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The Devil and Bella Dodd: One Woman's Struggle Against Communism and Her Redemption
“Step by step, I retreated from God and went forth to meet the world, the flesh, and the devil. . . . I’d join the devil himself. . . . There is no doubt that I traveled with him at my side and that he extorted a great price for his company.” This is how Bella Dodd (1904–69) described her long battle with atheistic communism, an ideology her Church calls a “satanic scourge.” She later described it as a “school of darkness,” a school of “hate,” a school for which she was a master organizer and infiltrator of every organization—public, private, and even ecclesiastical. Bella Dodd courageously left the Communist Party and its diabolical machinations. Her former communist affiliates then smeared her with eerily familiar epithets to modern ears, dubbing her everything from a “fascist” to a “racist.” Some things never change. One thing that changed, however, was Bella Dodd. The man who helped pull her from the pit? A priest. A priest by the name of Fulton Sheen. Bella Dodd’s story thereafter changed dramatically from one of seduction by the devil to redemption through Christ. She dedicated the remainder of her life to a special penance: warning the world of the evil of communism and its plans . In the battle between the devil and Bella Dodd, Bella and her Church won. At long last, here is her inspiring story.
422 pages, Hardcover
Published November 17, 2022
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December 2, 2022
Did Bella Dodd disrespect the street code?
Paul Kengor is back to dish out what amounts to more Red Scare propaganda, this time with a biography co-authored with Mary Nicholas on Communist Party USA’s biggest snitch Bella Dodd (1904-1969). Dodd is known today as the focus of conspiracy theories for allegedly having participated in a conspiracy involving placing “over 1000 communist men” into Catholic seminaries to infiltrate the Church. Expanding upon Dodd’s 1954 memoir School of Darkness, Kengor and Nicholas tell the story of a woman enchanted by communism only to fall out with her Party, return to the Catholic Church, and rat out her former comrades during McCarthyism.
Unfortunately, this is not a good book. It’s not even bad in a fun or cringy way that would make a communist like me laugh at its errors; it’s just bad in terms of being poorly written, very mellow dramatic, and quite disjointed with tangents barely relevant to the topic. Going into this book I was expecting: 1. an in-depth biography on Bella Dodd, especially concerning her activities in the Party as well as what drove her from committed communist to Catholic anti-communist and informant, 2. a detailed discussion of how the environment inside CPUSA during its heyday in the 1930s affected its members, and finally 3. something of hard evidence concerning CPUSA infiltrating Catholic seminaries. It did not deliver.
The first major issue I took with this book was the slew of misleading information about Dodd and the Communist Party. The book begins with Dodd’s purge from the Party, claiming she was hastily expelled after breaking the Party’s rules by defending a landlady in court. Not mentioned are the actual main reasons for Dodd’s expulsion: in 1945 CPUSA called an emergency convention where they expelled their corrupt leader Earl Browder, who had sold out the Party, claimed class struggle was no longer necessary, claimed US imperialism was “progressive”, basically given up on communism, etc. William Z. Foster, an old labor radical, became leader again. The Party began purging its “revisionist” elements. Dodd, being one of Browder’s biggest supporters, was likewise purged a few years later after being subjected to harsh scrutiny from the rest of the leadership. Even in School of Darkness Dodd describes getting into squabbles with other Party leaders after Browder was ousted on account she was still loyal to him. Dodd obviously broke the Party’s trust first. None of this context is mentioned; in fact, Kengor and Nicholas insist Dodd was nothing more than an innocent victim of bullying.
