Man's Right to Liberty

...This Methodist lobby has been recently denounced for its flagrant violation of the American principle of separation of church and state...

...The present New York state constitution, adopted in 1894, measures up fully to the standard of religious liberty set by these foremost Americans, acknowledging, as it i8o THE COMMONWEAL June i8, 1930 does for all mankind without a single exception, freedom of religious profession and worship according to the dictates of the individual conscience...

...Despite all this no man can have more contempt than I have for unscrupulous liquor traffic or for the drunkard, but I am convinced by hard facts that prohibition is not the remedy against either abuse...

...We all remember how the Oregon school vote to close every denominational elementary school in order to force every child into the public school was annulled by the United States Supreme Court, June 1, 1925, which decided as follows: The fundamental theory of liberty upon which all governments in this union repose, excludes any general power of the state to standardize its children by forcing them to accept instruction from public school teachers only...

...The law provides that: Students in non-Catholic seminaries or rabbinical schools may postpone their military service until after graduation, and parents of non-Catholic students in the elementary schools are entitled to claim exemption for their children from religious instruction...

...Listen to a statement by the Archimandrite Simon, superior of the Russian Orthodox Church in Rome...

...While these last words are Mr...

...The ups and downs of liberty happen to be of marked concern to very many...

...If their broad American ideas in this matter had been maintained, it would not have been possible for Pope Pius XI, in his great encyclical on the education of Catholic youth, to charge our present state school system with the violation of a great fundamental principle in human relations—the violation of distributive justice...

...Frank P. Graves might feel it to be his duty also to teach them and those for whom they make this enquiry the same lesson which he has just taught so strikingly to the delinquent principal of an American public school...

...The Metropolitan Sergius is merely the head of a comparatively small number of bishops who in August, 1927, made a declaration of adhesion to the Soviet regime...

...Under these circumstances, no honest Christian minister cared to brand as unlawful and even intrinsically evil (as some of the drys loosely declare) what Jesus Christ, the Son of God, by miraculous power gave men and women to drink at the Wedding Feast...

...One of these ministers, of the same Unitarian faith as Thomas Jefferson, who had such a passionate zeal for religious liberty, not only in the United States but also in Europe and in South America, made enter into the apology for his conduct not only what he himself called his "cursory" observations as a tourist in Russia, but especially the published testimony of Archbishop Sergius, the present acting head of the Russian Orthodox Church...

...Now remember that the Supreme Court of the United States is not infallible in all its decisions despite its fine record in general...

...In the use of the bounties of nature prohibition has tried to restrict this liberty although George W. Wickersham, chairman of President Hoover's enforcement committee, in his report to Congress, admitted as an obstacle to successful enforcement "the conception of natural rights, classical in our policy...

...This New York state constitution does not, however, maintain equally the fulness of liberty in the field of education as both Washington and Jefferson conceived it...

...In fact, even greater efforts to restrict liberty of education in the United States have been made in recent times, but happily for the honor of America's good name, these efforts have all failed...

...William J. Hoffman, on proper application, can establish by satisfactory evidence that he has, in fact, acquired a proper appreciation of American ideals of tolerance in religion...

...Such defection from true Americanism as that of Mr...

...It has, therefore, seemed advantageous to present the following reflections by a distinguished Catholic priest whose researches have made him familiar with the cultural development of the United States...

...The Jewish Telegraph Agency sent out a despatch from Rome, April 15, 1930, on the publication that day of a law passed in June, 1929, which recognized in detail the rights of non-Catholics in Italy to liberty not only in the profession of faith, religious worship and the exercise of charity, but also in education...

...The revocation of his license is to take effect July 1 and to hold until Mr...

...Father Zwierlein leads the argument into three important domains—personal rights, education, socialized persecution of religion...

...Relying upon the wisdom of past ages and the experience of the rest of the civilized world, I urge as strongly as I can the duty of temperance upon all who can drink with sobriety and the duty of total abstinence upon all who cannot drink without going to excess...

...Wickersham's own words, he does not seem to have realized the logical application of his admission to the whole problem of prohibition...

...Religion has been put back into the schools of Italy, which is almost wholly Catholic...

...That phrase, red terror, reminds us at once of the worst phase of the French Revolution that put it in strange contrast to our sane and glorious American Revolution...

...Both these men also stood for liberty in things of much higher plane than such sumptuary matters, namely, liberty in education and in religion...

...The Metropolitan Eulogius of Paris and Archbishop John, the head of the Lett Orthodox Church, have expressed their belief that the alleged statement of Sergius was either imposed or forged...

...He says: Many Italian newspapers, having reproduced the notice of the agency Tass which gives a statement of the Metropolitan Sergius, according to which he denies that religion is subjected to persecution on the part of the Bolshevists, we consider it desirable to make the following statement regarding the Metropolitan Sergius: By canon law the Russian Orthodox Church has as head and lieutenant of the patriarchal see, the Metropolitan Peter, who for four years has been exiled to Tobolsk in northern Siberia...

...The best-known and most trusted collaborators of the late Patriarch Tikkon are in exile or in prison, namely the Metropolitans Arsenius, Cyril and Joseph, the Archbishops Hilarion, Icander and Serafin...

...If employment agencies for public-school teachers have the presumption to inquire into the religious affiliations of applicants for teaching positions, Dr...

