"People's Padre"
In the Gospel Guardian last week and this week we publish a part of the story of Emmett McLoughlin, one of America's most famous Franciscan priests who, five years ago, broke with the hierarchy. These two articles (a speech McLoughlin delivered last January 21 in Constitution Hall, Washington, D.C.) give but a brief glimpse into the truly fascinating story of this Irish Catholic priest and his bitter fight with the Catholic Church which he left.
Four or five years ago Paul Blanchard in his American Freedom and Catholic Power made a devastating attack on Catholicism and her threat to American freedom. In writings thoroughly documented from Catholic sources Blanchard spelled out the insidious and growing threat of this fascist, authoritarian system of religio-political power. What Blanchard did in exposing Catholicism's threat to our political freedom, Emmett McLoughlin has done now in exposing Catholicism's threat to intellectual and spiritual freedom. There is this difference, however: Blanchard wrote from the outside, while McLoughlin writes from the intimate, first-hand knowledge and experience of thorough Catholic indoctrination and association. For a thousand years his ancestors were the strongest supporters of Catholicism anywhere to be found. McLoughlin received the full training and indoctrination as a priest of the Franciscan order. He knows whereof he writes.
"People's Padre" is the name of the book McLoughlin has written describing his life as a Catholic priest, and detailing the reasons why finally intellectual integrity and ordinary human decency compelled him to break away from the system that had held him captive. He believes that instead of the thirty percent of priests who do quit the priesthood there would be at least seventy-five percent who would do so were they not held captive by FEAR! McLoughlin describes in detail what was done in an effort to win him back to Catholicism, and failing in that, to break and destroy him. And the fight still goes on. He stands a more than even chance at this late date of dying with an assassin's bullet in his heart or a knife within his back.
Fascinated by the little bit we knew of McLoughlin's struggle, we have just bought and read the full autobiography he has written. The cover jacket of "People's Padre" says:
"This is the rare warm, human story, of a man whose most burning desire was to spend himself to bring health, hope, and purpose to other human beings who had none of these things. It is as simple as that. But the story delivers a powerful impact, because a man like this finds opposition everywhere — even from the rulers of his own church.
"He was first christened John Patrick in 1907; but when he entered the novitiate of the Franciscan Order after five years in St. Anthony's Seminary of Santa Barbara, he was re-christened Emmett. He spent twelve years in the seminary and fourteen more in the parish to which he was assigned — the South Side of Phoenix. This was a spot characterized by U. S. officials as the worst slum area in the United States. It was close to the city dump; there were open cell-pools, dilapidated shacks, stabbings and shootings in-the streets at night, prostitutes, outlaws, glassy-eyed victims of denatured alcohol, grotesquely deformed venereal babies, women being delivered in broken-down hovels by untrained midwives while their children looked on . . . . and the underprivileged: impoverished Negroes, Spanish-Americans, whites."
Into this boiling sea of misery sandy-haired Emmett McLoughlin came like an angel of mercy. He won the love of the outcasts — and the hatred of his smug Catholic superiors. The nuns and priests tried to thwart him, and finally tried to destroy him. All the mighty power of the Papacy was marshaled in an effort to bring the rebellious priest into line.
Of particular interest to this writer were Emmett McLoughlin's references to George H. Dunne, another Phoenix priest (a Jesuit) with whom Brother Harry Pickup, Jr., is right now engaged in a written discussion.
McLoughlin says of Dunne:
"Father George Dunne, the Jesuit priest assigned to "refute" Paul Blanchard's American Freedom and Catholic Power, lives in Phoenix and was one of the three priests who remained friendly to me. I told him several times that his 'refutation' of Blanchard refuted nothing.
"Mr. Blanchard asked me to invite this priest to debate the books in the Catholic colleges on the west coast, particularly the Jesuit universities. 'You know the bishops as well as I' Dunne told me. 'They will never consent'."
Again McLoughlin refers to Dunne:
"The Rev. George Dunne was ousted from the Los Angeles Diocese when he openly upheld the actors and technicians in their strike against the movie producers."
We feel that "People's Padre" should be required reading for every Christian in the land. It will fortify us all for the inevitable struggle and the final show-down with the most ruthless and vicious power in the Western Hemisphere — the Roman Catholic Church. It is one of the most interesting life stories to appear on the American scene in many years. You will certainly not agree with everything Emmett McLoughlin believes, nor with everything he has done. But you cannot but admire the magnificent courage of the man, and his integrity and forthright meeting of the challenge of spiritual dictatorship.
We are happy that this story is now in print. (See advertisement on back page of this issue of The Gospel Guardian.) And we salute a great American, a man of stature and greatness of heart, who richly deserves the affectionate regard which led the down-trodden and outcast ones of Phoenix to call him the "People's Padre."
— F.Y.T.