There is no real discussion about the internal dynamics of the Communist Party at the time. Kengor and Nicholas, quoting Dodd, portray the Party as an organized crime unit which stalked, harassed, and brutalized members so they would comply with Party demands. They attempt to discredit the Party by insisting it was nothing more than a Soviet spy organization. It is true CPUSA was very top-down and expected a high amount of discipline from members but it was not anything close to what the authors insist. The evidence the Party was violent is not well documented from sources other than Red Scare testimony and snitch memoirs (said memoirs were a dime a dozen during the second Red Scare with snitches describing their experiences based not on what actually happened but on what the feds wanted to hear happened). Members were free to leave as they pleased and there is no proof CPUSA ever sent KGB agents after ex-members (this claim is rather laughable). The authors do not mention how CPUSA’s record for fighting for American workers during the Great Depression (and before) was exemplary. This was the same organization that organized workers, fought for the unemployed, went to the American South in the 1930s to organize Black and white workers together as an attempt to subvert segregation, and so on. Even CPUSA’s relationship with the Soviet Union was not always stellar (recall Stalin called out the Party in the 1920s for being factionalist and chauvinist). When the Cold War was starting, the Party began coming under extreme surveillance from the feds and needed to be extra cautious to protect itself from repression. This was a Party dealing with crisis in the best way it could, not a gang of brutes behaving viciously for no reason.
All throughout the book Dodd is portrayed as having been naive and gullible. Taking her words in School of Darkness as absolute truth, the authors claim she was duped into thinking the communists were fighting for social justice all while simultaneously oblivious to their aim of creating a Soviet America. By the time she recognized the Party’s true evil she couldn’t leave without suffering consequences. Yet by showcasing how active Dodd was in CPUSA, Kengor and Nicholas contradict this narrative entirely. They admit Dodd was a significant figure in the Party’s labor division. On page 189 they mention how she was active in numerous front groups. There’s an entire chapter dedicated to how rigorously Dodd organized teachers (many of them communists) through the Teachers Union. On page 200 she’s mentioned leading a huge protest against cuts to state aid for schools. Chapter 12 is all about Dodd going to great lengths to advocate for communist teachers under investigation during the Rapp-Coudert hearings (including illegally destroying a list of names). Dodd was so successful in her activism Browder assigned her to the Party’s national committee. She would have been very familiar with the Party’s convictions and strategies. Given that Dodd was actively participating in this life I don’t buy for one second she didn’t know what she was doing. She was in no way a sympathetic victim of communist deception as Kengor and Nicholas describe her.
Another major problem with this book is how it comes off much less like a political biography and more like a way for Kengor and Nicholas to rant about contemporary conservative grievances. In the first chapter, they immediately tie Dodd’s expulsion from the Party to so-called “cancel culture” as Dodd was denounced in The Daily Worker as a racist, antisemite, and so on (which, given her support for Browder’s chauvinism, was probably warranted). In chapters 4 and 5 the authors attempt to make a linear connection between Dodd’s experience of Marxism during her college years to fields like Critical Race Theory and Queer Theory taught in American universities today. There are pages and pages going over the American utopian socialists, Fabian Society, John Dewey, and the Frankfurt School. There are no chapters dedicated to discussing the history of the CPUSA and the backgrounds of those who made up its leadership, or how the Party became what it was when Dodd was a member. Perhaps Kengor and Nicholas want their audience to think socialism is solely the item of elites rather than those engaged in struggle from below.
Also discussed is the alleged Marxist hostility towards the family. On page 119 the book states: “[T]he Party deterred Bella from having children. Bella longed for a family… but her comrades ‘dissuaded me’.” Kengor claims abortions were very high among CPUSA members as the Party looked down on members having children (of course, he can’t confirm this) and attributes it to anti-family policies in the early Soviet Union. Wouldn’t the attitudes of American socialists concerning the family be far more relevant here? Some of the first people to promote birth control in America were the anarchists who made up the more radical wing of the labor movement (to which William Z. Foster and Margaret Sanger both once belonged) who saw lowering the working-class birthrate as a weapon of industrial sabotage. Or, more realistically, the Party merely viewed having children as detrimental to organizing. Regardless, it’s clear the authors just want an outlet to go after the “cultural Marxism” boogeyman.
