A Catholic Cold War: Edmund A. Walsh, S.J., and the Politics of American Anticommunism

by Patrick J. McNamara

Overview

This book is the first biography in 42 years of the priest and educator whomhistorians have called the most important anticommunist in the country.Edmund A. Walsh, as dean of Georgetown College and founder in 1919 of itsSchool of Foreign Service, is one of the most influential Catholic figures of the20th century. Soon after the birth of the Bolshevik state, he directed the PapalRelief Mission in the Soviet Union, starting a lifelong immersion in Soviet andCommunist affairs. He also established a Jesuit college in Baghdad, and servedas a consultant to the Nuremberg War Crimes Tribunal.A pioneer in the new science of geopolitics, Walsh became one of Truman's mosttrusted advisers on Soviet strategy. He wrote four books, dozens of articles, andgave thousands of speeches on the moral and political threat of Soviet Communismin America. Although he died in 1956, Walsh left an indelible imprint on theideology and practical politics of Cold War Washington, moving easily outside thetraditional boundaries of American Catholic life and becoming, in the words of onehistorian, practically an institution by himself.Few priests, indeed few Catholics,played so large a role in shaping American foreign policy in the 20th century.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780823224593
Publisher:	Fordham University Press
Publication date:	05/01/2005
Edition description:	1
Pages:	302
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x (d)

About the Author

Patrick McNamara is an Archivist at the diocese of Brooklyn and teaches history at St. Francis College, St. Joseph's Seminary, and the Seminary of the Immaculate Conception.

Editorial Reviews

...[a] scrupulously researched book...

American Catholic Studies

Jesuit priest Edmund Walsh, a founder and longtime director of the influential Georgetown UniversitySchool of Foreign Service, is remembered primarily as the man who allegedly suggested to Senator Joseph McCarthy in early 1950 that the latter take up anticommunism to win his forthcoming reelection race. McNamara (St. Francis College) casts doubt upon the McCarthy story, but argues that Walsh was the "most important and influential Catholic anticommunist in the United States" concerning US foreign policy toward Russia for 30 years, beginning in the mid-1920s. In his well researched and documented (footnotes and bibliography constitute over one third of this volume), if rather plodding, account, McNamara demonstrates that Walsh, primarily as the result of his experience in directing Vatican famine relief efforts in Russia in the early 1920s, developed a black-and-white "evil empire" view of the Soviet Union, contrasted with a "city on the hill" interpretation of the US. Stressing the need for a religious-moral basis for US policies and even advocating preemptive nuclear attack on Russia, Walsh propounded his views in numerous publications and an estimated 1,500 lectures, and was often called upon by high executive and legislative officials to share his views. Summing Up: Recommended. Graduate students/faculty.

Choice

A major contribution to our knowledge of a man whose well-deserved reputation as one of America’s foremost experts on Soviet communism made him an influential voice in shaping American public opinion [on] the American response to Soviet foreign policy. . . .Walsh, rather than the lamentable Senator Joseph McCarthy, deserves to be regarded as the most important American Catholic anticommunist of the twentieth century.”——Richard Gid Powers, Author of Not without Honor: The History of American Anticommunism

“Patrick McNamara’s thoroughly researched and crisply written biography is an important contribution to American political history."——Charles R.Morris, Author of American Catholic: The Saints and Sinners Who Built America’s Most Powerful Church

From the Publisher

...[McNamara] expertly blends an intellectual history of American and Catholicc anticommunism into the national political climate from World War I to the mid-1950's...

The Catholic Historical Review

“Patrick McNamara’s thoroughly researched and crisply written biography is an important contribution to American political history."

Author of American Catholic: The Saints and Sinners Who Built America's Most Powerful Church - Charles R.Morris

“A major contribution to our knowledge of a man whose well-deserved reputation as one of America’s foremost experts on Soviet communism made him an influential voice in shaping American public opinion [on] the American response to Soviet foreign policy. . . .Walsh, rather than the lamentable Senator Joseph McCarthy, deserves to be regarded as the most important American Catholic anticommunist of the twentieth century.

Author of Not without Honor: The History of American Anticommunism - Richard Gid Powers