Charles Coughlin: American Catholic

Abstract

Charles Coughlin was a Roman Catholic priest and national media figure in America during the 1930s. To some he was a populist, to others a demagogue, but to his devoted radio listeners he was a fearless teller of truth and a voice of the dispossessed in Depression-era America. Coughlin’s early political agenda gave voice to the poor in a Catholic social activist tradition derived from papal encyclicals.  He viewed Franklin Roosevelt as the main national champion of this cause but Coughlin soon became disillusioned with the New Deal. He allied with other populists and attempted a third party challenge to Roosevelt’s presidential bid in 1936. Coughlin’s descent into open anti-Semitism resulted in the end of his broadcasting career at the onset of the Second World War and tarnished his reputation for generations to come. Father Coughlin was an apparent study in contradictions: he was for the working man and vocally anti-union, anti-Communist and anti-capitalist, and a populist who relished proximity to national politicians. When viewed through a traditional American political and cultural lens Father Coughlin’s actions can be confusing but they make more sense when viewed in a Catholic context. Catholic anti-communism and historical anti-Semitism informed Coughlin’s anti-union and anti-Semitic positions. He sincerely believed in the ideals of social justice but only within the narrow confines of Catholic papal orthodoxy, which included a moral aversion to capitalist excess. Charles Coughlin was personally militant and mercurial but he was not a political radical. He was at once a conservative Catholic and an American populist.