The Catholic Church in the United States entered the Second World War as a large, increasingly confident American institution that had learned from its experience during the First World War. By 1941, American Catholics numbered roughly 23 million, nearly one out of every six citizens, and the Church possessed a national network of dioceses, parishes, schools, hospitals, religious communities, charitable organizations, and lay associations capable of mobilizing on a remarkable scale. The war therefore became an important moment in the Church’s integration into American public life. 

The American Catholic response to World War II was shaped by two convictions that sometimes existed in tension. The first was a strong sense of American patriotism and responsibility for the common good. The second was the Church’s longstanding moral teaching that war is a grave evil and can be justified only under stringent conditions. The bishops therefore did not regard war as good in itself. Rather, once the United States entered the conflict, most Catholic leaders came to regard resistance to Nazi Germany, Fascism, and Japanese aggression as a legitimate defense of human freedom and civilization.

One of the Church’s most important contributions to the war effort was pastoral care for the armed forces. Catholic priests entered the military chaplaincy in large numbers, ministering to soldiers, sailors, marines, and airmen in training camps, on ships, in hospitals, and on battlefields. By the end of the war, the chaplaincy program had produced nearly 1,500 Catholic chaplains. The Knights of Columbus worked closely with the chaplaincy to provide religious and recreational services. The importance of this ministry should not be underestimated. For millions of young Catholic men and women, military service was an intensely formative experience. Chaplains provided Mass and the sacraments, but they also accompanied soldiers through fear, homesickness, combat, wounds, and death. The priest became a visible sign that the Church had not abandoned her sons and daughters even in the most terrible circumstances.

The Church also mobilized its parishes and lay organizations for the home-front effort. Catholics participated in bond drives, blood donations, scrap-metal collections, rationing programs, civil-defense efforts, and various charitable campaigns. Catholic hospitals and religious sisters contributed to the care of wounded servicemen and civilians. Perhaps most significantly, the Church’s social-service apparatus expanded its international humanitarian work. During the war and its aftermath, the National Catholic Welfare Association (NCWC) provided food, clothing, medical assistance, and other relief to devastated populations and eventually became the foundation for Catholic Relief Services. After the war, the National Catholic Resettlement Council was established to assist displaced persons and refugees entering the United States. 

Was there any Catholic objection to the war? The hierarchy and the great majority of American Catholics supported the war after Pearl Harbor, but Catholic pacifism remained a genuine, if minority, voice. The clearest example was Dorothy Day and the Catholic Worker movement. From its beginning in 1933, the Catholic Worker had combined service to the poor with radical Christian nonviolence. In 1940, Day explicitly reaffirmed the movement’s pacifism, rejecting the argument that violence could save Christianity, civilization, or democracy. This minority witness is important for understanding Catholic social teaching. The Church’s support for legitimate defense did not mean that Catholics were required to approve every military action. The just-war tradition presumes that peace is preferable to war and places moral limits upon the means used in war, a teaching that would challenge the subsequent nuclear threat that emerged at the end of the war and into the Cold War era.  

The end of World War II transformed the position of the United States — and consequently the position of American Catholicism. The country had emerged economically and militarily dominant, while Europe lay devastated. The Soviet Union had become a formidable rival, and communism expanded across Eastern Europe and eventually into China. American Catholics increasingly interpreted this new international situation through the lens of totalitarianism and religious freedom. The Church had already suffered enormously under Nazi persecution, but Catholics also remembered the suppression of religion under Soviet communism. The defense of the Church against atheistic communism therefore became a central theme of American Catholic public life. Catholics increasingly presented the United States as the opposite of atheistic totalitarianism, yet they also had to ask whether American society itself lived up to its claims concerning human dignity, racial equality, labor rights, and religious freedom. 

The Cold War therefore produced an American Catholicism that was simultaneously more patriotic and more international. On the one hand, Catholic leaders became prominent voices in the struggle against communism. Catholic schools, newspapers, universities, clergy, and lay organizations educated Catholics about the threat of Soviet atheism. Figures such as Cardinal Francis Spellman and Bishop Fulton J. Sheen became highly visible public representatives of Catholic anti-communism. Sheen’s later television program, Life Is Worth Living, exemplified the ability of Catholicism to enter the emerging mass media culture of postwar America. His message connected Catholic Christianity with moral order, freedom, and opposition to communism. At the same time, Catholic humanitarianism continued to look beyond the borders of the United States. The Church’s work with refugees and displaced persons expanded dramatically. War Relief Services eventually became Catholic Relief Services, establishing one of the most significant Catholic humanitarian institutions in American life. 

The Second World War and the subsequent Cold War was therefore a decisive time in the history of American Catholicism. Throughout this period, the story of American Catholicism is one of trying to hold together three commitments: loyalty to the nation, fidelity to the Gospel, and the universal Catholic conviction that every human person possesses a dignity that no nation or ideology may legitimately violate. That tension would become one of the defining themes of American Catholicism in the decades leading to the Second Vatican Council.

Next month: The Civil Rights Movement