A few words on Cardinal Spellman

That Sonia Sotomayor was educated at Cardinal Spellman High School in the Bronx is duly recorded in every biography of the Supreme Court nominee, but I have yet to come across any reporting about her alma mater’s namesake. That’s a shame because Francis Cardinal Spellman is quite memorable.

As archbishop of the rich and powerful Roman Catholic Archdiocese of New York from 1939 until his death in 1967, Spellman was one of the most famous — or, if you prefer, most notorious — American clergymen of the 20th century.

A religious, social and political conservative, it is difficult to imagine Spellman endorsing the appointment of Spellman High’s most illustrious alumna unless he made a leftward turn en route to that place in heaven reserved for princes of the church. And while I’m sure the young Sonia Sotomayor heard a lot of wonderful things from the priests and nuns about the name etched in stone above the entrance while she was a student, I don’t think a grownup Judge Sotomayor and Cardinal Spellman would like each other very much.

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Spellman first gained notice as the vicar, a sort of super Catholic chaplain, to the U.S. Armed Forces during World War II and in that role, he was said to have spent as much time overseas as Bob Hope, providing religious comfort to the troops and serving as an unofficial diplomat for President Roosevelt in Europe and the Middle East.

After Roosevelt’s death and the war’s end, Spellman was named a Cardinal by his old friend, Pope Pius XII, and made himself the nation’s preeminent defender of the Catholic faith against all enemies, foreign and domestic, real and imagined.

Among the early targets of Spellman’s ire was one of the few prominent females in postwar America, the widow of the late president, Eleanor Roosevelt. When Roosevelt wrote of her opposition to federal aid to non-public schools in her newspaper column “My Day,†the cardinal accused her of taking part in “a craven crusade of religious prejudice against Catholic children†and “discrimination unworthy of an American mother.†That final remark united Democrats against the cardinal and forced him to make a pilgrimage to the Roosevelt home at Hyde Park where both sides voiced regrets over “a misunderstanding.â€

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In 1949, the same year he had his misunderstanding with Mrs. Roosevelt, Spellman also had a long-remembered misunderstanding with gravediggers who had gone on strike at the Cavalry Cemetery in Queens. Catholics to a man, the $56-a-week gravediggers were affiliated with a CIO union with communist ties, so Spellman branded his employees communists, and in a flight of rhetorical overkill, condemned their “unjustified and immoral strike against the innocent dead and their bereaved families, against their religion and human decency.â€

These enemies of the innocent dead were only asking for a five-day week for the same $56 they were getting for six. When his rhetoric didn’t work, Spellman broke the strike by dramatically crossing the picket line with 100 seminarians from St. Joseph’s Seminary in Yonkers whom he put to work burying the dead.

The cardinal was also active as a movie critic, enthusiastically condemning movies with sexual themes, ranging from Tennessee Williams’ “Baby Doll†to a potboiler called “Forever Amber†that his attack made into a huge hit. The future Justice Sotomayor would be especially interested in Spellman’s losing battle against “The Miracle,†a film that dealt with a demented woman’s belief that she had given birth to Christ. The Supreme Court overruled a New York ban inspired by the cardinal and the decision became the first to offer movies First Amendment protection.

The cardinal’s last battle was with the reformer Pope John XXIII, of whom Spellman once said, “He’s no pope. He should be selling bananas,†according to John Cooney, author of “American Pope, the Life and Times of Francis Cardinal Spellman.†He opposed most of the reforms initiated by Pope John, including replacing the Latin mass, but his own funeral mass was said in English. Sic transit gloria mundi.

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Only one member of the Supreme Court is known to have commented publicly on the life and times of Francis Cardinal Spellman, and that was the comparably indiscreet liberal Justice William O. Douglas, whose term on the court from 1939 to 1975 coincided with Spellman’s reign as New York archbishop.

Douglas said Spellman was the reason he abandoned his belief in heaven and hell because he could not face the prospect of spending eternity in either place with people like Francis Cardinal Spellman.

Dick Ahles is a retired journalist from Simsbury. E-mail him at dahles@hotmail.com.