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Name:
Charles Edward Coughlin
Dates:
Born: October 25, 1891 in Hamilton, Ontario
Died: October 27, 1979
Ordained: 1916
National Union for Social Justice (Union Party): November 11, 1934
Biography:
Charles Edward Coughlin (1891-1979) was a Roman Catholic priest who achieved a great
deal of public notoriety through his weekly radio program. According to Coughlin,
whose greatest exposure was during the Great Depression, most of the country's
problems could be attributed to godless communists and Jewish bankers - and,
unfortunately, American liberals like President Roosevelt were little more than dupes
for the communists and Jews.
To further his political goals, Coughlin formed the National Union for Social Justice. This political party opposed unfettered capitalism, opposed the power of Wall Street over the national economy, supported the reintroduction of the silver standard, and a more plentiful money supply. Coughlin regularly used his radio program - ostensibly one designed for religious purposes - to attack Roosevelt and promote his political views.
In a speech given when the Union Party was founded, Coughlin outlined the following principles of social justice which he explained as the basis for his political activism:
1. I believe in liberty of conscience and liberty of education, not permitting the state to dictate either my worship to my God or my chosen avocation in life.
2. I believe that every citizen willing to work and capable of working shall receive a just, living, annual wage which will enable him both to maintain and educate his family according to the standards of American decency.
3. I believe in nationalizing those public resources which by their very nature are too important to be held in the control of private individuals.
4. I believe in private ownership of all other property.
5. I believe in upholding the right to private property but in controlling it for the public good.
6. I believe in the abolition of the privately owned Federal Reserve Banking system and in the establishment of a Government owned Central Bank.
7. I believe in rescuing from the hands of private owners the right to coin and regulate the value of money, which right must be restored to Congress where it belongs.
8. I believe that one of the chief duties of this Government owned Central Bank is to maintain the cost of living on an even keel and arrange for the repayment of dollar debts with equal value dollars.
9. I believe in the cost of production plus a fair profit for the farmer.
10. I believe not only in the right of the laboring man to organize in unions but also in the duty of the Government, which that laboring man supports, to protect these organizations against the vested interests of wealth and of intellect.
11. I believe in the recall of all non-productive bonds and therefore in the alleviation of taxation.
12. I believe in the abolition of tax-exempt bonds.
13. I believe in broadening the base of taxation according to the principles of ownership and the capacity to pay.
14. I believe in the simplification of government and the further lifting of crushing taxation from the slender revenues of the laboring class.
15. I believe that, in the event of a war for the defense of our nation and its liberties, there shall be a conscription of wealth as well as a conscription of men.
16. I believe in preferring the sanctity of human rights to the sanctity of property rights; for the chief concern of government shall be for the poor because, as it is witnessed, the rich have ample means of their own to care for themselves.
Coughlin's anti-Jewish rhetoric was so effective that even the anti-Catholic KKK supported him and he once spoke at a Klan funeral. He even supported the governments of Hitler and Mussolini, but after Pearl Harbor this became a huge embarrassment for the Catholic Church and in 1942 he was given the option of either being silent on social issues or leaving the priesthood. He chose the latter, but after his retirement in 1966 he wrote many pamphlets opposing both communism and Vatican II reforms.
Also Known As: none
Alternate Spellings: none
Common Misspellings: none
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