K
KC91
Guest
An excellent letter from Cardinal Spellman to Elanor Roosevelt in 1949 where he exposes the incompatibility of anti-Catholicism with American values which many Protestant fundamentalists claim to defend. This letter is on the occasion of Mrs Roosevelt’s opposition to state funding for Catholic schools, a cause which the Protestant fundamentalists shared. Although of course she denied being anti-Catholic many sources and contacts attest to her being so in private. There are many good quotes here which can be used for apologetics in debates.
*American freedom not only permits but encourages differences of opinion and I do not question your right to differ with me. But why, I wonder, do you repeatedly plead causes that are anti-Catholic? Even if you cannot find it within your heart to defend the rights of innocent little children and heroic, helpless men like Cardinal Martyr Mindszenty, can you not have the charity not to cast upon them still another stone?
America’s Catholic youth fought a long and bitter fight to save all Americans from oppression and persecution. Their broken bodies on the blood-soaked foreign fields were grim and tragic testimony to this fact. I saw them there - on every fighting front - as equally they shared with their fellow fighters all the sacrifice, terror and gore of war - as alike they shared the little good and glory that sometimes comes to men as together they fight and win a brutal battle.
Would you deny quality to these Catholic boys who daily stood at the sad threshold of untimely death and suffered martyrdom that you and I and the world of men might live in liberty and peace? Would you deny their children equal rights and benefits with other sects - rights for which their fathers paid equal taxation with other fathers and fought two bitter wars that all children might forever be free from fear, oppression and religious persecution?
During the war years, you visited the hospitals in many countries, as did I. You too saw America’s sons - Catholic, Protestant and Jewish alike - young, battered, scarred, torn and mutilated, dying in agony that we might learn to live in charity with one another. Then how was it that your own heart was not purged of all prejudices by what you saw, these, our sons, suffer?
Now my case is closed. This letter will be released to the public tommorow after it has been delivered to you by special delivery today. And even though you may again use your columns to attack me and again accuse me of starting a controversy, I shall not again publicly acknowledge you. For, whatever you may say in the future, your record of anti-Catholicism stands for all to see - a record which you yourself wrote on the pages of history which cannot be recalled - documents of discrimination unworthy of an American mother.*
*American freedom not only permits but encourages differences of opinion and I do not question your right to differ with me. But why, I wonder, do you repeatedly plead causes that are anti-Catholic? Even if you cannot find it within your heart to defend the rights of innocent little children and heroic, helpless men like Cardinal Martyr Mindszenty, can you not have the charity not to cast upon them still another stone?
America’s Catholic youth fought a long and bitter fight to save all Americans from oppression and persecution. Their broken bodies on the blood-soaked foreign fields were grim and tragic testimony to this fact. I saw them there - on every fighting front - as equally they shared with their fellow fighters all the sacrifice, terror and gore of war - as alike they shared the little good and glory that sometimes comes to men as together they fight and win a brutal battle.
Would you deny quality to these Catholic boys who daily stood at the sad threshold of untimely death and suffered martyrdom that you and I and the world of men might live in liberty and peace? Would you deny their children equal rights and benefits with other sects - rights for which their fathers paid equal taxation with other fathers and fought two bitter wars that all children might forever be free from fear, oppression and religious persecution?
During the war years, you visited the hospitals in many countries, as did I. You too saw America’s sons - Catholic, Protestant and Jewish alike - young, battered, scarred, torn and mutilated, dying in agony that we might learn to live in charity with one another. Then how was it that your own heart was not purged of all prejudices by what you saw, these, our sons, suffer?
Now my case is closed. This letter will be released to the public tommorow after it has been delivered to you by special delivery today. And even though you may again use your columns to attack me and again accuse me of starting a controversy, I shall not again publicly acknowledge you. For, whatever you may say in the future, your record of anti-Catholicism stands for all to see - a record which you yourself wrote on the pages of history which cannot be recalled - documents of discrimination unworthy of an American mother.*