There’s a new edition of Christian
Socialism: An Informal History by John Cort (Orbis Books, 2020). Gary
Dorrien of Union Theological Seminary provides its introduction. The book generally
goes in chronological order from the New Testament onto the Church Fathers
(East and West), then St. Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274) and St. Thomas More (1478-1535).
Henri de Saint-Simon (1760-1825) appears in a chapter about France and Most
Rev. William Temple (1881-1944) in one about England. The chapter on Catholic
socialism draws upon papal encyclicals, the thoughts of Msgr. John A. Ryan
(1869-1945) of St. Paul and on liberation theology. Now, something about Cort
himself.
John Cort
(1913-2006), a 1935 Harvard University graduate, served our country as a Peace
Corps volunteer in Philippines, as a local director in the Office of Economic
Opportunity and as a director of a municipal program. He is best known as founder
of Association of Catholic Trade Unionists in February 1937.
In the 1940s the Communist Party controlled 15 major
labor unions in the U.S. and had influence within others. Many blue-collar
workers at the time were immigrant Catholics. If Catholicism was indifferent to
the world of work, Cort reasoned, the door is open to communists to use unions
for their ideological purpose. Thus ACTU
would encourage Catholic workers to join unions and be active members, Cort
said. It assisted with CIO membership drives, battled racketeers and sponsored
labor schools where workers learned leadership skills and discussed Catholic
social principles. At ACTU’s peak there were 5,500 members in 14 cities. Many
ACTU chapters published hard-hitting newspapers.
ACTU was
controversial. Some Catholics accused it of cooperating with communism. The
greater criticism came from the other end: ACTU was a voting-block within union
locals, so fixated on anti-communism that it turned a progressive labor
movement hopelessly rightward. Indeed, a few ACTU chapters got so obsessed with
communism that they lost ACTU’s original purpose. Cort repeatedly said that the
U in ACTU stood for unionists, not unions. He did not
advocate Catholic trade unions or Catholic political parties, as sometimes
occurred in Europe. Catholics display their faith in public life simply by
being good unionists, good union members--or in other examples, good
politicians, good civil servants, good nurses, good teachers. The workers in
ACTU met outside their job site with fellow Catholics for mutual support,
spiritual formation and instruction on social doctrine. Communists in the 1930s
and 1940s were not socialists or progressive prophets who planted seeds of
reform, said Cort. They were Stalinists who denied the spiritual life and who
jeopardized national security. ACTU, Cort insisted, “was a progressive
organization most of whose leaders and members were dedicated to honest
democratic trade unionism.” Thus for Cort non-violence was a non-negotiable
religious principle. No exceptions.
Only in the 1970s
did Cort publicly call himself a socialist. But he was clear that socialism is
not crazy radicalism, not totalitarianism and not communism. For Cort it came
from a vision of society based on religious principles, not on Marxism. The
vision is sketched in Catholic social encyclicals and develops through the
efforts of ordinary Catholics, in cooperation with like-minded colleagues, to
improve policies in their workplace and their community. By the way, these
encyclicals—from 1891 to 2000—equally critique total systems like communism and
unrestricted systems like neoliberal capitalism. Cort gave an example. A 1937 encyclical
by Pope Pius XI (1857-1939) was, of course, published in Latin. It is often
titled in English as On Atheistic
Communism. “I analyzed this encyclical and found that one-quarter of it is
devoted to the evils of communism and three-quarters are devoted to the evils
of capitalism,” he said. “It might well have been entitled On Atheistic Capitalism.
For those not interested in the history lessons contained
in Cort’s Christian Socialism, get a
used copy of Cort’s autobiography, Dreadful
Conversions (Fordham University Press, 2003). It is terrific spiritual reading.
St. Basil (329-379) gives “the best and shortest summary
of Catholic social teaching,” Cort was fond of saying. “The coat that hangs in
your closet belongs to the poor.”
Droel edits INITIATIVES (PO Box 291102, Chicago, IL 60629), a newsletter
on faith and work.
