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PUBLIC AID TO PAROCHIAL EDUCATION
Copyright 1951,
The Harvard Law School Forum, Inc.
MR. WILLIAM COUSINS, JR. (President, Harvard Law School Forum): Good Evening, Ladies and Gentlemen -- our Forum tonight, on Public Aid to Parochial Education, to some folks, may seem analogous to re-fighting the Civil War. However, my impression is that tonight's program is not equivalent to any war whatsoever. Religions may differ, but, I think that in discussing things involving religion, the accent is better placed on the word peace than on the word War.
As regards tonight's program the Forum wishes to dispel any doubts that may exist as to the Forum's point of view. The Forum, as such, has no point of view (Laughter) unless it be to see that persons with points of view on controversial topics are afforded a platform from which to express themselves publicly.
The Forum therefore brings you tonight's four speakers together in what we expect to be a friendly, learned, and we hope a rewarding discussion of a controversial topic.
Professor Ulich, who was scheduled to moderate tonight's program, is ill. Professor George C. Homans, Professor of Sociology at Harvard University, is well qualified to do the task we have before us tonight. It gives me great pleasure at this time to introduce our moderator for this evening, Professor George C. Homans. (Applause)
PROFESSOR HOMANS: Thank you, Mr. Cousins. In one way I am very badly qualified to be moderator, and that is, that I'm a most immoderate man. In another way, I am superbly qualified for this position in that I have never studied the subject under discussion, I attended neither a public school nor a parochial school (Laughter) , (I was not without education) , (Laughter) , I attended another of what we ordinarily call a private school.
Now I believe very strongly that in preparing oneself for public speaking, one should use whatever materials come first to hand. And in preparing myself for introducing the people who are going to speak to you tonight, the first thing I saw on my desk was an enormous volume, which I have to review, called "Public Opinion, 1935-1946," which contains nothing less than the results of every single public opinion poll which was conducted during those years. Now, there are many very interesting things in this volume. I discovered that in a certain week in 1946, 73% of Englishmen bought fish. (Laughter) I also discovered that at a certain period in 1938, 62% of Americans thought people were happier in the horse and buggy days, than they were now. On the other hand, these same Americans, 69% of them said they would rather live now than in the horse and buggy days, (Laughter) which gave me a healthy respect for Public Opinion because as a logician I cannot reconcile these two positions. (Laughter) In any case, I looked up, for whatever evidence there was on Public Opinion, on the issue in question, and I discovered only one example, which I present to you, hoping that you will recognize all the inaccuracies and doubts that we have about Public Opinion polls. At any rate, on one occasion, in 1938, the following question was asked to a poll sample: "Should federal aid be given to public and parochial schools or should this aid be given to public schools only?" The national sample was: for both public and parochial schools 35%, for public schools only 53%, no opinion, 12%. (I think that last would have included your moderator.)
We are here to form and I suppose influence public opinion. I present that to you only as a little bit of evidence of what Public Opinion may be or was ten years ago. We are here, I submit, to change that in one direction or another.
Now, our first speaker is a lecturer on Church History in the Harvard Divinity School. He is well qualified to talk on this subject because he is a student of the history of the relations between church and state, and he is getting out shortly a monograph on the relations between church and state in France. And so I present as our first speaker Dr. George Hunston Williams of the Harvard Divinity School. . . . (Applause) . . .
