Edmund A. Walsh
SJ | |
---|---|
Born | South Boston, Massachusetts, U.S. | October 10, 1885
Died | October 31, 1956 Washington, D.C., U.S. | (aged 71)
Alma mater | ) |
Orders | |
Ordination | June 28, 1916 |
Edmund Aloysius Walsh
After experiencing
In addition to his role as an investigator of
So great was his reputation that Fr. Walsh was a confidant of multiple
More than a decade after his death, Walsh became famous once again, when he was alleged by
Some historians claim that Walsh, rather than Senator McCarthy, deserves to be remembered as the greatest American Catholic anti-communist of the 20th-century.[4]
Early life and education
Walsh was born on October 10, 1885, in South Boston, Massachusetts.[5] The youngest of six siblings, his father, John Francis Walsh, was a career police officer in the Boston Police Department, and his mother, Catherine J. (née Noonan) Walsh,[6] emigrated from Ireland to the United States with her family as a young girl.[7] Walsh grew up in South Boston, where one of his childhood friends included his future Jesuit colleague, Louis J. Gallagher.[8]
Walsh first attended a public
From 1909 to 1912, during his Jesuit formation, Walsh taught literature at what was then the preparatory division of Georgetown University.[8][2] He was present at the dedication of the statue of John Carroll on Georgetown's campus in May 1912, and was influenced by Chief Justice Edward Douglas White's speech about the common principles underlying the founding of the United States and Georgetown University.[10] Walsh was awarded a Bachelor of Arts degree from Georgetown.[2]
In September 1912, the Jesuit superiors sent Walsh to Europe for graduate studies. He began to study the classics at University College Dublin, but he was forced to withdraw because the academic senate declined to recognize his bachelor's degree from Georgetown. In March 1913, he began a similar program at the University of London. However, several months later, the Jesuit provincial superior directed Walsh to commence his theological studies, which he began in September of that year at the University of Innsbruck.[11]
In August 1914, with the outbreak of the First World War, Walsh's studies there were interrupted.[11] He instead returned to Woodstock College to continue his theological studies. He was ordained a priest on June 28, 1916, and then spent one year engaged in pastoral work in New York City. Walsh then returned to Woodstock to complete his theological studies,[12] and was awarded a Master of Arts degree.[2]
He later received a D.Litt. from Georgetown University, as well as an LL.D. from the University of Delaware.[2]
Georgetown University
On May 5, 1918, Walsh became the prefect of studies (dean) of the Georgetown University College of Arts & Sciences, succeeding John B. Creeden.[12][2] Walsh held this position only for one year, and was succeeded by W. Coleman Nevils.[13] In 1919, given the Jesuits' recently established policy that the deans and presidents of all Jesuit colleges should possess doctorates, Walsh was awarded an honorary Doctor of Philosophy degree from Georgetown.[14]
During World War I he served special duties as assistant educational director to the "Students' Army Training Corps."[2]
After the
Relief missions to Russia
In 1922, while studying
Upon his arrival in Russia, Fr. Walsh began friendships and close collaboration in famine relief work with the main leaders of the
This was why, when Fr. Walsh and the first Exarch of the Russian Greek Catholic Church first met one another and conversed in Ecclesiastical Latin, Feodorov, who admired Patriarch Tikhon and his followers and felt only contempt for the so-called Living Church, urged that the Famine Relief food supplies be entrusted not only to Catholic clergy, but also to those Russian Orthodox priests who remained loyal to Patriarch Tikhon for distribution to the starving. Fr. Walsh enthusiastically agreed with the Exarch's idea and ensured that it was carried out. In Orenburg alone, Fr. Louis Gallagher hosted six local Russian Orthodox bishops to his table to organize the delivery of food supplies to the starving.[22]
According to historian Paul Gabel, "By early October the mission was at work. By its own accounts it established hundreds of food kitchens in the Crimea and many more reaching as far north as Moscow and Petrograd. Eventually it gave daily food rations to over 160,000 people in over 400 localities and employed 2,500 Russians as workers at the stations. At its peak in the summer of 1923, it had created clothing and boot-making factories, donated money to sanitaria for children with tuberculosis, and imported medical supplies to combat typhus and malaria, ultimately spending the equivalent of $1.5 million on all programs. This effort can, of course, be construed as magnanimity or opportunism - the latter interpretation favored by many Orthodox Hierarchs and clergy."[23]
Meanwhile, Fr. Walsh and Archbishop Jan Cieplak also succeeded in securing the surrender of the
During his time in Russia, Walsh became militantly and vocally anti-Communist, first through his close friendships with Archbishop Cieplak, Monsignor Budkiewicz, and Exarch Leonid Feodorov and then having been a horrified eye-witness to their 1923 show trial prosecution by Nikolai Krylenko for anti-Soviet agitation during the First Soviet anti-religious campaign.[2][26] To raise global awareness of anti-Catholicism in the Soviet Union, Fr. Walsh, his aides, and Captain Francis McCullagh translated into English the trial transcripts they had recorded in shorthand and sent them abroad, where they were published by the New York Herald and La Civiltà Cattolica.[27][28]
