School Aid, the President and the Hierarchy:
NIEBUHR, REINHOLD
SCHOOL AID, THE PRESIDENT AND THE HIERARCHY ? religiously pluralistic and semi-secular society cannot afford to imperil the unity of a people through a pluralistic school system' By Reinhold...
...So much for early history...
...SCHOOL AID, THE PRESIDENT AND THE HIERARCHY ? religiously pluralistic and semi-secular society cannot afford to imperil the unity of a people through a pluralistic school system' By Reinhold Niebuhr THERE ARE MANY fascinating aspects to the controversy about President Kennedy's education bill, which provides Federal funds for public but not for parochial schools...
...But fringe benefits are the limits of our tolerance and of our gesture of understanding for the problem of double taxation...
...The early consensus was prompted in part by the sheer pluralism of the new nation, and in part by all the religious sects who sought refuge on our continent from diverse forms of religious absolutism in Europe—and, for that matter, by Roger Williams' protest against a new form of absolutism which had developed in Massachusetts...
...Liberty is ultimately an individual right...
...The President explained that this was in accord with the Constitution and was analogous to the uncontested scholarship requirements of the Gl Bill of Rights...
...Recent events prompt those of us who took a different position to chortle with glee, "I told you so...
...But it would be hard to find constitutional or other warrant for the religious liberty of parents...
...What is more important, they expressed a consensus of the whole budding nation...
...But it will also have an understanding for the resentments which such a cohesive community generates...
...An interesting aspect of this controversy between a Catholic President and the church hierarchy is that it refutes all the rabid Protestants and secular anti-Catholics who argued during the campaign that Kennedy's election would imperil our cherished separation of church and state, and would in effect give the Pope a mortgage on the White House...
...One wonders why the Catholic bishops do not see this aspect of our national problem...
...Perhaps the more immediate historical cause was the situation in Virginia, where the radical Presbyterians, Sectarians and Deists protested against the Anglican establishment...
...And the Jehovah Witnesses and the Seven Day Adventists may also ask tax support for their parochial schools...
...It may do well to have a residual sympathy, and even admiration for, a highly disciplined religious community...
...No one can deny that there is the broadest possible consensus in the American community on the virtue of the separation of church and state as ordained by our Bill of Rights...
...A liberal society may be too open...
...The difference in the optimistic mood of the Declaration of Independence and the realism of the Constitution, Jefferson being the author of the one and Madison of the other, is a convenient symbol of the differences between them...
...Some Catholic scholars think this violates the principles of "distributive justice," though the double taxation is selfimposed, or at least imposed by a highly disciplined church...
...The pluralism of the American religious community, which embraces not only Protestantism, Catholicism and various forms of Judaism, but the multitude of Protestant sects and increasingly a large secular segment of the population, has prevented and will continue to prevent the adoption of this expedient...
...There may be differences of opinion about the absoluteness of "the wall of separation," a phrase which Jefferson used but which has no constitutional warrant...
...But on the issue of religious liberty and the separation of church and state the radical Calvinist and the Deist were absolutely united...
...There are established and semi-established churches in many of the healthiest democracies of Europe...
...But this is probably too obviously political to give much satisfaction to those of us who were right in the first place...
...Why have they not long since disavowed all tax support...
...In commenting on this statement I affirmed what a Jesuit scholar could not say: namely, that Catholic statesmen from Cardinal Richelieu to Chancellor Konrad Adenauer were wont to take even more liberty to speak in and for the civic consensus than the Church would be inclined to allow...
...The Catholic hierarchy has lost no time in opposing this "discrimination...
...They are sufferable as long as the arrangement does not lead to the suppression of religious freedom for any minority...
...Some chaplains in the two recent wars have thought it important to counsel the soldiers against card playing, dancing, drinking and theater patronage, thus prohibiting the most innocent pastimes to which soldiers might be drawn...
...Only rabid anti-Catholics oppose support for school buses and school lunches or any benefit which goes to the child, rather than the institution...
...This is not to say that our constitutional principle is the only possible way of solving the age-old problem of "the two realms," or even the only possible democratic way...