DR. GEORGE HUNSTON WILLIAMS: I wish to pay tribute at the outset to the many Catholic scholars and publicists whose prodigious research and cogent, expositions of their convictions in respect to public aid to parochial education put all American citizens in their debt, for saving us from facile slogans and emotive thinking, in favor of clear moral, constitutional, theological and practical argumentation. I arose from my desk after reading an article reprinted from Commonweal, published in 1941, and included in the appendix of Prof. O'Neill's recent book, exhilarated with the conviction that the defense of religious liberty by this Catholic attorney in behalf of the Jehovah's Witnesses, deserved to rank alongside the writings of Milton and Madison for moral eloquence. There is no doubt in my mind that mingled with the obviously great economic urgency of the question of public aid to the parochial system there pulsates in many Catholic protagonists a truly great concern for religious and civil liberty. But even on this high level of debate, citizens of good will, fellow Christians indeed, can differ markedly. I share with Catholic Christians a deep concern lest democracy which is a polity be unwittingly or surreptitiously converted into the de facto established religion of our public schools, as the real religion of America. Hence, while I oppose the Supreme Court's decision in the Everson bus case which legitimizes free transportation for parochial schools, I regret the excesses of the McCollum decision, which temporarily aggravates the situation in the public schools in view of the alarming erosion of religious culture in the United States. The Court seems to be much more sensitive to infringements of personal religious liberty - and here religious liberty in the negative sense of freedom from even the suggestion of religious coercion, while the Court is of late less discerning in respect to what we may call corporate religious freedom. However this may be, I wish to say at the outset that while I agree that the exercise of religion, for example Bible reading without comment, catechizing, simple prayers, and hymns - while this exercise of religion certainly has no place in public education in our religiously heterogeneous society, the objective study of religion under the auspices of the public school is at least a discussable solution to part of our problem of religious illiteracy. People all too easily confuse instruction about religion on the one hand with religious worship and indoctrination on the other. In a civics or American history class, a teacher can discuss the Democratic and Republican parties without being herself partisan; and it should be possible in high school to study Communism without incurring the charge of indoctrinating. To be sure, there is the major problem of presenting religion objectively in a way satisfying to those who hold that religion is caught, caught as well as taught, and to those who hold there is only one divinely authenticated bearer of revelation. But surely in certain sections of the country the effort to bring in religious history in connection with other subjects should not be pilloried at once as unconstitutional. Certainly the religious history of mankind is as important to the child from an unbelieving home as to the child from a believing home. And the spiritual achievements and failures of the race are as important to communicate to the young citizen as geography and music. Are not the local churches and synagogues as legitimate a goal for a project excursion in the grade school as a trip to the zoo or the nearest dairy farm, or fire station? The separation of Church and State is not the same thing as the separation of religion and society. State and Church are disparate communities, the one the community of birth, the other a community of rebirth or regeneration. Church and State should not confuse their roles. But if social peace is not disturbed thereby, religion should by all means mingle with society!
With this much of an allusion to the problem of religion and the public schools, I turn to the allied problem of public aid to parochial or denominational schools, the assigned topic for the evening. It is important to make clear to us the several levels of possible contact between Church and State:
There are at least five distinguishable levels under consideration when we discuss public aid to parochial schools: first, child welfare, Child welfare legislation to children as children. The school is the natural congregating place of our young citizens; dietary and medical aid may be dispensed by the state to its children as legitimately within the parochial as within the public school precincts. Scholarships to veterans of national service belong in this same category and may be used by the veteran in any school of his choice, denominational or public. The second level is tax-exemption of parochial school properties. It is not now under debate, and I do not think that it should be. Custom and equity are against upsetting an immemorial practice without which churches could never maintain themselves in the strategic centers of population. To introduce taxation of church properties would bring the whole problem into the arena of bitter political debate and precipitate the kind of social turmoil and reprisals the principle of separation of Church and State seeks to obviate. Tax exemption may be interpreted as the recognition by the State of the priority of the Church and its dissociation from direct economic and political involvement in society. In any event it is passive aid only. The third level is distinguished from the second in representing a limited form of positive tax aid to the parochial system. It embraces the auxiliary services properly so-called, free text-books and free transportation. These are now legitimized by Supreme Court, but I wish presently to advance reasons why they should be reconsidered. Suffice it for the moment to say that whereas free lunches, medical care, and scholarships go to children as children, textbooks and free transportation go to children as school-children. The next level includes tax rebates to Catholic parents and perhaps Catholic citizens who are supporting the parochial system. And the last, the fifth, level includes direct tax aid to parochial construction, instruction, and maintenance, on the principle that the parochial system is just as American as the public school system.
