U. S. SCHOOL AID BILLS PERILED BY CHURCH-STATE CONTROVERSY
STOUT, JONATHAN
U. S. School Aid Bills Periled By Church-State Controversy Barden Bill Believed Killed By Cardinal Spellman's Blast By JONATHAN STOUT WASHINGTON. D. C. CLARIFICATION OF THE PROBLEM OF FEDERAL...
...Graham Barden of North Carolina...
...Herbert Nubian, a regular contributor...
...Notable among these, for instance, is the yearling...
...OVERSTUFFED WITH WORDS, disillusioned by programs, people were deeply touched by the sacrificial fact of this man—an average man like themselves...
...1ftroslp£CT&' such federal aid, which had been exceedingly bright until Spellman threw his bombshell, are, as a result, now rather dim...
...He believes dictatorships are sensitive to public opinion...
...forces has now become far moi« complex with the introduction of religious controversy and a national debate over the separation of State and Church...
...A Philadelphian, he is the son of Meyer Davis, a bandleader who played at the Republican and Democratic national conventions last year...
...His act was brave, his solution easy, his promise: peace...
...THE LEGISLATIVE HISTORY of the subject is that the Senate had previously passed a federal aid bill...
...his spectacular personal declaration and life as a man without a nation, gave colorful publicity to his seriousness in practicing what he believed in...
...and the new world government will mean the end of all world wars...
...Roosevelt and her position...
...Were it not for Cardinal Spellman's attack on Mrs...
...The manner in which Cardinal Spellman entered the controversy has shifted the foeus of the discussion from education to religion...
...they established the democratic principle of free education for as large a number of people as possible...
...Mention of his name invites passionate discussions: is he crank, saint, the great prophet of a better tomorrow, or a dangerous would-be fuehrer...
...It would appear safe to hazard at this point the opinion that Cardinal Spellman has failed in his objective of obtaining federal aid for Catholic schools...
...The issm then was whether the federal government should see that every child in this country receives an equal opportunity to obtain an adequate education or whether federul contributions to elementary and secondary schools constitutes "intervention...
...Even persons without children are taxed to support the public schools...
...They can be abolished only by the will and acts of the people of all nations, since their politicians have a vested interest in the status quo...
...The only tiling blooming now in that particular bit ef desert is what looks like one of the most serious religious controversies that has arisen in this country since the disgraceful Al Smith presidential campaign in 1928...
...Andrew L. Jacobs of Indiana, a Catholic, who spoke up publicly in sharp dissent from the Cardinal...
...So there was a movement to create free public schools for all chfutnn who' wished to attend them...
...Hugo Sims of North Carolina and Rep...
...Many Protestant churches and private citizens, also including Congressmen, have lined up with Mis...
...The Barden bill forbids the use of federal funds for private schools (including parochial schools...
...Jacobs to take a position publicly, are privately expressing the wish that the Cardinal had "stood in bed...
...the week before he had toured Switzerland, and a recent trip through the South of France had brought him many new adherents...
...To this, Barden bill supporters replied that the Catholic argument begs a change in a fixed American principle...
...Nothing was said about private schools...
...For, overnight it has ceased to be a discussion on federal aid to education...
...This, despite the showdown pushed through the House Education and Labor Committee under threat of a floor fight by young Rep...
...Roosevelt did m her reply to "the Cardinal—although she stjted she had taken no position specifically on that bill—as follows: ". . . the majority of early settlers of America were Protestants and...
...By registering as "world citizens," the people will start this movement...
...They said they are taxed to support public schools, while at the same time they tax themselves to support their own., schools, which must conform to the standards of education set .up for public schools...
...The Senate bill, in short, leaves it pretty much up to the states to decide these controversial questions...
...His subsequent fight with the Paris prefecture which tried to expel the voluntary apatridt as it had dona before to so many involuntary stateless people...
...Garry admitted to me that he is himself quite amazed at the role into which he has been thrust, and at the commotion he has started...
...All of which adds up to confusion thrice confounded on the problem of federal aid to education...
...D. C. CLARIFICATION OF THE PROBLEM OF FEDERAL AID to education remained as distant as ever this week...
...Until Cardinal Spellman's statement of the Cathohlic position in his exchange with Mrs...
...Not all Catholic Congressmen, bowever, are in accord with the Cardinal's position...
...Tom Steel of Oklahoma on the Barden Bill, which flared up into an acrimonious public dispute between Francis Cardinal Spellman and Mrs...
...The fact that he has received a few letters from behind the Iron Curtain, and that a few young French Communists have left the party to join him, means more to him than the war threats and concentration camps of the Soviet Union (which he considers scarcely more dangerous than any other country...
...But none ' is obligated, they pointed out, to use the public enterprises if they do not wish to...
...GARRY DAVIS, a blonde young man in slacks and open sportshirt, doesn't look a bit different from the thousands of American students and tourists you see everywhere on the Paris streets today...
...Public schools are public enterprises...
