The Holy See and the American Threat during the Cold War

After World War Two, Pope Pius XII faced new challenges posed by the United States.  Since positive relations with the Soviet Union were both unacceptable and impossible, the pontiff knew that some kind of arrangement with Washington was inescapable.  The United States, however, complicated matters by its own reluctance to accord Rome diplomatic recognition, an unwillingness that revealed deep cultural chasms between the two actors, between the ideas of pluralistic Americanism with its traditional suspicion of Catholicism, and those of the Catholic Church.  I intend to examine some of these issues, beginning with the debate on diplomatic recognition but also exploring the telling cultural suspicions that Pope Pius XII and the Vatican in Rome harbored over the “American way of life.”  Such issues would include Hollywood and U.S. divorce and marriage practices, which struck at Catholic core values.