On 10 April 1923,
One Catholic Bishop in the
According to Paul Gabel, "Walsh had said publicly that the Papal Relief Mission was to scrupulously avoid religious propaganda; the Mission was under strict orders from both the Bolsheviks and the Vatican not to proselytize. Even
In a 16 November 1923 letter to the
Following his return to the
Fr. Walsh's experiences during the Soviet anti-religious campaign represented a turning point in his life and he continued to vigorously promote
Soviet Foreign Commissar Georgii Chicherin very likely had the efforts of Fr. Walsh and Captain Francis McCullagh in mind when he confided years later in Bishop Michel d'Herbigny, "We Communists feel sure we can triumph over London Capitalism. But Rome will prove a harder nut to crack... Without Rome, religion would die. But Rome sends out, for the service of her religion, propagandists of every nationality. They are more effective than guns. It is certain it will be a long struggle."[34]
Later life
Walsh professed his fourth vow on March 27, 1924.[5]
During the
On December 5, 1938, Walsh spoke at an ecumenical conference in Washington whose focus was to combat religious and racial intolerance.[35]
In October 1941, Walsh publicly criticized
After the Allies' victory in
After Haushofer and his wife committed suicide in March 1946, Walsh visited their graves and wrote in his diary, "I could not help but think of the deep tragedy of this death by night, alone, in a lonely gulley, of the last of the geopoliticians! What an inscrutable destiny, that after 19 [years of] teaching and warning [the] U.S.A. about the teachings of Haushofer, I should today be kneeling over his suicide's body in one of the loneliest spots in Bavaria!"[39]
In Total Power: A Footnote to History, Walsh's 1948 account of his role in the Nuremberg Trials, Walsh accused the
Death
Walsh died of a
In its obituary, the New York Times remembered Walsh as founder of the School of Foreign Service. The Times added:
Father Walsh was a long-time leader in the fight against world communism. By the spoken and written word, and with every force at his command, he had uncompromisingly opposed it since the day in 1923 when he returned from Moscow after heading the Paper Relief Mission to the Soviet Union for more than a year.[2]
President Dwight D. Eisenhower sent a letter to Georgetown University when Walsh died in 1956, which read in part:
The death of Father Walsh is a grievous loss to the Society in which he served so many years, to the educational and religious life of the United States and to the free people of the Western world. For four decades, he was a vigorous and inspiring champion of freedom for mankind and independence for nations... at every call to duty, all his energy of leadership and wisdom of counsel were devoted to the service of the United States.[citation needed]
Legacy
After his death in 1956, a new academic building constructed to house the School of Foreign Service was named the Edmund A. Walsh Memorial Building in his memory.
Walsh's most enduring legacy is the school he founded, which has become an incubator of leadership in the United States and internationally. Graduates of the School have included U.S. President Bill Clinton, U.S. President Barack Obama's Chief of Staff Denis McDonough, U.S. President Donald Trump's Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney and the leaders of the U.S. intelligence community (George Tenet), the American labor movement (AFL-CIO President Lane Kirkland), and the American Catholic Church (New York Cardinal Archbishop John Joseph O'Connor). Heads of state educated at the School have included King Abdullah of Jordan, King Felipe VI of Spain, and Gloria Macapagal Arroyo of the Philippines.[citation needed]
The school has been home to several prominent faculty members including the historians Carroll Quigley, and Jules Davids, the political scientist, and World War II hero Jan Karski, and the first woman Secretary of State Madeleine Albright. On May 29, 2012, both Karski (posthumously) and Albright received the Presidential Medal of Freedom from U.S. President Barack Obama.[citation needed]
In 2023, a controversial proposal to rename the Georgetown School of Foreign Service after Madeleine Albright over Fr. Walsh's alleged role in McCarthyism received criticism from Georgetown students argued in a petition of their own that Fr. Walsh cannot be blamed for McCarthyism and that the legacy of the School of Foreign Service's founding Dean deserves to be celebrated rather than minimized.[40] Others including students, faculty, and alumni, have argued against the name change based on both opposition to Albright's diplomatic policies and admiration for Fr. Walsh's role in defense of global religious freedom and other human rights.[41] On 10 October 2023, Georgetown University announced that the replacement of Fr. Edmund A. Walsh's name with that of Madeleine Albright was no longer under consideration, but that an alternative means of honoring Albright was still being sought.[42]
Works
Books
- The History and Nature of International Relations. Georgetown Foreign Service Series. New York: Macmillan Co. 1922. OCLC 587383– via Google Books.
