in the 

United States in the twentieth century condemn a 

children's book for representing an angel as having 

the solidity of a humming-bird? Because the Pope 

and the Congregation of the Holy Office have said 

that angels are incorporeal beings, and that they will 

remain incorporeal (p. 190). 

Binsse's comment can only be understod "as part of the 

total system of taboos." 

To anyone who knows Harry Lorin Binsse (the man 

who translated into English George Bernanos' acid criti-

cisms of the hierarchy, Lettres Aux Anglais) the picture 

of an intellectually shackled Binsse fearfully writing his 

piece of criticism with the Pope and the Congregation of 

the Holy Office looking over his shoulder is very funny. 

In a church which I recently visited, a group of angels 

cavorted on the wall behind the main altar. They looked 

for all the world like a group of blond college ingenues in 

old-fashioned nightgowns in a dance for a Spring Festival 

on the lawns of Mrs. Peabody's Academy for Proper 

Young Ladies. I was not conscious of the Pope or the 

Holy Office looking over my shoulder, but I objected. I 

objected in the name of art, philosophy and theology. 

I object to Blanshard's book in the name of the same 

trinity. 

43 



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