...He also declared— and in doing so, incidentally, was keeping his campaign promises without reservations—that the failure to grant tax support to parochial schools was "beyond debate" because both the Constitution and the Supreme Court decisions on the scope of the First Amendment clearly prohibited such support...
...In a world tormented by all kinds of collective hatreds and misunderstandings that unheroic attitude is nevertheless a virtue...
...As a matter of fact, the section of the bill which would provide scholarships for college students does not discriminate against those who choose to attend Catholic colleges...
...Suppose they coerce children to attend a parochial school against their wishes...
...It counsels us to "let sleeping dogs lie...
...A religiously pluralistic and semi-secular society cannot afford to imperil the unity of a people through a pluralistic school system, the heterogeneity of which would be aggravated by tax support of religious schools...
...Breaching the principle of separation would mean support not only for Catholic schools, but presumably for various Jewish and Protestant parochial schools...
...Only one facet of this echo from the campaign can be interesting beyond the justification it gives some of us for discounting the extravagant fears of the anti-Catholics...
...In a document signed by archbishops and bishops, it protests that the program would be unfair to Catholic children...
...One might sum up the whole problem by a reminder that civic and political virtue requires not only justice but prudence...
...True, the "fair" treatment for all religious bodies works well in the Army Chaplaincy, but one wonders why no Army commander or responsible chaplain has ever blurted out the truth that many of the chaplains who secure their commissions because no religious group can be "suppressed" are worse than useless as Army spiritual guides...
...Why could not either a constitutional amendment or jurisdictional adaptation soften the rigors of "absolute separation" and provide equal support for all sects, so long as the support does not involve either establishment or suppression...
...We cannot afford this divisiveness in our education and in our national life...
...That is the fact that the emotions of the campaign, insofar as they were prompted by ignorance of historical facts, were due to the failure of non-Catholics to appreciate the significance of "lay Catholicism" in the history of European and Western democracy...
...The great nation of today does not face exactly the same problem as the young nation for which the Constitution was devised...
...This has proved to be so...
...A church may interpret its character and scope, but a free society must protect individuals against any kind of coercion...
...In other areas the Constitution has been amended...
...The problem of double taxation is serious enough to justify the civic community's giving Catholic parents as many "fringe benefits" as possible...
...Among such historical contingencies are the peculiar conditions created by the presence of a highly disciplined church within the general atmosphere of an "open" society...
...But the prohibition of either the establishment of religion or its suppression presumably does not include a fair and equitable support of all religious bodies...
...There is no reason, of course, why we should regard this early solution of the problem of religious pluralism as sacrosanct...
...Religious pluralism in the new nation, both within the various colonies and between the colonies, plus resentment against the New England theocracy of which not a secularist but the deeply religious Roger Williams was the most important force and symbol, all conspired to make the constitutionally fixed separation of church and state in the United States inevitable...
...Others think that the failure of the nation to give tax support to religious schools violates the religious liberty of parents to send children to the schools of their choice...
...The answer to this question is simple enough...
...Of course, the Catholic population feels the burden of "double taxation...
...The simple constitutional guarantee of liberty for all religious sects solved the problem of unity amid diversity, which many of the nations of Europe achieved only after a century of the gradual growth of religious toleration...
...It will not condone, but it will not do anything to exacerbate the fierce anti-Catholic biases evident during the recent Presidential campaign...
...These protests were eloquently articulated by Jefferson and Madison, who did not agree on all things...
...Tax exemption for both parochial school property and support of Catholic parents for their parochial schools already exist, though no one would claim that these exemptions break the back of double taxation...
...During the campaign the distinguished Jesuit scholar, Father Gustave Weigel, argued that the Church allowed Catholic statesmen to speak for and in the consensus of a civil community...
...Prudence is a civic virtue because it is necessary not only to strive for justice, but to take cognizance of all contingencies in preserving the stability and health of a community...
...Furthermore, the Supreme Court has "followed election returns" in the sense that its decisions have gradually adjusted hallowed constitutional principles to the new realities of an advanced industrial civilization...
...Prudence is not a heroic virtue...
Vol. 44 • March 1961 • No. 12
