Father Coughlin’s speech to the convention of the National Union of Social Justice in which he urged his followers not to blame the Jews for “all” the evils of the present banking system was being carefully scanned today in Jewish circles.
Addressing 11,000 persons Friday night in an attack on the banking system, the “radio priest” laid stress on the part the Jews had played in its development, but added that they had been forced by circumstances into dealing in gold.
“Don’t blame the Jew for everything,” Father Coughlin cautioned. “That’s Hitlerism.”
After denouncing usury as un-Christian, un-American and ungodly, he held up as “Christianity” and “sound, sane and patriotic Americanism” the doctrine that money should not be owned and controlled by private individuals. He continued:
“The first principle of Christianity is ‘Love thy neighbor as thyself,’ but I regret to say that our ancestors in thousands of cases did not practice what they believed. We find them persecuting Jews and driving them from every nation in Europe save the Papal States. Why? Because they were bad Christians.
“They forced the Jews to own the only thing a Jew could own when every ten or fifteen years or so Jews were kicked out and driven from pillar to post in a most un-Christian manner. Jews owned only what their ingenuity permitted them to own, namely, gold, which they could easily carry with them. Under this persecution the natural talents of the Jew were nurtured.
“Oh, you can talk of the persecution of the Irish, the Poles and the Huguenots, but there never was such persecution as we Christians inflicted without reason upon the Jews.”
Outlining the history of banking, Father Coughlin related that Jews began trafficking in gold, built vaults to ward off thieves; kings and princes of the Middle Ages were forced to borrow from them to pay their mercenaries and meet their bills.
Christians began to traffic in gold, too, he said, warning his followers not to blame the Jews for all the evils of the present banking system.
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The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
