In his speeches and writings, Father Coughlin preached the need to
protect America from foreign radicals and ideologies and the way to
lead a Christian life, which he intertwined. His message had a wide
appeal at a time of social and economic collapse at home and widespread
upheaval and aggressive dictatorships abroad.
National Union of Social Justice
SOCIAL JUSTICE
Coughlin advocated a doctrine he called Christian social justice; its
goal was living in peace and Christian virtue. The barrier to leading
such lives was the accumulation of wealth by a few. This social
injustice had begun in the fourteenth century when the developing
forces of capitalism, secularism, and nationalism began to displace
Christianity, communal ties, and the guild system; consequently,
society rejected Christ’s teachings and returned to the non-Christian
or pagan values he called “naturalism.” The unequal distribution of
wealth and the rejection of the “supernatural” or Christianity as the
basis of government and society led historically to the re-introduction
of international war and currently to the rise of Communism and
Naziism, both of which he called the Antichrist. Happiness in this
world and salvation in the next lay in Christ (
"Am I an
Anti-Semite?", 8-9, 13-16).
