The New York Herald Tribune declared editorially today that the country and the Catholic community had reason to be grateful for Cardinal Mundelein’s disavowal of Father Coughlin. The priest, the editorial said, had been playing a dangerous, game, the more dangerous because many Catholics had tended to regard an attack on him as an attack on the Church, and the Cardinal had now removed all ground for that misconception.
Denouncing Father Coughlin’s thesis that the Jews were peculiarly responsible for Communism, the Herald Tribune said it “tends to make the American reaction to events abroad not an American reaction but a matter of the specifically Catholic or Jewish or other group reaction.” Pointing out that it was natural for Jews to resent persecution of Jews more bitterly and for Catholics to resent persecution of Catholics more Bitterly, the editorial said there was no room for a Catholic or Jewish question here and added that “all Americans must be Americans first of all.”
The New York Post also commented on Cardinal Mundelein’s statement, saying that it took on added force from the fact that he had returned only a few days ago from a visit to the Pope.
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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.