- Fall of the Russian Empire: The Story of the Last f the Romanovs and the Coming of the Bolsheviki. Boston: OCLC 6870254.
- Why Pope Pius XI Asked Prayers for Russia on March 19, 1930: A Review of the Facts in the Case Together with Proofs of the International Program of the Soviet Government. New York: OCLC 3883110.
- Last Stand: An Interpretation of the Soviet Five-Year Plan. Boston: OCLC 415049.
- Ships and National Safety: The Role of a Merchant Marine in Balanced Economy. Washington, D.C.: Georgetown University School of Foreign Service. 1934. OCLC 2868749.
- Wood Carver of Tyrol. New York: OCLC 11630192.
- Total Power: A Footnote to History. Garden City, NY: OCLC 880297– via Internet Archive.
- Total Empire: The Roots and Progress of World Communism. Milwaukee: Bruce. 1951. OCLC 1478385.
Articles
- "Soviet Geopolitics and Strategy". Naval War College Review. 4 (7). September 1951. Archived from the original on June 26, 2023. Retrieved June 26, 2023 – via U.S. Naval War College.
See also
References
Citations
- ^ Fr. Edmund Walsh Archived 2008-06-19 at the Wayback Machine
- ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m "Rev. E. A. Walsh of Georgetown U.: Founder of School of Foreign Service in 1919 Dies—Was Authority on Soviet". The New York Times. November 1, 1956. p. 39. Archived from the original on March 11, 2023. Retrieved 11 March 2023.
- ^ O'Neill, Paul R. and Paul K. Williams, "Georgetown University"
- ^ "The Argument of Strength Justly and Righteously Employed": Edmund A. Walsh, Catholic Anticommunism, and American Foreign Policy, 1945-1952 by Patrick J. MacNamara, U.S. Catholic Historian, Fall 2004. Pages 57-77.
- ^ a b c Mendizàbal 1972, p. 494
- ^ a b Gallagher 1957, p. 21
- ^ a b McNamara 2005, p. 7
- ^ a b McNamara 2005, p. 8
- ^ Gallagher 1957, p. 24
- ^ McNamara 2005, pp. 8–9
- ^ a b McNamara 2005, p. 9
- ^ a b McNamara 2005, p. 10
- ^ Curran 2010, p. 398, Appendix C: Prefects of Studies/Deans of the College of Arts and Sciences, 1889–1964
- ^ McNamara 2005, pp. 6, 177
- ^ https://www.library.georgetown.edu/exhibition/house-walsh-built-century-georgetowns-school-foreign-service The House That Walsh Built
- ^ https://www.library.georgetown.edu/exhibition/house-walsh-built-century-georgetowns-school-foreign-service The House That Walsh Built: Speeches from the Formal Commemoration of the Founding of the School of Foreign Service, November 25, 1919
- ^ https://www.library.georgetown.edu/exhibition/house-walsh-built-century-georgetowns-school-foreign-service The House That Walsh Built: Program from Dinner for the First Graduating Class, 1921
- ^ https://www.library.georgetown.edu/exhibition/house-walsh-built-century-georgetowns-school-foreign-service The House That Walsh Built: Fr. Frank L. Fadner, SFS Professor and Regent
- ^ McNamara 2005, p. 13.
- ^ Парфентьев, Павел (2017). Служение блаженного Леонида Федорова в России. Православные католики Одессы.
- ^ Fr. Paul Mailleux, S.J. (2017), Blessed Leonid Feodorov: First Exarch of the Russian Catholic Church; Bridgebuilder between Rome and Moscow, Loreto Publications. Pages 155-187.