The climax of the book is Dodd’s abandonment of communism and return to the Catholic Church under the hand of Fulton Sheen. Though the authors portray this event as heartwarming, they don’t make an attempt to speculate on whether Dodd’s conversion was truly an epistemological break. Citing Dodd herself, they claim her “fall” into Marxism was the result of her lacking a metaphysical base on which to ground her worldview (in this case, a proper Catholic education). Her re-embrace of Catholic teaching provided the “truth” that Marxism couldn’t. Yet, her dedication as an activist demonstrates her adherence to Marxism was her way of finding truth and meaning. Also, in her final years in the Party Dodd knew the feds were coming and probably tried to dip as she couldn’t handle being potentially arrested and tried as a traitor. After all, she became affiliated with CPUSA at a time when the Party was playing up its “Americanism” and left when communism was deemed “un-American”. Was this at all related to her psychology as an Italian immigrant who strived for acceptance in American society? Did Sheen find her “useful” as an ex-communist the same way Browder found her “useful” as an organizer? Was her “conversion” merely the result of seeking validation? These are all questions Kengor and Nicholas could have answered.
There are only four pages in this book dedicated to Dodd’s testimony despite the authors admitting it was of huge importance in taking down CPUSA. The authors claim Dodd allegedly felt awful about her activities as a communist and sought to go into isolation for the rest of her life when Sheen told her the only way to repent was to turn state and rat out her former Party. Yet, the authors admit on page 323 Dodd felt reluctant to testify on the basis she knew the damage it would cause so many people, including those she at one point considered her friends. Dodd agreed to snitch only days after this conversation. It’s argued that by testifying against her former CPUSA comrades Dodd did penance for the “harm” she inflicted. What penance? Dodd reportedly got hundreds of teachers arrested, investigated, imprisoned, and blacklisted by the FBI. Many of Dodd’s victims were the same teachers she had recruited into the Teachers Union herself. How was this in any way ethical? It needs to be noted CPUSA was not prosecuted based on anything its leaders had said but on things which Marx and Lenin had said. They weren’t charged with “attempting to overthrow the American government” but “teaching the necessity of the overthrow of the American government” based on words written in Marx and Lenin (among others). The Party leadership explicitly rejected adventurism and terrorism. By testifying against them, Dodd was collaborating with a highly repressive state for her own benefit (ironic how the authors complain about “cancel culture” when McCarthyism was cancel culture on steroids).
Now comes the juicy part everyone was waiting for: the claim Dodd helped CPUSA recruit “over a thousand communist men” to infiltrate Catholic seminaries. To make their case, the authors bring up a handful of other ex-CPUSA snitches who spoke about the Party’s desire to “infiltrate” Protestant churches (it was probably the case Party members were reaching out to churches in order to build class consciousness). On page 258 the authors cite a talk Sheen gave in 1952 in Rome in which he claimed American communists started a plan to infiltrate seminaries in 1936. Since Sheen made this statement only weeks after receiving Dodd back into the Church the authors insist he heard it from her. This is contrasted to a report from the Senate Judiciary Committee in 1960 which claimed the French Communist Party had sought to infiltrate seminaries in the 1930s, though it’s admitted this report gave few details. There is no talk of CPUSA infiltrating Catholic Churches in School of Darkness nor in any of Dodd’s Congressional testimony. Talk of this infiltration is only reported to have come up in talks she gave later in life, including a private conversation with philosophers Dietrich and Alice von Hildebrand and a talk she gave in California sometime in the 1960s. Dodd never provided any names, but this is allegedly because Sheen forbade her to name anyone out of fear it would cause a scandal in the Church. The lack of names isn’t the only problem. How does a conspiracy involving hundreds of people not leave any paper trail? Kengor copes by claiming CPUSA destroyed all their documents and would have “certainly” destroyed anything related to this one particular plot. There is also no record of the FBI ever investigating Catholic Churches and seminaries during McCarthyism. In a time when multiple American institutions were being targeted the feds would have immediately gone after the Church if they suspected communist infiltrators regardless if no names were given. After agreeing to testify, Dodd spent the rest of her life working with the feds against communists as a professional informant. She had FBI agents following her everywhere for security. So, she publicly exposes a massive communist infiltration plot during her public talks with feds accompanying her, and the feds don’t investigate these claims at all? It gets even flakier with the talk of communist infiltration leading directly to the Second Vatican Council. If Vatican II was railroaded by secret communists, why did the CIA (which was keeping tabs on communist movements all over the world) let it fly under their radar? There were entire programs dedicated to taking out proponents of Liberation Theology (which Kengor also claims was engineered by the KGB) so to think the CIA would passively let communists reform the Church is unbelievable. So many questions are left unanswered here.
