Abstract

Conflicts in Catholicism

The article presents information on conflicts in Catholicism. Catholics, as part of the Democratic-liberal-labor combination of the New Deal, participated in the social revolution of the thirties. But they did so as a bloc in the machine of the big-city Democratic Party and never as a conscious partner in the liberal movement. The Communist issue was the factor which estranged most Catholics from their fellow workers in the New Deal. While a few outstanding individual leaders like Phil Murray of the Congress of Industrial Organizations were part of the wedding with the Communists, working with them because they knew that survival of labor's gains demanded it, most Catholics remained aloof from the liberal movement, thus maintaining the stereotype of American Catholic reaction.