Timothy Kelly

For Both Cross and Flag: Catholic Action, Anti-Catholicism, and National Security Politics in World War II San Francisco (review)

W illiam Issel organizes For Both Cross and Flag around the story of Sylvester Andriano’s rise to prominence as one of the leading lay Catholics in the San Francisco archdiocese and his deportation from the region during World War II for his alleged fascist activities. Issel uses this episode to explore the broader world of Catholic social justice efforts, the local manifestation of international political tensions, and the dangers of misguided patriotism fueled by fear. The story is ostensibly a public biography of Sylvester Andriano that follows his rise to prominence in the San Francisco area Italian American and Catholic communities, his ties to a powerful local political force, his unjust public persecution and short-lived exile from these positions, and then his return to San Francisco and, presumably, his redemption. On this level alone the story is compelling and significant. If Andriano’s story forms the major plot line, Issel aims at something much broader. He states that his major purpose is “to demonstrate how international and national events impinged on the political culture of a major American city from World War I to World War II, eventually influencing domestic security politics after Pearl Harbor” (6). Andriano’s plight, it seems, turned on the San Francisco manifestation of an Italian (and Italian American) fissure over fundamental questions of social justice and politics that pitted the Catholic Church against the Communist Party, freemasons, and factions within the labor movement both in Italy and America. Sylvester Andriano arrived in San Francisco as a young boy at the turn of the twentieth century. He had spent his early childhood near Turin, Italy. He attended St. Mary’s College in Oakland, where he played basketball, edited a college literary magazine, won academic honors, and became active in Catholic Action. (Issel’s explication of Catholic Action may be the most robust and insightful historical portrayal yet published.) Two of his brothers entered the priesthood, but Andriano chose to prac-