In conclusion, Kengor and Nicholas argue in bad faith, exclude crucial facts and context, and rely on conspiracy theories in lieu of actual history. It provides no hard evidence backing up their most serious claim concerning CPUSA infiltrating the Catholic Church aside from “trust me bro”. If anything, Bella Dodd’s story should be viewed not as a warm Saul-to-Paul redemption tale but one of an immigrant woman who loved pedagogy and felt out-of-place, found validation in the Communist Party, jumped ship when things got too hot, and chose to betray the people she once loved when she found more validation in Catholicism and anti-communism.
Paul Kengor is back to dish out what amounts to more Red Scare propaganda, this time with a biography co-authored with Mary Nicholas on Communist Party USA’s biggest snitch Bella Dodd (1904-1969). Dodd is known today as the focus of conspiracy theories for allegedly having participated in a conspiracy involving placing “over 1000 communist men” into Catholic seminaries to infiltrate the Church. Expanding upon Dodd’s 1954 memoir School of Darkness, Kengor and Nicholas tell the story of a woman enchanted by communism only to fall out with her Party, return to the Catholic Church, and rat out her former comrades during McCarthyism.
Unfortunately, this is not a good book. It’s not even bad in a fun or cringy way that would make a communist like me laugh at its errors; it’s just bad in terms of being poorly written, very mellow dramatic, and quite disjointed with tangents barely relevant to the topic. Going into this book I was expecting: 1. an in-depth biography on Bella Dodd, especially concerning her activities in the Party as well as what drove her from committed communist to Catholic anti-communist and informant, 2. a detailed discussion of how the environment inside CPUSA during its heyday in the 1930s affected its members, and finally 3. something of hard evidence concerning CPUSA infiltrating Catholic seminaries. It did not deliver.
The first major issue I took with this book was the slew of misleading information about Dodd and the Communist Party. The book begins with Dodd’s purge from the Party, claiming she was hastily expelled after breaking the Party’s rules by defending a landlady in court. Not mentioned are the actual main reasons for Dodd’s expulsion: in 1945 CPUSA called an emergency convention where they expelled their corrupt leader Earl Browder, who had sold out the Party, claimed class struggle was no longer necessary, claimed US imperialism was “progressive”, basically given up on communism, etc. William Z. Foster, an old labor radical, became leader again. The Party began purging its “revisionist” elements. Dodd, being one of Browder’s biggest supporters, was likewise purged a few years later after being subjected to harsh scrutiny from the rest of the leadership. Even in School of Darkness Dodd describes getting into squabbles with other Party leaders after Browder was ousted on account she was still loyal to him. Dodd obviously broke the Party’s trust first. None of this context is mentioned; in fact, Kengor and Nicholas insist Dodd was nothing more than an innocent victim of bullying.
There is no real discussion about the internal dynamics of the Communist Party at the time. Kengor and Nicholas, quoting Dodd, portray the Party as an organized crime unit which stalked, harassed, and brutalized members so they would comply with Party demands. They attempt to discredit the Party by insisting it was nothing more than a Soviet spy organization. It is true CPUSA was very top-down and expected a high amount of discipline from members but it was not anything close to what the authors insist. The evidence the Party was violent is not well documented from sources other than Red Scare testimony and snitch memoirs (said memoirs were a dime a dozen during the second Red Scare with snitches describing their experiences based not on what actually happened but on what the feds wanted to hear happened). Members were free to leave as they pleased and there is no proof CPUSA ever sent KGB agents after ex-members (this claim is rather laughable). The authors do not mention how CPUSA’s record for fighting for American workers during the Great Depression (and before) was exemplary. This was the same organization that organized workers, fought for the unemployed, went to the American South in the 1930s to organize Black and white workers together as an attempt to subvert segregation, and so on. Even CPUSA’s relationship with the Soviet Union was not always stellar (recall Stalin called out the Party in the 1920s for being factionalist and chauvinist). When the Cold War was starting, the Party began coming under extreme surveillance from the feds and needed to be extra cautious to protect itself from repression. This was a Party dealing with crisis in the best way it could, not a gang of brutes behaving viciously for no reason.
