Mini-Review: God, Church, and Flag

What made Joe run? How exactly did Joseph McCarthy, a bumptious judge from Wisconsin, become the most loved, hated, and feared man in Washington? For years, the short answer was “Catholicism.” Pundits claimed that McCarthy, an Irish Catholic, was buoyed by support from co-religionists, who—the pundits further claimed—were without exception die-hard red hunters. As usual, the conventional wisdom is wrong. Donald Crosby’s “God, Church, and Flag: Senator Joseph R. McCarthy and the Catholic Church, 1950-1957” explodes the myth that Catholics marched in lockstep behind Tail Gunner Joe.

McCarthy was hardly the model Catholic. Though he attended mass each Sunday, he was ignorant of even the most basic church teachings. His knowledge of Catholic social policy brings to mind Al Smith’s lament: “What the hell is an encyclical?” And while he certainly appreciated whatever support he got from Catholics, rarely—if ever—did he pitch his anti-communist appeal on a religious level. His speeches were often spiced with fiery condemnations of “atheistic communism,” but that was hardly unusual among red-baiters.

Joe didn’t think much about Catholicism. Strange as it may seem, many Catholics didn’t think much about Joe, either. Opinion polls found that large percentages of Catholics held no opinion whatsoever about McCarthy. Among those who did, the majority supported the senator—but so did a majority of Protestants, and by nearly identical margins. When McCarthy went into a spiraling nosedive after the Army hearings, his support among Catholics and Protestants dropped side-by-side.

Your average John Q. Catholic didn’t care much for McCarthy one way or the other. The real fight took place within the Catholic elite, the clergymen, politicians, and journalists who fancied themselves the voice of Catholic America. Some, like Francis Spellman—the New York cardinal whose unofficial slogan was “kill a commie for Christ”—embraced McCarthy. Conservative Catholic periodicals such as The Wanderer, the Los Angeles Tidings, and the Brooklyn Tablet did the same. They stuck with McCarthy even after his fall, transfiguring him into a Christ-like martyr persecuted for speaking the truth.

Every good word from the conservative Catholic elite was balanced by a harsh one from the liberals. Commonweal denounced McCarthy from the very start. America, published by the Jesuits, was so critical of the senator that the Jesuit superiors ordered the editor to stop writing about McCarthyism. McCarthy’s support among the conservative New York City clergy was balanced by opposition from the liberal clergymen of Chicago, led by the activist cardinal Bernard Sheil.

Yet it was mostly sound and fury; the Tablet’s rabid McCarthyism never translated into concrete Catholic votes. Why, then, did the myth of Catholic McCarthyism persist? Mostly because it meshed with existing stereotypes. Protestants believed Catholics to be ignorant and anti-democratic. McCarthy gave them a living symbol of everything they feared. No matter how much the evidence refuted it—in his 1952 re-election campaign, for instance, McCarthy did quite poorly among Wisconsin Catholics—the elite clung tightly to their preconceptions.

The final irony: the “sensible” elites were more to blame for McCarthyism than were ordinary Catholics. The Catholics thought little of McCarthy. The elite obsessed over him, and their loathing of McCarthy—mixed with a certain degree of admiration—made the senator an inescapable presence in the media. They broadcast his every move; they printed his every allegation. And when McCarthy grew famous from the attention, they shifted the blame to Catholics and washed their hands of guilt.