Creche landing
Ford, Maurice deG.
I | 1 l I II Church & state CRECHE LANDING A MELLOWING OF THE COURT T HE SUPREME COURT has finally handed down its decision in the Pawtucket crrche case, in what will hopefully be the end...
...Or not so curious...
...Old wine is best, and there is a new constitutional respect for the old traditions, such as the opening of the sessions of many state legislatures with prayer, or the use of public funds to support a chaplain for the United States Congress...
...No longer, fortunately, in this writer's view, is decision-making absolutist and rigidly categorical...
...The American Civil Liberties Union, you remember, joined by the National Council of Churches, had sued the city of Pawtucket, Rhode Island, claiming that its Christmas display discriminated against non-Christians and violated the First Amendment's strictures mandating separation of church and state...
...Murphy who will always be chasing me...
...remarked the teacher...
...member recalled, after giving a talk to a B'nai B'rith group in Pawtucket, "Some of them said...
...It's been there so long, why did you ever bring it up...
...As George Frazier, a plaintiff in the suit and A.C.L.U...
...To me, this is taking the matter far too seriously...
...Whereas once the slightest intrusion of religion might have raised a persecuted outcry, now we can comfortably stroll along the corridors of the National Gallery of Art, an institution amply supported by public funds, looking at all fifty-seven varieties of Madonna and Child and pass a pleasant uncontroversial Sunday afternoon...
...Indeed, the particular Pawtucket display symbolizes the intermingling of sacred and secular, the infant Jesus with Santa Claus, that has traditionally grown up around Christmas through the years...
...He must be referring to the Twenty-third Psalm which we recite each day: 'Surely, Goodness and Mercy shall follow me all the days of my life, and I shall dwell in the house of the Lord forever.' "Let it be, let it be . . . . A mellow decision and one to be commended...
...Which reminds me of the seven-year-old second grader who ran home one day after school, slightly terrified, and asked his mother: "Who is this good Mrs...
...Dudley Clendinin of the New York Times, who was sent to Pawtucket to survey the damage the day the Supreme Court opinion was announced, noted that the chief minority group likely to be offended, our Jewish brethren, did not join in the suit to ban the crrche...
...Ford, a Boston lawyer, teaches law and psychiatry at Harvard University...
...For if he were to enthusiastically approve the crrche, it might appear that he were unduly favoring his own religion...
...One of the criteria for striking down practices which raise First Amendment inquiry is whether they involve an unnecessary entanglement between church and state...
...MAURICE deG...
...FORD (Maurice deG...
...Nowhere is this more evident than in the Pawtucket crrche case...
...In reversing lower court decisions banning the Pawtucket scene, however, Chief Justice Burger pointed out that the concept of an absolute "wall" between church and state, advocated by some zealots, while "a useful figure of speech probably deriving from the views of Thomas Jefferson," was no longer apropos in twentieth century America, where no institution in our society exists in a vacuum or in isolation from any other part...
...One of the nicest things about the field of constitutional law is that it is never, and never can be, static...
...It may be curious that the dissent in the Pawtucket crrche case was written by Justice William Brennan, the only Catholic member of the Court...
...Thus, the Chief Justice wrote, "to conclude that the primary effect" of the Pawtucket display was "to advance religion in violation of the Establishment Clause would require that we view it more beneficial and more an endorsement of religion, for example, than expenditure of large sums of public money for textbooks supplied throughout the country to students attending church-sponsored schools, expenditure of public funds for transportation of students to church-sponsored schools, and the tax exemptions for church properties," practices already sanctioned by the Supreme Court in 1947, 1968, and 1970...
...As such, it constituted the most emphatic pronouncement of the Good News...
...Perplexed, his mother phoned the home room teacher...
...It did not decide whether, for example, a creche or Easter cross standing alone in the midst of the village green would be constitutional...
...A practice that might have been anathema in the eighteenth century might be more than welcome in the more modem conditions of the twentieth...
...I | 1 l I II Church & state CRECHE LANDING A MELLOWING OF THE COURT T HE SUPREME COURT has finally handed down its decision in the Pawtucket crrche case, in what will hopefully be the end of years of considerable controversy...
...Commonweal: 202...
...In a 5-4 ruling, the justices upheld Pawtucket's practice of exhibiting a creche, nestled in with, among other things, "a Santa Claus house, reindeer pulling Santa's sleigh, candystriped poles, a Christmas tree, carolers, cut-out figures representing such characters as a clown, an elephant, a teddy bear, hundreds of colored lights, and a banner proclaiming 'Season's Greetings.' " It is important to note that the Court ruled only on the narrow facts of the Pawtucketdisplay...
...The Pawtucket decision, like a number of those handed down in recent years, represents a mellowing, a maturing judicial judgment...
...Justices are appointed to exercise judgment, not to mechanically apply formulas to changing conditions...
...Rather than taking a take-it-or-leave-it attitude towards the crrche or viewing it, as Chief Justice Burger and the majority of the justices did, as merely engendering (along with a hearty noggin of good rum punch) "a friendly community spirit of good will in keeping with the season," Justice Brennan felt the scene was "best understood as a mystical re-creation of an event that lies at the heart of the Christian faith...
Vol. 111 • April 1984 • No. 7
