Twisted social justice: Father Coughlin the Christian Front

The Labor Encyclicals of Popes Leo XIII and Pius XI urged Catholics to engage in a program of social justice, emphasizing a sense of Catholic unity to reach this elusive goal. In the Depression-era United States, this sense of unity through social justice was twisted by the "radio priest" Father Charles Coughlin, and the followers of his grassroots movement, the Christian Front. For some American Catholics in 1938, social justice meant a campaign of united Christian action to combat communism. The Christian Front became part of the fascist minded anticommunist movement of the late 1930s and early 1940s within the context of American Catholic anticommunism. Communism became the scapegoat for what was wrong in the United States. In an effort to fulfill their own quest of unity and social justice, (and in an effort to become "better" Catholic Americans), many who joined the Christian Front went on an all-out assault against the perceived greatest enemy of Christianity: communism. And in their efforts to re-connect to America by using their twisted sense of social justice, Catholics did so at the expense of the Jews.