Vatican Views
Steven Merritt Miner’s “Why the Vatican Condoned U.S. Aid to Stalin’s Army” (Opinion, Nov. 9) wonders about how the Roosevelt government curbed Vatican hostility to the USSR sufficiently to allow U.S. aid to fight off the Nazi invasion. He states, “Without more information, which may not exist anymore, it is impossible to judge to what extent U.S. threats of financial pressure quieted church opposition.”
Some information is available. In “The Mumford-Brooks Letters” (G. Spillers, editor, 1970), Lewis Mumford describes how the Roosevelt administration finally curbed the Catholic Church’s pro-fascist activities (such as Father Coughlin’s nationwide anti-Semitic, pro-fascist broadcasts) by threatening to sic the IRS on all the church’s fund-raising activities and perhaps revoke its tax-exempt status.
Even more interesting today is why the Vatican “condoned” (actively protected) vast numbers of Nazis who had engaged in the mass torture, starvation and murder of Europe’s Jews.
LARRY SELK
Los Angeles
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