For the purpose of tonight's debate I am ranged with Bishop Oxnam in opposing public aid to parochial education on the last three levels of increasingly direct positive financial aid. My arguments are arranged in the following order: moral, constitutional, and practical, that lets out the theological side altogether.
First certain moral arguments:
The Roman Church, then, in connection with the moral argument, is defending, I conceive and gladly acknowledge, a fundamental principle in our highly socialized age, namely, the priority of the family over the State in the education of the child. I should go further and agree that the Church as the larger family of rebirth or regeneration has a special place in channeling the wishes of Christian parents. For this very reason, the Church should not become beholden to the State in the exercise of this franchise. In many parts of the world today the problem of the Roman Church is not more State aid but freedom from the State. Therefore, in this country the Church should beware intermeshing financially with any State and thus losing its freedom of action.
The Catholic spokesmen insist that they do not desire, indeed would not accept, public aid, for the religious part of parochial instruction. They are emphatic in their distinction between the secular and the religious part of the instruction given. But parochial education cannot be so divided. That indeed is one of the basic reasons which Catholics give for teaching all subjects under the auspices of the Church by sisters and priests. How can it be said, therefore, that the non-believing taxpayer is being asked to support only the secular portion of a system of education in which by definition the religious and the secular are inextricably fused?
Spokesmen of the Catholic Church argue that it is unfair, if not immoral, to require Catholic citizens to be taxed twice for reason of conscience, since the parochial schools are acknowledged as fulfilling all the State requirements for education. This claim should surely gain admittance to our civic conscience; nevertheless it should be pointed out emphatically to our Catholic fellow-citizens that they overlook on their part a possibly greater inequity in their claim for public support of parochial education. Madison and Jefferson in their own native state opposed even the moderate inequity of multiple establishment. Madison's resounding Remonstrance was directed specifically against an assessment on the whole population for the maintenance of instruction under diverse Christian auspices. Now the Catholic apologists are right, of course, that neither Madison's grand Remonstrance nor Jefferson's Bill for Establishing Religious Freedom in Virginia carry Constitutional compulsion outside their native state, but they are clearly of immense theoretical import. And we may legitimately appeal to their moral support of our present contention that more than five-sixths of the present American population which is non-Roman may not be compelled, however indirectly or imperceptibly, to support by taxation a system of instruction that necessarily implies or indeed proclaims that the rest of us are heretics, schismatics, or reprobates. This may very well prove to be true (Laughter) and the Church surely has the right in our Constitutional democracy to communicate this assurance to her children, but not at the expense of fellow citizens in our contractual commonwealth! This would be taxation without salvation! (Laughter) It is immoral in the name of the God of righteousness, to coerce or contrive to coerce fellow citizens into supporting the extension of an exclusive faith which they are unable to hold or indeed may openly oppose. A Church that regards itself as the sole bearer of truth, must expect to stand and to labor alone. It should not seek even temporary allies among religious groups to whom it would assign no better role than that of buffer provinces between the Kingdom of God and the sway of evil!
We turn now to a consideration of the Constitutional and historical arguments.
The Catholics are right: the First Amendment as it emerged from the extended debates of the First Congress was no more a restriction on the national government, forbidding it to make any laws respecting an establishment of any one denomination. It is, to be sure, important to add that Jefferson and Madison personally desired a similar restriction imposed on each of the states, that they succeeded in achieving this full measure of religious freedom in their native Virginia, and that Madison struggled valiantly for the inclusion of such a stricture in the Federal Constitution and won his point in the House only to lose it in the Senate in the final formulation of what has become our First Amendment. Admittedly, the very failure, by howsoever narrow a margin, supports the Catholic in his interpretation of the original understanding of that Amendment. But a hundred and sixty years of American history have expanded that meaning. And especially is it the compulsion of the Fourteenth Amendment and the sense which it gives to the first and the fifth when transposed in terms of the polity of the several states that occupies the center of the most recent discussion in the field.
