Autobiographical Notes

On Cardinal Wyszynski, Catholicism and Communism

As to your proposed article on [Wyszynski]¹, it seems to me that it is better to drop the subject. It had and has no value except as a stick with which to beat the Soviets and their allies. The sole question is in that case whether the man was justified in his stand for liberty even in that restricted area of religious freedom and the freedom especially of the Catholic religion to be itself, as every religion has a right to be in all civilised countries and whether it was worth while fighting out that question when the real question is how to get rid, if now it is at all possible, of the Bolshevik monstrosity and the tyranny with which it threatens the world. That can't be done by subtly philosophical and even metaphysical articles balancing the rights and wrongs on each side and the relative wickedness of the Soviets and the Western nations. Many readers might even take it as a justification or at least a partial condemnation of the prosecuting Government and the martyrdom it has chosen to inflict on the rebellious Cardinal. And what is the pertinence of the past history of the Roman Catholic Church, especially at a time when we have one of the most liberal minded Popes or even the most liberal minded Pope in Roman Catholic history? Even if it is only a fight between the Holy See of Rome and the unholy See of the Kremlin the fight is between one centre of religious intolerance and another centre of a still more damnable and intolerant religion,—for that is

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what Bolshevism is,—still why give any latitude to what is by far the worse of the two?

3 August 1949