David Goldstein

BORN TO poor Jewish parents who emigrated from London to New York City and Boston in his childhood, David Goldstein (1870-1958) is a fascinating and little-known figure in American letters whom you will never, for sure, read about in today’s mainstream publications. He described his early life thus:

 Poverty was the lot of my father and mother. This they struggled through with courage, with devoted love for each other and the children. My parents and their four children had to be supported on the meagre earnings my father obtained from long hours of toil at the bench, making cigars. Though born of strictly Orthodox Jewish parents, they like most Jews who attend the synagogue were Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur Jews. Thus, my father and mother, during my boyhood days, attended synagogue services on those two leading Jewish holidays, “if only for the children’s sake,” as Jewish fathers and mothers often say. [Wikipedia]

Goldstein became a socialist as a teenager and entered politics. He ran unsuccessfully for mayor of Boston when he was 27. He lost his political will, however, when he became disenchanted with socialism and Marxism. He realized the degree to which both opposed normal and healthy family life. Socialist “free love” deeply offended someone so conscious of his own indebtedness to family constancy and intimacy. He unsuccessfully sought to get the Massachusetts Socialist convention in 1902 to disavow free love and attacks against religion. He co-authored a book Socialism: The Nation of Fatherless Children in 1903. He was, of course, entirely correct and prophetic about the implications of socialism for the family. He also grew tired of class enmity:

It took some time to understand — being sympathetic with Socialism — that Socialists succeed in making ‘Socialist minds’ mainly by constantly picturing the misery of the poor and the greed of the rich; by continually condemning all things which meet with dissatisfaction in the minds of toilers, whether the discontent be rational or ridiculous; by increasing disapproval or condemnation of the character, work or proposals of officials in trade unions who have to meet practical issues and the responsibilities of the conflicts of labor organizations. At the same time, Socialists press forward their abstract propositions attract those idealists whose pictures are ephemeral and fall into confusion, like a baby’s house made of blocks, when the common sense touch of the actual world of strife and strain is applied to them; for human nature is what it is and not what Socialist idealists conjure it up to be in their sickly sentimental thoughts.” [Wikipedia]

Not long after his disillusionment with socialism, Goldstein, through the mysterious workings of grace,  converted to Catholicism. He then set about his most important intellectual work — doing battle with prejudices and misconceptions of the Church. For ten years, he wrote a weekly column for the Boston Pilot, a newspaper of the Boston Archdiocese. A sample of his learned and elegant columns, in many cases actual letters to various public individuals — truly remarkable for their literary quality, especially by today’s standards — can be found at catholictradition.org.

Goldstein also traveled around the country as a sidewalk apologist, speaking in streets, squares and parks. He took his duty to propagate the Faith with unabashed seriousness and courage. He explained why he possessed such extraordinary zeal:

There is nothing so powerful, and so necessary, as truth for the guidance of man; the moral basis of which is religion. This is deeply appreciated by converts to Catholicism, especially by those of scientific, pedagogic, legal, literary, and artistic ability. This is due to their having journeyed the intellectual road to the realization of the exactitude of Catholic terminology; the soundness of Catholic reasoning; and the positive, uncompromising adherence of the Catholic Church to Christian moral principles, in comparison to the lack of this triad of qualities in the churches from which they graduated. They find the Catholic religion to be a profound intellectual religion, which therefore appeals to man’s highest endowment, his reasoning faculty.

It is the realization of the intellectual character of the Catholic religion, in contrast to the emotionalism of Protestant religions, that prompted former Congresswoman Mrs. Clare Booth Luce, a graduate from Protestantism, to say during the week before this was typed, that “Catholics are commonly supposed to be deprived by their Faith of the power of reason, when they are the ones who insist on the intellectual approach to religion. On the other hand, Protestants who claim the right to think things through for themselves, generally approach religion in an emotional or sentimental way.”

Learned converts are simply amazed to find the Catholic Church to be doctrinally and historically the very opposite to what they had pictured her to be; that she has the Christ-proclaimed religious and moral teachings, whole and entire, divinely in her keeping. Their propaganda spirit is awakened by the realization that Catholic principles are universal principles, which apply to every department of human endeavor; principles that alone make possible the Christ-intended solution of the personal, domestic, civic, and social problems that vex mankind. All this comes to converts like a revelation, which it is in the sense of the veil having been raised which had beclouded their mental vision.

It is this striking contrast between what they, converts, thought the Catholic Church to be, and what she is, that causes many of them to be more active propagators of Catholic principles and practices than are “cradle Catholics”, as persons of Catholic parentage are sometimes called. Catholics to the manor born generally tend to leave the propagation of things Catholic entirely to the priests; often due to failure to appreciate that the authority to teach, which was given by Christ to His ambassadors, the bishops and priests, has always been understood to include the laity as their assistants in the propagation of the faith. It is the realization that the laity are privileged, are expected to play a part in furthering the understanding of things Catholic, as expressed by Pope Leo XIII, and repeated by the four succeeding Popes, that urged this columnist to become a propagator of the faith.

It was not easy being a convert from Judaism, Goldstein wrote in a letter to a “Mr. Solomon.” But,

This suspicion [of Jews toward converts], hard though it be to bear, is a small price to pay in heartaches for the glorious gift of Catholic faith.

My closing word for you, my dear Mr. Solomon, and for all my other fellow Israelites, is the prayer I utter daily in union with thousands of other Catholics: “God of Goodness, and Father of Mercies, we beseech Thee by the Immaculate Heart of Mary, and through the intercession of the Patriarchs and Apostles, to cast a look of compassion on the Children of Israel, so that they may be brought to the knowledge of our only Saviour Jesus Christ, and that they may partake of the precious fruits of the Redemption.”

May the dearly departed David Goldstein, through the mercy of God, rest in peace.

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