Religious Response to the Spanish Civil War

RELIGIOUS RESPONSE TO THE SPANISH CIVIL WAR

Contention

In July 1936 military officers, led by Gen. Francisco Franco, declared war against the government of the Republic of Spain and launched a four-year civil war between his rebels and the loyalists supporting the republic. The Spanish Republic was created in 1931 after King Alphonso XIII left the country and initially had fairly wide support. But monarchists were soon joined by opponents of the republic's policies, which affected large landowners, the wealthy, and the institutions of the Roman Catholic Church. The military also became disaffected, and many troops followed Franco into revolt. The Spanish Civil War, which lasted until Franco's Flangist forces won in 1939, was a foretaste of the approaching world war.

Divided Opinions in the United States

As the war dragged on, American religious communities were sharply divided in their attitudes toward the competing armies and their actions. The rebels were vigorously supported by most American Catholics and Catholic clerics, who had been horrified by the republic's confiscation of church land and popular violence directed against Catholic officials. They were also concerned by the growing role Communists played in Republican forces. Protestants and Jews tended to support the loyalists, pointing out that the republic was the legitimate government of Spain and recognized as such by the United States. The political Left charged that Franco's Nationalists were a part of the growing fascist threat to peace and democracy in Europe. A 1938 Gallup public-opinion poll revealed that 58 percent of American Catholics were pro-Nationalist, while 83 percent of Protestants were proloyalist. The only significant Catholic publication to express reservations about the Nationalists was Dorothy Day's Catholic Worker, which was both pacifist and anti-fascist. In 1938 there was an internal revolt in the staff of Commonweal, an independent Catholic journal. The opponents of the previous pro-Nationalist editors gained power and established a neutral editorial position with regard to the war. There was a rapid 25 percent drop in circulation.

ROMAN CATHOLICS AND THE SPANISH CIVIL WAR

In 1937 the Roman Catholic periodical Commonweal came out with an ardent statement on American response to the Spanish Civil War. "The New York newspapers," it said, "omitted all mention of the extraordinary fact that 15,000 people in [Madison Square] Garden cheered to the echo all references … to the conviction shared by so many that the American press is displaying partizanship [sic] in favor of the Reds and neglecting to tell the truth concerning the aims, ideals and activities of [Francisco Franco's] Nationalist government and its army and continuing to keep a veil of silence over the slaughter of more than 150,000 Catholic noncombatants by the Communists and Anarchists controlling a government which a dominant section of the American press terms *a democratic, representative government worthy of the support of democratic, representative Americans."

Source:

"American Committee for Spanish Relief," Commonweal, 26 (4 June 1937): 141-143.

Tensions between Catholics and Protestants

Their opposing stands regarding the civil war led to increased tensions between American Protestants and Catholics. In the summer of 1937 the Spanish Catholic hierarchy published an open letter condemning the loyalist forces and the Republican government for their alleged abuses of priests and nuns and of church property. A week later, to the outrage of Catholics, 150 prominent Protestant clergymen took out an advertisement to attack their position. Catholic-Protestant relations dropped further as, a week later, 175 Catholic clerics responded, asking if these Protestants actually approved the persecution of Christians.

Deepening Distrust

The conflict between the two religious communities deepened as Protestants charged that Catholics had sabotaged an attempt to bring a group of Basque orphans to the United States and that they were responsible for blocking attempts to allow the loyalists to buy arms in the United States. As Communists seemed to gain tighter control over the loyalists and turned against their rivals in the republic, Catholics seemed to bind themselves even closer to the approaching triumph of Franco's Nationalists. For Protestants this was further evidence of the antidemocratic tendency of Roman Catholicism. The strident anti-Semitic charges and antidemocratic statements of Father Charles E. Coughlin and the support he gained in Catholic communities in the northeastern states only confirmed Protestant suspicions. Catholic support for Franco's anti-democratic forces in Spain led many to doubt Catholic support for democracy in the United States.

Sources:

George Q. Flynn, American Catholics and the Roosevelt Presidency, 1932-1936 (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1968);

Flynn, Roosevelt and Romanism: Catholics and American Diplomacy, 1937-1945 (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1976);

Allen Guttman, The Wound in the Heart: Americans and the Spanish Civil War (New York: Free Press, 1962);

John F. Thorning, "Why the Press Failed on Spain," Catholic World, 146 (December 1937): 289-291.