Bella Dodd
Teacher and lawyerWikipedia
21
MENTIONS
14
EPISODES
12
PODCASTS
Search complete. 21 mentions across 14 episodes found for "Bella Dodd".
Sep 30, 2026
Brannon HowseHOST
These guys, the Marxist, the cultural Marxist, they love to redefine terms.
Brannon HowseHOST
Bella Dodd, the former communist, warned about that in some of her speeches and congressional testimony.
Brannon HowseHOST
Hijacking of words.
Brannon HowseHOST
Well, they've just hijacked, he just hijacked the word love.
Jack PosobiecHOST
But one cool thing, though, happened is that after the war ends and the Cold War begins, that Fulton Sheen's anti-communism actually became very beneficial to the FBI.
Jack PosobiecHOST
And believe it or not, he actually used to work to convert public socialists and communists in the United States, like Bella Dodd, who was the head of the teacher's union.
Jack PosobiecHOST
He converts her to Chri- to, uh, Catholicism, and then she starts working for the FBI as an informant against the Soviet Union and against, like, Soviet cells within the United States.
Jack PosobiecHOST
So I mean, it, it's just-
Jack PosobiecHOST
But one cool thing, though, happened is that after the war ends and the Cold War begins, that Fulton Sheen's anti-communism actually became very beneficial to the FBI.
Jack PosobiecHOST
And believe it or not, he actually used to work to convert public socialists and communists in the United States, like Bella Dodd, who was the head of the teachers union.
Jack PosobiecHOST
He converts her to Catholicism.
Jack PosobiecHOST
And then she starts working for the FBI as an informant against the Soviet Union and against like Soviet cells within the United States.
Stephen K. BannonHOST
Amen
Jack PosobiecGUEST
... helping people defect, like Bella Dodd, getting her to turn over.
Jack PosobiecGUEST
And so, Steve, this, this incredible moment, wow, h- was held here in the Rome of the West, St. Louis.
Jack PosobiecGUEST
By the way, I w- I would be remiss if I did not add here on Franco Friday that Fulton Sheen back in 1937 said that, that Francisco Franco is fighting the barbarians in Europe who are trying to take down Western civilization.
Jack PosobiecGUEST
And throughout World War II, throughout the Cold War, he sat there and explained that communism is an atheistic, godless ideology that must be destroyed.
Jack PosobiecGUEST
He was an active participant in the Cold War, by the way, and it even included helping people defect, like Bella Dodd, getting her to turn over.
Jack PosobiecGUEST
And so, Steve, this...
Jack PosobiecGUEST
This incredible moment was held here in the Rome of the West, St. Louis.
Robert RoyalPANELIST
Mm-hmm.
Raymond ArroyoHOST
Her name was Bella Dodd.
Robert RoyalPANELIST
Mm.
Raymond ArroyoHOST
Bella Dodd was a communist from 1930 to 1950.
Raymond ArroyoHOST
This is not very well known and so on.
Raymond ArroyoHOST
But when she entered the Communist Party, Joseph Stalin was the head of the party in, there in Russia, and he said, "The greatest enemy communism has is the Roman Catholic Church, and the way to destroy it is to recruit men into the priesthood who have no faith."
Robert RoyalPANELIST
Yeah.
Raymond ArroyoHOST
"And, uh, and they will cause havoc in the priesthood." Bella Dodd told Bishop Sheen that she personally was involved with recruiting between 800 and 1,200 men into the priesthood who had no faith.
Alan SmithGUEST
And I think that's why Fulton Sheen had so many converts.
Alan SmithGUEST
And in Clark, I always look at those communist converts when he converted Bella Dodd and Budin's and some of the real hard cases.
Alan SmithGUEST
And yet he got her done.
Alan SmithGUEST
So got it done with love, got it done with simplicity and some complexity, too.
Grace ReillyHOST
Bella Dodd was expelled from the Communist Party in 1949 after being a card-carrying member for many years.
Grace ReillyHOST
She was specifically tasked with infiltrating the education system and the church.
Grace ReillyHOST
But after she left the party, she testified before the United States Senate, and she told them, "...there is no doubt in my mind that the Communists will use the schools in every educational medium, from the nursery school to the university." She said, the youth are very special targets of the communists.
Anthony StineHOST
But that's neither here nor there.
Anthony StineHOST
The men, many of whom should never have been priests, the spiritual children of Bella Dodd, the men that she helped put into the priesthood in the 30s and 40s, Many of those men became bishops by her own admission in the 1950s after she had repented and tried to, you know, raise alarm bells.
Anthony StineHOST
And for some reason or another, Fulton Sheen told her to keep the name secret.
Anthony StineHOST
Do kind of have questions about why he did that.
Terry BarberHOST
That ain't all, folks.
Terry BarberHOST
When I come back, we're going to talk about Bella Dodd.
Terry BarberHOST
Wow.
Terry BarberHOST
Folks, I want to tell you, if you want to get that copy of all the mission stories that Sheen wrote regarding conversion stories, but just mission work, the zeal the missionaries have, What you can do is next week we'll have it ready.
Terry BarberHOST
I'll have it on the website where people can just download the writings of two decades of Fulton Sheen because, as I said earlier, I scanned all of them after I laminated the original newspaper writings, which are all yellowed out because they're about 60, 70 years old.
Terry BarberHOST
But we saved them, and you'll be able to get that next week here at vmpr.org.
Terry BarberHOST
When we come back, Bella Dodd, a New York attorney, member of the Communist Party, USA.
Terry BarberHOST
Are you ready? When we come back, we'll tell you about Bella Dodd and how she came back to the Catholic
4 more episodes mention Bella Dodd.
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