FDR AND THE CATHOLIC CONNECTION

"Once, when asked his philosophy, Franklin Roosevelt answered simply, "I am a Christian and a Democrat."

As always with Roosevelt, there was more to it than that. He was not just a Christian, but a Protestant, an Episcopalian, a descendant of Huguenot and Yankee New Englanders on his mother's side. And he was not just a Democrat, but a New York Democrat, whose leaders and most faithful voters were overwhelmingly Catholic, especially Irish Catholic. There was a tension, always, between this Protestant patrician and his Catholic party, a tension that this congenial country squire and shrewd politician sought to resolve, with much success, but never with finality. There remained a tension between the Democratic party he created in his own image and the Catholics who were such a large part of its constituency, until the tie between them snapped some time in the late 1960s."

Inside Catholic

After reading this article, which I quite enjoyed, I'm struck with something; Roosevelt didn't bring the Catholics into the Democrat party as much as the Catholics caused the Democrats to swerve decidedly to the left. This may have been a happy coincidence of shared political goals or, as I think more likely after reading this article, a case of political opportunism reshaping the belief system of Roosevelt. It seems that he threw off long held familial political beliefs to accumulate political power. I'm not sure why this hadn't occurred to me before but I think that it may warrant further research.

Teddy Roosevelt was both Progressive and Conservative. I would have to say the same thing about FDR. Of course, this is judging by today's standards. In their time they were doing things that were far to the left of the average WASP Americans belief system. But not far removed from the beliefs of the newly immigrated European Catholic refugee. Interesting that the Progressive movement was able to gain the foothold that it did in the country at the same time as the greatest European immigration waves were washing on our shores. At the same time that the Irish Catholics were gaining political power in New York, Boston and even here in St. Louis, generally through the use of gang muscle. Michael Barrone's article shows the deep political ties that the Irish were able to wrap around Roosevelt. How much policy influence did they exert?