...The Catholics, who maintain at their own expense 8,289 elementary schools with an enrollment of 2,304,063 students, and 2,150 secondary schools with an enrollment of 482,072 students—a total of 2,787,637 children—argued (and other private schools groups joined them in this) that the withholding of federal aid to school children attending private (and parochial) schools is unjust and discriminatory...
...It is established, they said, that every member of the community is obligated to support, public enterprises...
...Davis does not have the mannerisms of a fuehrer, or the earmarks of a great personality...
...Davis was hardly concerned when I asked how the peoples under Soviet dictatorship could ever express and achieve their will to join the other peoples in a world government...
...But with that failure also appears to have gone prospects of getting federal aid for any schools, public or private...
...his uncle is symphony conductor Pierre Monteux...
...On the practical level of operation on Capitol Hill, this works out into an alliance between Catholic Congress - to education...
...Advocates of the Barden bill argued, as Mrs...
...Roosevelt, debate over the Senate and Barden bills might have continued on the basis of federal or no federal aid per se...
...And to give public tax funds to private schools, or private fire departments, without the consent of the taxpayers, tqputd be wrong in principle and nnfustffled in law* Ifs all right for state* which have laws permitting such use of public funds and the consent of their taxpayers, to do this with state funds, they argued, but h would be wrong to do this with federal funds...
...BEFORE THE Spellman-Roosevelt exchange, Catholics claimed that if the goal is equalization of education opportunity for all school children, then denial of federal funds for things like transportation, health and textbooks amounts to discrimination against children attending private and parochial schools...
...This bill is now before the Mouse Education and Labor Committee...
...I am not a political man...
...He joined the World Federalists, but soon became disappointed by the academic nature of their work...
...a "people's constituent assembly" will be convoked and declare the independence of the world from its national governments...
...But he considered it only as a joke...
...Throughout Europe, 200,000 people have already followed his appeal and "registered" as world citizens...
...HS PROGRAM IS SIMPLE: National sovereignties are obsolete and lead to war—they should be abolished...
...Instead of a dispute over how far the federal government should go in aiding education, we now appear to have a debate outer the Catholic church's intervention in government Prominent Catholic laymen, including Congressmen and an unofficial spokesman for the Vatican, have lined up with Cardinal Spellman...
...While his war experience meant little to him and he was quite eager to return to his peace-time job, he became startled by the general talk and fear'of a new world war which be observed in postwar America...
...Public opinion must demand that the nations give up their sovereignty...
...whUe-tfcewm»~*m aalHHiHtal*w*IUalHiHrtlai.Mi since his intempa-rate attack upon Mrs...
...But, they added, no citizen could be obligated to support somebody's private fire department or, equally, somebody's private school...
...The Senate bill permits the use of federal funds for transportation of children to schools, for health aid to school children, and purchase of textbooks for children attending nonpublic schools in states where such use of public funds for those purposes is permitted...
...Is now traveling abroad...
...At 28, he has played bit parts on Broadway: during the war he was a bomber pilot...
...This, was enough to make many people, especially young ones, follow him with enthusiasm...
...When I visited Garry Davis in his small Montparnasse walk-up apartment, he seemed as confident of his quick and final victory as a wardheeler before Election Day...
...John Dewey Comments on Spellman: "l an happy to baliave that a large* body «i Ajaafieaa Catholic...
...So is the bill introduced by Rep...
...Whan I told him he was now playing on a rather big stage to an enthusiastic audience, he seemed flattered...
...Roosevelt, the struggle over federal aid to education had proceeded on another level entirely...
...As we have developed in this country, we have done more and more for our public schools...
...I feal my own inadequacies, and t want to finish this job quickly so I can fo back to my work on the stage," he said with a disarming smile...
...To do so, he went to Paris, renounced his American citizenship, and declared himself a "citizen of the world...
...But on the other hand, he explains his ideas and purposes with a conviction whose fanaticism is only slightly camouflaged by ^iis unassuming, matter-of-fact wayuf speaking...
...They are open to all children and it has been decided that there should be no particular religions beliefs taught in them . . . and that religious teaching of any child must be done by his own church and in his own home...
...once his message reaches the people in the Soviet orbit, they will respond it...
...He is little known at home, but in present-day France, few Americans are better known...
...And a considerable number of Catholic Congressmen, less ready perhaps than Rep...
...He had just come back from a successful speaking tour in Belgium...
...his camping on the United Nations grounds in u sleeping bag...
...Roosevelt...
...Franklin D. Roosevelt...
...moreover, they could have a private Are department if they wanted to, and could afford to, and if the private fire department met the standards "set up for fire departments...
...Funds provided under the Barden bill could be used only for public schools, .regardless of what is permissible by law in the several states...
...He "began to think" and decided that the individual, all the individuals, had to bring about the revolution of world government by their own actions...
...Profile of a World-Citizen Bv NORBERT MUHLEN PARIS...
...What might have evolved from this debate—conducted on pragmatic grounds by the Catholics, mainly, and on grounds of principle and tradition by the public school group—cannot be guessed any more...
Vol. 32 • August 1949 • No. 32
