Taylor Marshall is Fact-Checked on Bella Dodd

Taylor Marshall wrote on X about Bella Dodd and the famous claim that she put hundreds of men into Catholic seminaries in order to subvert them from within. He was subsequently fact-checked by Elias Atienza (picked up by AOL News).

It is necessary to offer some clarifying remarks that have arisen from Atienza’s article. These remarks are not to be seen as a rebuttal, but rather to strengthen Atienza’s presentation.

Readers are encouraged to read the article by Kevin Symonds on Bella Dodd and infiltration over at Homiletic & Pastoral Review (H&PR) for some background to the below information. It was used by Atienza as a source for his article.

Statement 1:

Social media users are claiming that Dodd, a former communist, said, “In the 1930s, we put eleven hundred men into the priesthood in order to destroy the Church from within.” This claim, though, appears to be contradicted by Dodd saying in 1961 that she had never met a communist who became a priest, according to Homiletic and Pastoral Review.

At the heart of Atienza’s response is a statement from Dodd during her first September 1, 1961 Detroit Lecture:

“I never met a Communist who was a member of the Catholic clergy.”

There is a question here about the precision of the attribution to Dodd’s own words and point. The cited statement from Marshall on X uses the first person plural (“we put…), which is not the same as the first person singular (“I put…”). So, in the X post, was Dodd talking about what the Communist Party did vs. what she herself did? If it is the former, then we can better understand why she’d say in Detroit “I never met a Communist who was a member of the Catholic clergy.”*

Moreover, there is a distinction between card-carrying members of the CP vs. other groups such as “fellow travelers.” This distinction was known to Dodd and she was quite consistent in her various talks and lectures about ensuring that the public know it and stop thinking in terms of card-carrying members being threats. Men of low morals and who sympathized with the CP would be just as much a threat as actual card-carrying members of the CP. A solid argument could be made that men of low morals and sympathizers could be more so a threat as it would be harder to identify such persons as Communists.

Lastly, Atienza says that the attribution to Dodd “appears to be contradicted” by her statement in Detroit. There was qualifying information presented in Symonds’ article. In the “Making Sense of Matters” section of this article, Symonds went through the available data. He concluded that Dodd’s 1961 statement does not necessarily contradict the claim. Atienza acknowledged this fact in his own concluding remarks, but there was a much larger context to Symonds’ words that is not present in Atienza’s article.

Presumably, this context is left out for reasons of space. It is referenced here for the sake of clarity as the ending note of Symonds’ article is different than how Atienza’s could be interpreted.

Statement 2:

The claim appears to be from a friend of Dodd, Alice von Hildebrand, who said to Nicolas and author Paul Kengor that Dodd told her, “When I was organizing for the Communist Party back in the 1930s, I helped place over a thousand communist men in Catholic seminaries,” according to Crisis Magazine.

Here, Atienza depends upon an article from Crisis Magazine that is a transcript of an interview between Dr. Paul Kengor and Eric Sammons.

When one goes back and looks at the documentation, it is clear that there are two primary claims from Dr. Alice von Hildebrand about Bella Dodd and infiltration:

  1. The infiltration of the seminaries, and
  2. Dodd’s statement about four cardinals at the Vatican working for Communism.

Respectfully, Kengor conflated the two claims from von Hildebrand in his interview with Eric Sammons. The conflation notably changes Atienza’s fact-check.

Alice von Hildebrand spoke about the first claim in terms of what her friends, Johnine and Paul Leininger, claimed to have heard from Dodd during a talk of hers that they attended in the early 1960s. The second claim is what Alice von Hildebrand states that she herself heard from Dodd in the 1960s.

As the claim about so many subversive men going into the priesthood relates to Alice von Hildebrand, she was primarily speaking from the sworn statements of the Leiningers in their affidavit from 2002. She promoted their statement and incorporated their testimony in her interviews.

Moreover, as Symonds noted in his article, the claim of Dodd and subversives going into the priesthood was discussed years before Alice von Hildebrand began talking about it from 2001 onward.

Statement 3:

Kevin Symonds, summarizing in Homiletic and Pastoral Review, says that “Bella Dodd’s newly restored remarks from her 1961 Detroit lecture present a challenge for Catholics who believe that she helped to infiltrate Catholic seminaries.”

Atienza then cites the end of Symonds’ article:

“The challenge forces them to look at underlying presumptions, as well as take a highly critical view towards the sources. Those sources have largely rested upon the good reputation of Alice von Hildebrand, herself a titan in Catholic life and thought. Truth, however, is above a person’s reputation,” reads Symonds. He adds, that the “facts, as they presently stand, indicate that the claims of Dr. Alice von Hildebrand and her friends Johnine and Paul Leininger are not necessarily contradicted by Dodd’s 1961 Detroit lecture. We must, however, reconsider how we think about the matter.”

Here, what was said earlier must be reiterated. Symonds’ examination of the facts did not disprove that Bella Dodd had any kind of knowledge or involvement in any effort to infiltrate Catholic seminaries. Rather, some popular understandings surrounding the claim must be re-worked in the minds of many interested persons.

These understandings have arisen due to different factors, such as imprecisions and people adding their own flair to the story. When such things enter the re-telling of a story, the original statements become obfuscated, giving rise to misunderstandings and confusion.

The efforts of belladodd.net are dedicated, in part, to undoing some of these misunderstandings and confusions so as to let Bella’s voice ring clear and speak to the world today.

Conclusion

Atienza is to be appreciated and respected for his article. Due to so much misinformation about Bella Dodd, efforts to be clear about her life and work are to be praised. Due largely to what appears to be space considerations, Atienza’s efforts require a more careful look at the facts as explained here.


Notes:

*This position is supported by a statement Dodd made to the journalist Westbrook Pegler in 1953. At the time, there was discussion about the Communist Party (CP) infiltrating the Catholic Church in New York via the “Catholic Committee for Civil Rights.” Pegler had visited Dodd and she told him that she was aware of the CP’s effort to infiltrate this organization, but, Pegler notes, “Mrs. Dodd refused to take any part in this effort to penetrate the Catholic fold. Her expressed position was that she would be either a Catholic or Communist.”[1] So, if Dodd wanted to act either as a Catholic or Communist, it is clear that she could have known about any effort to infiltrate the priesthood, but not directly take part in it. Hence the reason why in the original attribution cited by Atienza, it is “We” and not “I” put.

Of course, based upon this statement from Dodd through Pegler, one could also ask if there is any truth to the claim attributed to her about infiltration of the Catholic clergy. To this, one could answer with what Symonds said in his H&PR article: there is a lot that is unknown or uncertain at this time. We must weigh very carefully the available data and be clear to make distinctions while acknowledging both the lack of information as well as the fact that there is much yet to be studied.

Disclaimer: Kevin Symonds authored this article for belladodd.net.

[1] Westbrook Pegler. “Fair Enough.” The Register (August 4, 1953): B6. See also Westbrook Pegler. “Catholic Editor Strikes Hard.” Muncie Evening Press (July 15, 1953): 6.

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