The Chicago Catholic Archdiocese's Response to the Cold War Most
Chicago Catholics, from the Cardinal to the humblest Sodality or
Holy Name Society member, understood that the Cold War with the
Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) was their war. They
knew that the USSR aggressively opposed, in word and deed,
everything in which they believed and for which they lived:
Catholicism in particular and Christianity in general;
democracy; the United States; freedom; liberty. Most Chicago
Catholics, moreover, saw communism—if not consciously or even
rationally—as another part of an encroaching modernism that
promised to substantially alter the way they lived their lives.
During the height of the Cold War, in the decade that began in
1947, the Archdiocese of Chicago often engaged the USSR in
skirmishes and battles. Sometimes the weapons were spiritual,
other times political; sometimes the conflict was in the open,
other times in secret. In 1950 the Archdiocese of Chicago
comprised Catholics living in Cook and La