...Italy has recently reorganized itself after reaching an understanding with Pope Pius XI so as to put an end to the strained relations between Church and state in that country because of the absorption of the Papal States by the United Kingdom of Italy...

...If the natural rights here in question are unalienable, as the Declaration of Independence puts it, prohibition even by constitutional amendment is an act of tyranny, and the Supreme Court of the United States was and is in error in lending support to its enforcement...

...For example, we all know how wrong the Supreme Court of the United States was in the grounds alleged for its decision in the Dred Scott slave case, in which its error was even emphasized at the time it was rendered by the dissent of two of its judges...

...The child is not the mere creature of the state...

...This was settled some years ago, but only the other day, April 24, 1930, Dr...

...For they claimed that judicious taxation was sufficiently able to suppress any abuse in such matters...

...Furthermore, when the United States constitution was in the making, Madison's Journal, published by the United States government, shows that the makers of this constitution refused explicitly to give Congress power to make any sumptuary legislation...

...Hoffman was not so much a matter of surprise as the unwillingness of some ministers of religion to raise their voice in prayer and protest against the atheistic persecution of all religion in Soviet Russia, especially in view of its self-confessed aim to extend their antireligious policy to the whole world as soon as possible...

...June i8, 1930 THE COMMONWEAL 179 MAN'S RIGHT TO LIBERTY By FREDERICK ZWIERLEIN THE subject which I have chosen for this paper while thoroughly modern in its implications, was mentioned long ago in the Declaration of Independence by Thomas Jefferson among the unalienable rights with which all men are endowed by their Creator— their right to liberty...

...Let us keep pure and unsullied the unalienable right of mankind to liberty, for which it stood, so that the nations on the face of this earth, when they break the bonds of tyranny that enslave them, may look to our glorious tradition of sound liberty in which alone there can be the pursuit of happiness, for which all men hunger and thirst...

...that he can and will properly interpret the constitution with its historical background, with specific reference to its guarantee of religious freedom and that he will, in his own future conduct, furnish an example of truth and rectitude to his students and teachers...

...Unfortunately the Treasury Department of the United States government was guilty of the same offense when at the very outset of its zeal for the enforcement of prohibition, it sent a circular to every minister of religion in the United States, requesting a sermon in behalf of prohibition from every pulpit in the length and breadth of our land...

...Frank P. Graves, state commissioner of Education, had to revoke the teacher's license of William J. Hoffman, principal of the Harriman School in the town of Monroe, Orange County, for refusing to appoint Miss Anna Mulholland of Plattsburg to a position in the school on the ground that she was a Catholic...

...In 1929 more than two hundred bishops remained deprived of their liberty, of whom 105 are imprisoned in the famous island of Solovetz according to the statement of the Archbishop Kaunas (Lithuania) who was recently in Moscow...

...The conclusion is a defense of the national "tradition of sound liberty," held to be the highest political achievement of the race and a reminder of important historical contrasts.—The Editors...

...One method of assault may be to effect, in the forms of the constitution, alterations which will impair the energy of the system, and thus to undermine what cannot be directly overthrown...

...Now behold the irony of fate...

...Finally, George Washington, in his Farewell Address to the People of the United States, warned them how to preserve their government and the permanence of the happy state which they then enjoyed, telling them: It is requisite not only that you steadily discountenance irregular opposition to its acknowledged authority, but also that you resist with care the spirit of innovation upon its principles, however specious the pretexts...

...The new law makes provisions also for instruction in a special religion within the school premises when the number of non-Catholic students is sufficiently large to warrant it...

...But what about the rights of non-Catholics in Italy...

...But what of Archbishop Sergius...

...Here the United States Supreme Court was correct in its decision precisely because it recognized the unalienable natural right of the parent to control the education of the child...

...those who nurture him and direct his destiny have the right coupled with the high duty, to recognize and prepare him for additional duties...

...Schools in non-Catholic communities may be subsidized by the state or by the municipality...

...This means a reasonable use of the bounties of nature which God has given to man, and to which man has an unalienable natural right, "a conception" that ought to be "classical in our policy" now and forever as it was in the beginning under such men as Thomas Jefferson and George Washington...

...The circular of the United States Treasury Department reached us on the eve of the Sunday when the Gospel prescribed for that day gave the account of the Wedding Feast of Cana at which Christ, upon the request of His Blessed Mother, changed water into wine that was superior in quality to the wine that the master of the house had first served to his guests...

...Despite this, some persons of high authority in the Orthodox churches are convinced that Sergius could not have been the traitor that he is represented to have been in the worst crisis of Russian persecution...

...The Orthodox newspaper, Rhul, February 20, 1930, has received information from an excellent source that the author of the interview of Sergius is the secretary, Finikejew, who was assigned to him by the G. P. U., the Soviet secret police, the weapon of the red terror...

...There you have in a few words a wonderful, prophetic diagnosis of the present condition to which these United States have been reduced by the experiment of prohibition, the lobby of the Methodist Board of Temperance and Morals to the contrary notwithstanding...

...Now this last is a simple matter of distributive justice, and so you see that the New York state constitution fails to allow that support for religious schools which Catholic and papal Italy admits as a matter of course for non-Catholic schools of every denomination, Protestant or Jewish...

...Let me explain what this means by a striking example which is not sufficiently known to the American public at large...