Letter

              Labour Catholic Vote
30th December, 1937.
Rev. L. O'Hea, S.J., M.A., 
Catholic Social Guild, 
OXFORD.
Dear Father O'Hea,
I am much obliged to you for your letter to me of the 21st December, and was agreeably surprised after such a long delay in hearing from you.
I am deeply grateful to you for your interest and for sending me the pamphlet and the Code which you enclose. I think them exceptionally good, and this is really the sort of work of a democratic nature which I think the Catholic Church and the Catholic confraternity should be enthusiastically endorsing.
Your letter was so kind that it led me to think that there was really not much between us, but I am afraid, to be quite frank, that there still is. I am, however, grateful to you for your sympathy with regard to the British Catholic Press. I am sure what you say is right. It is really deplorable that the Catholic Press should be acting as it is at present, especially when many good Catholics are being deluded that it is backed by authority.
It is rather amusing really that your Catholic Social Guild publications should be boycotted by this rather ignorant, prejudiced Catholic Press.
I am inclined to agree with you that the Spanish problem is not an easy one, if it is considered away from principles, but Catholic philosophy demands that we take our stand on certain democratic principles. You are, of course, entitled to your own opinions of either the Barcelona Government or the Franco regime, and I gather from your letter that they are unfavourable about both, and I appreciate your desire to be non-committal at the moment. I, however, cannot be so. I think Franco's effort is wrong from every ethical Catholic point of view, and we can quote even from the Code you sent me and from Eppstein's pamphlet, that it was wrong of Franco to act as he did instead of following the usual constitutional method.
/ I am