Still Potentially Dangerous in Some Quarters
The charges that led Gen. John L. DeWitt to deport Sylvester Andriano from the Western
Defense Region in 1942 were bogus, the product of an anti-Catholic campaign by
Communist Party activists, Masonic anti-Catholics in the Italian community, and
recent Italian anti-Fascist exiles (fuorusciti). This wartime abuse of civil rights in
the name of national security grew from a discourse of demonizing the religious, not
solely the racial and ethnic, Other. The article makes several arguments about ethnicity
and religion on the Pacific Coast: Faith-based political activism played a significant
role in the region9s urban political culture, as did cultural politics between
Catholics and anti-Catholics. Irish American Catholic clergy welcomed, rather than
excluded, Italian American laymen into the Church9s highest councils in San Francisco,
where the Irish had long dominated civic life. However, Italian Americans were
bitterly divided between devout Catholics and disaffected anti-clericals.
John O'Connor and the "New Age" of Catholic Journalism, 1960-1967
I n the early 1960s the Catholic press in the United States entered what journalist John O’Connor dubbed a “new age.”1 It was new in the sense that Catholic newspapers were encouraged to move away from being “house organs” or from simply being the mouthpiece of the local bishop. The Catholic press was to be professional, technically competent, and driven by the same standards as the secular press. In the language of the era, the Church and its press had to emerge from the “ghetto” and engage the world openly and honestly. In 1963, Daniel Callahan wrote of two current trends surfacing in the U.S. Church: “self-criticism as an accepted part of Catholic life and a greater receptivity on the part of the Catholic press and Catholic publishers to controversial discussions and debates.”2 A whole cadre of young, professional Catholic journalists emerged to test the limits of traditional Catholic journalism: Robert Hoyt in Kansas City, Gerald Sherry in Fresno, California, John Leo in Davenport, John Deedy in Pittsburgh, Doug Roche in Edmonton, and John O’Connor in San Francisco. The movement reached its peak in 1964 with Hoyt’s founding of the independent lay Catholic weekly, the National Catholic Reporter. The following year the theme of the Catholic Press Association’s annual convention could have served as a motto for this group, “Truth in Search for Freedom.” At stake was the basic definition of the purpose of a Catholic newspaper: Was it to provide real news and employ aggressive investigative journalists, who were to follow a story wherever it led? Or was it simply to provide the news with a Catholic slant? Was it to be a catechetical tool explaining the Church to the Catholic faithful and to the world? Or was it to be a vehicle to express the mind of the bishop
Mussolini and Fascism: The View from America
Mussolini, in the thousand guises he projected and the press picked up, fascinated Americans in the 1920s and the early '30s. John Diggins' analysis of America's reaction to an ideological phenomenon abroad reveals, he proposes, the darker side of American political values and assumptions.Originally published in 1972.The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These paperback editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.