All throughout the book Dodd is portrayed as having been naive and gullible. Taking her words in School of Darkness as absolute truth, the authors claim she was duped into thinking the communists were fighting for social justice all while simultaneously oblivious to their aim of creating a Soviet America. By the time she recognized the Party’s true evil she couldn’t leave without suffering consequences. Yet by showcasing how active Dodd was in CPUSA, Kengor and Nicholas contradict this narrative entirely. They admit Dodd was a significant figure in the Party’s labor division. On page 189 they mention how she was active in numerous front groups. There’s an entire chapter dedicated to how rigorously Dodd organized teachers (many of them communists) through the Teachers Union. On page 200 she’s mentioned leading a huge protest against cuts to state aid for schools. Chapter 12 is all about Dodd going to great lengths to advocate for communist teachers under investigation during the Rapp-Coudert hearings (including illegally destroying a list of names). Dodd was so successful in her activism Browder assigned her to the Party’s national committee. She would have been very familiar with the Party’s convictions and strategies. Given that Dodd was actively participating in this life I don’t buy for one second she didn’t know what she was doing. She was in no way a sympathetic victim of communist deception as Kengor and Nicholas describe her.
Another major problem with this book is how it comes off much less like a political biography and more like a way for Kengor and Nicholas to rant about contemporary conservative grievances. In the first chapter, they immediately tie Dodd’s expulsion from the Party to so-called “cancel culture” as Dodd was denounced in The Daily Worker as a racist, antisemite, and so on (which, given her support for Browder’s chauvinism, was probably warranted). In chapters 4 and 5 the authors attempt to make a linear connection between Dodd’s experience of Marxism during her college years to fields like Critical Race Theory and Queer Theory taught in American universities today. There are pages and pages going over the American utopian socialists, Fabian Society, John Dewey, and the Frankfurt School. There are no chapters dedicated to discussing the history of the CPUSA and the backgrounds of those who made up its leadership, or how the Party became what it was when Dodd was a member. Perhaps Kengor and Nicholas want their audience to think socialism is solely the item of elites rather than those engaged in struggle from below.
Also discussed is the alleged Marxist hostility towards the family. On page 119 the book states: “[T]he Party deterred Bella from having children. Bella longed for a family… but her comrades ‘dissuaded me’.” Kengor claims abortions were very high among CPUSA members as the Party looked down on members having children (of course, he can’t confirm this) and attributes it to anti-family policies in the early Soviet Union. Wouldn’t the attitudes of American socialists concerning the family be far more relevant here? Some of the first people to promote birth control in America were the anarchists who made up the more radical wing of the labor movement (to which William Z. Foster and Margaret Sanger both once belonged) who saw lowering the working-class birthrate as a weapon of industrial sabotage. Or, more realistically, the Party merely viewed having children as detrimental to organizing. Regardless, it’s clear the authors just want an outlet to go after the “cultural Marxism” boogeyman.
The climax of the book is Dodd’s abandonment of communism and return to the Catholic Church under the hand of Fulton Sheen. Though the authors portray this event as heartwarming, they don’t make an attempt to speculate on whether Dodd’s conversion was truly an epistemological break. Citing Dodd herself, they claim her “fall” into Marxism was the result of her lacking a metaphysical base on which to ground her worldview (in this case, a proper Catholic education). Her re-embrace of Catholic teaching provided the “truth” that Marxism couldn’t. Yet, her dedication as an activist demonstrates her adherence to Marxism was her way of finding truth and meaning. Also, in her final years in the Party Dodd knew the feds were coming and probably tried to dip as she couldn’t handle being potentially arrested and tried as a traitor. After all, she became affiliated with CPUSA at a time when the Party was playing up its “Americanism” and left when communism was deemed “un-American”. Was this at all related to her psychology as an Italian immigrant who strived for acceptance in American society? Did Sheen find her “useful” as an ex-communist the same way Browder found her “useful” as an organizer? Was her “conversion” merely the result of seeking validation? These are all questions Kengor and Nicholas could have answered.