- ^ Fr. Paul Mailleux, S.J. (2017), Blessed Leonid Feodorov: First Exarch of the Russian Catholic Church; Bridgebuilder between Rome and Moscow, Loreto Publications. Pages 150-153.
- ^ Paul Gabel (2005), And Created Lenin: Marxism vs. Religion in Russia, 1917-1929, Prometheus Books. Page 382.
- ^ "The Catholic Diplomat: Edmund A. Walsh, S.J." Archived from the original on 2012-07-22. Retrieved 2009-10-05.
- De Christiana expeditione apud Sinas suscepta ab Societate Jesu
- ^ McNamara 2005, pp. 23–61.
- ^ Paul Mailleux (2017), Blessed Leonid Feodorov: First Exarch of the Russian Catholic Church, Bridgebuilder between Rome and Moscow, Loreto Publications. Pages 207–207.
- ^ a b Fr. Paul Mailleux, S.J. (2017), Blessed Leonid Feodorov: First Exarch of the Russian Catholic Church; Bridgebuilder between Rome and Moscow, Loreto Publications. Pages vii-viii.
- ^ Felix Corley (1996), Religion in the Soviet Union: An Archival Reader, New York University Press. Pages 35–37.
- ^ Paul Gabel (2005), And Created Lenin: Marxism vs. Religion in Russia, 1917-1929, Prometheus Books. Pages 382-383.
- ^ Paul Gabel (2005), And Created Lenin: Marxism vs. Religion in Russia, 1917-1929, Prometheus Books. Page 383.
- ^ Boleslaw Szczesniak (1959), The Russian Revolution and Religion: A Collection of Documents Concerning the Suppression of Religion by the Communists, 1917–1925, University of Notre Dame Press. Pages 219–221.
- ^ "The House That Walsh Built: A Century of Georgetown's School of Foreign Service | Georgetown University Library".
- University of SyracusePress. Page 174.
- ^ "The Witness". www.episcopalarchives.org. Retrieved 2023-06-22.
- ^ McNamara 2005, pp. 120–125.
- ^ McNamara 2005, pp. 125–126.
- ^ a b McNamara 2005, p. 128.
- ^ McNamara 2005, p. 126.
- ^ Georgetown may soon cross a red line on pro-abortion advocacy, by Manuel A. Miranda, The Washington Times, Thursday, July 27, 2023.
- ^ Georgetown Still Considering Renaming SFS After the Late Madeleine Albright, by Caroline Rareside and Caitlin MacLean, The Hoya, August 12, 2023.
- ^ School of Foreign Service to Not Rename After Madeleine Albright, By Clayton Kincaide, The Hoya, 13 October 2023.
Sources
- Curran, Robert Emmett (2010). A History of Georgetown University: The Quest for Excellence, 1889–1964. Vol. 2. Washington, D.C.: ISBN 978-1-58901-689-7.
- Gallagher, Louis J. (February 1957). "Father Edmund A. Walsh". Woodstock Letters. 86 (1): 21–70. Archived from the original on June 26, 2023. Retrieved June 26, 2023 – via Jesuit Online Library.
- McNamara, Patrick (2005). A Catholic Cold War: Edmund A. Walsh, S.J., and the Politics of American Anticommunism. New York: JSTOR j.ctt13x00vh.
- Mendizàbal, Rufo (1972). Catalogus defunctorum in renata Societate Iesu ab a. 1814 ad a. 1970 (in Latin). Rome: Jesuit Archives: Central United States. pp. 490–521. Archived from the original on February 8, 2023. Retrieved June 26, 2023.
Further reading
- Gallagher, Louis J. (1962). Edmund A. Walsh, S.J.: A Biography. New York: OCLC 3633509.
- McNamara, Patrick J. (Fall 2004). ""The Argument of Strength Justly and Righteously Employed": Edmund A. Walsh, Catholic Anticommunism, and American Foreign Policy, 1945–1952". U.S. Catholic Historian. 22 (4): 57–77. JSTOR 25154933.
- Watkins, Anna, ed. (1990). Footnotes to History: Selected Speeches and Writings of Edmund A. Walsh, S.J. Washington, D.C.: ISBN 0-87840-506-2. Archivedfrom the original on June 23, 2023. Retrieved June 23, 2023 – via Georgetown University Library.
External links
- GCache of the Digital Georgetown Special Collection at the Wayback Machine (archived January 22, 2005) describing the Walsh Building.
- Georgetown University Location map pinpointing the Walsh Building.
- Profile of Fr. Walsh from the Georgetown University newspaper.