Catholics v. WAACs

The rush of enlistments in the Women's Army Auxiliary Corps (WAACs) has perturbed the Roman Catholic pulpit and press.

Bishop James E. Cassidy of Fall River told his cathedral congregation that he hoped no Catholic woman would join the WAACs, as it was opposed by "teachings and principles of the Roman Catholic Church." In Rochester a joint conference of the Catholic Central Verein of America and the National Catholic Women's Union called the influx of women into war activities "a serious menace to the home and foundation of a true Christian and democratic country."

The Brooklyn Tablet trumpeted that the WAACs were "no more than an opening wedge, intended to break down the traditional American and Christian opposition to removing women from the home and to degrade her by bringing back the pagan female goddess of desexed, lustful sterility." Wrote The Commonweal, Catholic liberal weekly: "If the home is thought of impatiently as that which keeps the wife and mother from war work, the amount of war work which she might do no longer signifies, for the soul of our society will already be lost."

Nearest approach to an official Catholic stand came from the National Catholic Welfare Conference. It voiced one ever-present Catholic fear: that the state will use the war as an excuse for assuming control of children. "Only as a last resort " said the N.C.W.C., "should married women with children be employed [in the armed forces]." If they must be, said the N.C.W.C., "the fullest use should be made of the religious resources of the community ... for the care and training of children needing care away from their own families. . . . Support given by the Federal Government to programs growing out of wartime needs should not be used as a means of fixing a national pattern on American community life."

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