WelcomeUser Guide
ToSPrivacyCanary
DonateBugsLicense

©2024 Poal.co

135

“In the late 1920’s and 1930’s, directives were sent from Moscow to all Communist Party organizations. In order to destroy the Roman Catholic Church from within, party members were to be planted in seminaries and within diocesan organizations...In the 1930’s, we put eleven hundred men into the priesthood in order to destroy the Church from within. The idea was for these men to be ordained, and then climb the ladder of influence and authority as Monsignors and Bishops. Right now the Communist infiltrators are in the highest places in the Church where they are working to bring about change in order to weaken the Church’s effectiveness against Communism. You will not recognize the Catholic Church.”

Dr. Bella Visono Dodd

>“In the late 1920’s and 1930’s, directives were sent from Moscow to all Communist Party organizations. In order to destroy the Roman Catholic Church from within, party members were to be planted in seminaries and within diocesan organizations...In the 1930’s, we put eleven hundred men into the priesthood in order to destroy the Church from within. The idea was for these men to be ordained, and then climb the ladder of influence and authority as Monsignors and Bishops. Right now the Communist infiltrators are in the highest places in the Church where they are working to bring about change in order to weaken the Church’s effectiveness against Communism. You will not recognize the Catholic Church.” >Dr. Bella Visono Dodd

(post is archived)

[–] 0 pt (edited )

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bella_Dodd

Bella Dodd (née Visono; 1904[1] – 29 April 1969[2]) was a teacher, lawyer, and labor union activist, member of the Communist Party of America (CPUSA) and New York City Teachers Union (TU) in the 1930s and 1940s ("one of Communism's most strident voices"), and vocal anti-communist after her expulsion from the Party in 1949.[3]

Interesting...

During her time with the TU, Dodd worked closely with the Party, but she was not an open member. As she testified before HUAC in 1953, "the Communist Pary was emphatic that professional people engaged in public service who had public jobs were not to be exposed and were not card-carrying members. Rather, she served in the faction that moved the TU "in the direction of the Communist Party."[1][3] By 1943, Dodd's feelings toward the Communist Party had changed:

During the war period I saw how opportunism and selfishness engulfed many [Party] comrades. They wore expensive clothes, lived in fine apartments, took long vacations at places provided by men of wealth.... There were the trade union Communists who rubbed elbows with underworld characters at communist-financed night clubs, and labor lawyers who were given patronage by the Party...and now were well established and comfortable.[1]

...

In March 1943, Gil Green convinced Dodd to become an open Communist Party leader.[1][3] Dodd succeeded Si Gerson (who was enlisting in the Army) as Communist legislative representative for the New York district, retaining an honorary TU position. At Party headquarters, she attended Politburo meetings with Gil Green, Earl Browder, William Z. Foster, Robert Minor, Jim Ford, Jack Stachel, John Williamson, and Elizabeth Gurley Flynn. Dodd, Philip Jones, and Allen Goodwin set up a law office at 25 West 43rd Street for political outreach beyond the Party, including with the National Maritime Union.[1][3]

In 1944, Dodd served on the National Committee of the Communist Party, on the secretariat of the New York State Communist Party along with Si Gerson and Israel Amter,[1][3] and the National Committee of the "Communist Political Association."

She later wrote:

By January 1944 I was firmly established at Party headquarters on Twelfth Street. There I organized the legislative program of the Party; but, more important still, I supervised the legislative work of the unions, chiefly the unions of government workers on a state, local, and national level, of the mass organizations of women, and of 'the youth organizations.[1]

Dodd wrote that the Party had control of the CIO Political Action Committee as well as the Independent Committee of Artists, Scientists and Professionals, chaired by sculptorJo Davidson. Depressed by continued infighting, Dodd complained to Gurley Flynn, who sent Dodd on a cross-country speaking tour in 1945, but upon her return to New York she found no improvement.[1]

By April 1945, the US Communist Party leader Browder, who had suppressed orders from Moscow to radically change the Party's platform from that of the wartime alliance and to instead vocally attack the United States as a Fascist police state. When Moscow informed the Party of their wishes, Browder was vocally opposed by Mother Bloor, Gurley Flynn, Ann Burlak, Benjamin J. Davis Jr., and Pat Tuohy. Dodd began angling to leave the Party but was refused. In January 1946, Browder and all those suspected of "Browderism" were expelled from the Party; Dodd claimed "several thousands were expelled". These included writer Ruth McKenney and husband Bruce Minton.

Dodd began to come under government suspicion. She told the New York County district attorney's office she had become a Communist "because only the Communists seemed to care about what was happening to people in 1932 and 1933.... They were fighting hunger and misery and fascism then; and neither the major political parties nor the churches seemed to care."