JUNE 16 • 2022 | 27

stain on our history. That’s an 
unavoidable fact. And it has to 
be recognized.
”
The pairing of organizations 
at the head of the May 31 
event made for an interesting 
historical wrinkle: The Detroit 
JCRC/AJC was originally 
founded in 1937 as the Jewish 
Community Council of 
Metropolitan Detroit, and one 
of its first orders of business was 
to publicly oppose Coughlin’s 
broadcasts as antisemitic. 
Meanwhile, the Archdiocese of 
Detroit supported and protected 
Coughlin for the first decade 
of his broadcasting career, until 
1937, when the death of the 
area’s bishop combined with 
Coughlin’s escalating bad press 
led the Vatican to appoint a 
new bishop, Ed Mooney, who 
worked more aggressively 
to control the Radio Priest’s 
rhetoric.
Coughlin’s name was rarely 
mentioned during the program 
itself, although Robert Fastiggi, 

a historian at Sacred Heart 
Major Seminary in Detroit, 
opened his talk from the priest’s 
old dais by stating, “Father 
Coughlin was antisemitic.
” 
 He added that there remained 
elements of antisemitism 
in the Church today, before 
running through a history of 
Jewish-Catholic relations that 
climaxed with Pope Paul VI’s 
1965 reading of Nostra aetate, 
the papal declaration that Jews 
were not to blame for the death 
of Jesus Christ. 
But during the Q&A section, 
Jewish attendee Levi Smith, 
vice president of a foundation 
devoted to the legacy of Detroit 
Jewish architect Albert Kahn, 
made a note of the venue’s 
history. 

“Speaking on behalf of myself 
and a lot of other people in our 
community, when we drive 
past the Shrine we get scared,
” 
Smith said. “Because of Father 
Coughlin.
”
He asked if there were 
plans to change the wording 
on the Shrine’s plaque and 
website to more accurately 
reflect Coughlin’s true nature. 
He offered to be part of any 
discussion on the subject: 
“Let’s sit down, let’s talk, 
and let’s come up with some 
improvements.
”
After the lectures ended, 
attendees were invited to take 
a guided tour of the church, 
which will mark its centennial 
in 2026. They were also invited 
to a dessert reception, which 

the church’s monsignor, Patrick 
Halfpenny, took care to note 
was kosher. 
As some of the Jews in 
attendance followed the tour 
guide, a Shrine parishioner 
named Bob Irwin approached 
Smith to tell him that there 
was a committee at the church 
reexamining its history, and 
Coughlin’s, in anticipation of its 
100th anniversary. 
The committee had rewritten 
the plaques and were awaiting 
approval to mount them, Irwin 
said. The new history would 
more openly acknowledge 
Coughlin’s antisemitism and 
discuss its efforts to assert its 
identity in the post-Coughlin 
years. Would Smith like to be a 
part of it?
Smith looked around at the 
church’s interior, at its high, 
arched ceilings and mounted 
artifacts of an antisemite who 
had once delivered his sermons 
to the world.
“God,
” he said, “brought us 
together.
” 

Rabbi Asher Lopatin speaks 
from the old dais of the late 
Father Charles Coughlin at the 
National Shrine of the Little 
Flower Catholic Church in 
Royal Oak. Lopatin had helped 
organize an event at the church 
discussing “The Jewish-Catholic 
Relationship.” Shrine’s founder, 
Father Coughlin, broadcasted an 
antisemitic radio show during the 
Great Depression.

Levi Smith, a Jewish attendee at 
the event, inspects a plaque dis-
cussing the history of its antise-
mitic founder, Father Charles 
Coughlin. Smith later offered 
to help change the plaque’s 
wording, which he and other 
Jews said glazed over Coughlin’s 
antisemitism.

