Coughlin, Chas. E. A Series of Lectures on Social Justice, with ephemera. Royal Oak, Mich.: The Radio League of the Little Flower, 1935. [11202]
8 1/4 x 5 3/4 inches, edge-worn, bottom corner of back cover torn with loss, white ring on back cover. 244 clean pp. With typed letter apologizing for the delay in sending the book, asking the recipient (Mary Z. Purcill of Auburn, NY) to conduct social justice meetings in her home, to encourage at least three new people to vote, and to contribute ten cents per month to the National Union for Social Justice. Also, an Application for Membership in the National Union for Social Justice, with the 16 principles of the Union printed on the opposite side. We think the signatures on both are printed. Good. Pamphlet.
This has the Imprimatur of †Michael James Gallagher, D. D., Bishop of Detroit.
Charles Edward Coughlin (1891-1979), b. Hamilton, Ontario; d. Bloomfield Hills, Michigan. Coughlin was educated at St. Michael's College, University of Toronto (Ph.D. 1911), was ordained a Catholic priest (1916), and taught philosophy and English at Assumption College, Sandwich, Ontario. He then served as parish priest for several Michigan congregations before being sent to found a parish at Royal Oak, Michigan. There he established the Shrine of the Little Flower, "remaining there until 1966. Coughlin began an effective radio ministry in 1926 in an effort to explain Roman Catholicism after the Ku Klux Klan burned a cross in the churchyard of his church."
His broadcasts soon became more political in orientation than strictly religious. He was an outspoken anti-Communist, a denouncer of international banking systems, a defender of the lower classes, and was accused of antisemitism.
"In 1934 Coughlin organized the National Union for Social Justice and through the magazine Social Justice (1936) was able to promote his views." He opposed Roosevelt and his policies and denounced the entry of the United States into WWII, calling it a British-Jewish-Roosevelt conspiracy.
"Coughlin was eventually forced off the air by church authorities and his magazine put out of print (1942). He spent his last years in seclusion, occasionally writing tracts denouncing communism and Vatican II." - R. L. Peterson, Dictionary of Christianity in America.
