Franco Shrine to Close in Philly – Saint Joan of Arc Church Harrowgate

I find it extremely ironic that Francophile Charles Chaput with his blue ribbon committees and bankers to derivative-ize / bundle the Archdiocesan real estate portfolio before his next promotion, would could overlook this Sufi-like shrine in Philly to the secretly sainted Generalissimo.

I also find it ironic or even questioning the management style or lack of it from a temporary Vatican hack in the form of the Canadian American person of Archbishop Charles Chaput of Philly waiting around for his next real and or important assignment by the Vatican after this temporary Hatchet Job (hand job) gig in the city of brotherly luv.

Saint Joan of Arc Church will close on June 23 at noon.  It’s founder Msgr. Edward F. Hawks was quite a writer and defender of General Franco and his regime in Spain during and after the Civil War there. 

Hoods and shirts: the extreme right in Pennsylvania, 1925-1950

“Franco’s armies are good to the people, and Franco is especially kind towards the children.”   
~~ Msgr. Edward Hawks, St Joan of Arc Parish, Harrowgate Philadelphia.

 

Edward F. Hawks

(PAHRC – Phila Pa)

http://www.pahrc.net/index.php/catablog/hawks-rev-edward-f-papers-1900-1952-mc-15/

“…After converting, Hawks left his home in Canada and became a priest in the Archdiocese of Philadelphia, where he served for several years as a parish curate. During World War I, he served as a chaplain in the Canadian army. When he returned to Philadelphia in 1919, he established St. Joan of Arc parish, where he remained until his death.  He was also the founder of the Catholic Evidence Guild, an organization designed to attract converts and lapsed Catholics.

Hawks was a well-known writer and lecturer. For more than 30 years, he wrote a column on current events for the diocesan paper The Catholic Standard and Times. From 1936-1938, after becoming a domestic prelate, he toured Spain to gather accounts of the Civil War for his column. His efforts on behalf of the Nationalist cause won him decoration from the Spanish government. …”

I never have quite understood the whole Father Coughlin thing in the depression era except that the Canadian priest had such a powerful media grip through radio on the American people and the love of Germany and Spain and Italy as fascist regimes along with anti-Semitism was a growing political threat to FDR and that the Boston wing of the American Catholic church through Joe Kennedy on behalf of FDR had Coughlin silenced through then Bishop Spellman and through then Cardinal Pacelli (later Pius XII) and his intervention via the Vatican in that silencing.

That in all the writings of I have seen, you see the fascism part of the Catholic Right in America, the emphasis of the love of fascism was also a means to confront the Reds and or Communist movement in Europe and in America.

Now that Communism is a threat to no one, the Right Wing of the Catholic Church in America serves up love of fascism as nostalgia and or support of pure anti-human market place capitalism.

I see that the Boston wing may have silenced Coughlin but the Philly wing under Cardinal Dougherty and via the Archdiocesan Newspaper and Msgr. Hawk’s pro-Franco, pro-fascist weekly column, that not all regions of the US RCC always acts in unison.

I also find it strange how the fascist saints of Saint Joan of Arc and Saint Thomas More got resurrected in the 1920s and continue to this day as coded symbols in the advancement of power at the ultimate expense of humanity.

That and the Knights of Columbus involved in right wing politics in the 1930s continues all the way to today.

(pax)

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