There are only four pages in this book dedicated to Dodd’s testimony despite the authors admitting it was of huge importance in taking down CPUSA. The authors claim Dodd allegedly felt awful about her activities as a communist and sought to go into isolation for the rest of her life when Sheen told her the only way to repent was to turn state and rat out her former Party. Yet, the authors admit on page 323 Dodd felt reluctant to testify on the basis she knew the damage it would cause so many people, including those she at one point considered her friends. Dodd agreed to snitch only days after this conversation. It’s argued that by testifying against her former CPUSA comrades Dodd did penance for the “harm” she inflicted. What penance? Dodd reportedly got hundreds of teachers arrested, investigated, imprisoned, and blacklisted by the FBI. Many of Dodd’s victims were the same teachers she had recruited into the Teachers Union herself. How was this in any way ethical? It needs to be noted CPUSA was not prosecuted based on anything its leaders had said but on things which Marx and Lenin had said. They weren’t charged with “attempting to overthrow the American government” but “teaching the necessity of the overthrow of the American government” based on words written in Marx and Lenin (among others). The Party leadership explicitly rejected adventurism and terrorism. By testifying against them, Dodd was collaborating with a highly repressive state for her own benefit (ironic how the authors complain about “cancel culture” when McCarthyism was cancel culture on steroids).
Now comes the juicy part everyone was waiting for: the claim Dodd helped CPUSA recruit “over a thousand communist men” to infiltrate Catholic seminaries. To make their case, the authors bring up a handful of other ex-CPUSA snitches who spoke about the Party’s desire to “infiltrate” Protestant churches (it was probably the case Party members were reaching out to churches in order to build class consciousness). On page 258 the authors cite a talk Sheen gave in 1952 in Rome in which he claimed American communists started a plan to infiltrate seminaries in 1936. Since Sheen made this statement only weeks after receiving Dodd back into the Church the authors insist he heard it from her. This is contrasted to a report from the Senate Judiciary Committee in 1960 which claimed the French Communist Party had sought to infiltrate seminaries in the 1930s, though it’s admitted this report gave few details. There is no talk of CPUSA infiltrating Catholic Churches in School of Darkness nor in any of Dodd’s Congressional testimony. Talk of this infiltration is only reported to have come up in talks she gave later in life, including a private conversation with philosophers Dietrich and Alice von Hildebrand and a talk she gave in California sometime in the 1960s. Dodd never provided any names, but this is allegedly because Sheen forbade her to name anyone out of fear it would cause a scandal in the Church. The lack of names isn’t the only problem. How does a conspiracy involving hundreds of people not leave any paper trail? Kengor copes by claiming CPUSA destroyed all their documents and would have “certainly” destroyed anything related to this one particular plot. There is also no record of the FBI ever investigating Catholic Churches and seminaries during McCarthyism. In a time when multiple American institutions were being targeted the feds would have immediately gone after the Church if they suspected communist infiltrators regardless if no names were given. After agreeing to testify, Dodd spent the rest of her life working with the feds against communists as a professional informant. She had FBI agents following her everywhere for security. So, she publicly exposes a massive communist infiltration plot during her public talks with feds accompanying her, and the feds don’t investigate these claims at all? It gets even flakier with the talk of communist infiltration leading directly to the Second Vatican Council. If Vatican II was railroaded by secret communists, why did the CIA (which was keeping tabs on communist movements all over the world) let it fly under their radar? There were entire programs dedicated to taking out proponents of Liberation Theology (which Kengor also claims was engineered by the KGB) so to think the CIA would passively let communists reform the Church is unbelievable. So many questions are left unanswered here.
In conclusion, Kengor and Nicholas argue in bad faith, exclude crucial facts and context, and rely on conspiracy theories in lieu of actual history. It provides no hard evidence backing up their most serious claim concerning CPUSA infiltrating the Catholic Church aside from “trust me bro”. If anything, Bella Dodd’s story should be viewed not as a warm Saul-to-Paul redemption tale but one of an immigrant woman who loved pedagogy and felt out-of-place, found validation in the Communist Party, jumped ship when things got too hot, and chose to betray the people she once loved when she found more validation in Catholicism and anti-communism.
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