It is well known that the Fourteenth Amendment, ratified in 1868, was not originally construed as restrictive of the States in the matter of religion. The clause guaranteeing the privileges and immunities and the liberty of the recently freed slaves from abridgment by the several states had a clear meaning in terms of the then recent victory of the Union cause over the Confederate view of States' rights and slavery. Nevertheless, this essentially Republican Amendment was allowed by subsequent judicial construction to lose much of its force. Corporations, construed as persons within the meaning of the Amendment, were made the chief beneficiaries of the protection of persons from deprivation by the State "of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law."
It was indeed as late as 1925 that the Supreme Court began to rediscover the citizen behind the corporation and, recovering the original signification of person, proceeded then to enlarge the scope of personal liberty, privileges, and immunities in respect to state as well as to the national government. And therewith began a process of strengthening an admittedly fragile Constitutional bridge, in a succession of judicial expansions of the concept of liberty, to enable it to carry the now rather heavy legal traffic whereby the First Amendment and the other Amendments in the Bill of Rights are brought to bear upon the controversies between religion and society on the level of the states. The two most recent decisions in the area of education, for example, the Everson parochial school bus case [FOOTNOTE 1] and the McCollum released time case, [FOOTNOTE 2] are grounded in
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FOOTNOTE 1: Everson v. Board of Education, 330 U.S. 1 (1947) . (Mr. Everson, as a New Jersey taxpayer, challenged the action of a local school board in reimbursing parents for payments made in transporting children to parochial schools. The Board acted pursuant to a statute which provided that local school districts were authorized to make rules or contracts for the transportation of school children to and from schools including those other than public schools, except those operated for profit in whole or in part. . . The state court denied the taxpayer's contentions that the statute and resolution of the school board passed pursuant thereto were unconstitutional because (1) public funds were being appropriated for private purposes and (2) the state action was in support of a religious group contrary to prohibitions of the First Amendment as made applicable to the states by the Fourteenth Amendment. Upon appeal to the United States Supreme Court, held affirmed. Mr. Justice Black wrote the majority opinion.)
FOOTNOTE 2: McCollum v. Board of Education, 333 U.S. 203 (1948) . (Mrs. Vashti McCollum brought an action for mandamus against the Champaign Board of Education in Champaign County, Illinois. She alleged that religious teachers, employed by private religious groups, were permitted to come weekly into the school buildings during the regular hours set apart for secular teaching, and then and there for a period of thirty minutes substitute their religious teaching for the secular education provided under the compulsory education law. She charged that this joint public-school religious-group program violated the first and fourteenth amendments to the United States Constitution. The state court denied the taxpayer's petition. Upon appeal to the United States Supreme Court, held reversed. Mr. Justice Black, again, wrote the majority opinion.)
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this relatively recent application of the Bill of Rights to the states by way of the fourteenth. Y et the theory by which the Fourteenth Amendment makes applicable to the States the restrictions originally imposed solely on the Federal Government is still in the process of judicial clarification. There are at least two theories with varying views as to the extent of the inclusion.
And Catholics quite naturally point to this anomaly at the highest level of purely judicial debate and go on to marshal their other Constitutional and historical arguments in their effort to interpret the First Amendment as the safeguard, not of strict separation, but rather of nondiscriminatory cooperation between Church and State, and then warn the nation that we are in danger of judicial usurpation of an American right to the non-preferential aid of a Christian, at least a religiously motivated, surely not a neutral, state.
Over against these Catholic contentions, other Americans are arguing that the same First Amendment is the principal guaranty of strict separation. Religious freedom is ours, they contend, not as this state or that state safeguards the liberty by its own (state) constitutional provision or statute, not as Ohioans or as Rhode Islanders, but as Americans. Immigrants have come to these shores not to seek Massachusetts or Virginia citizenship but to become Americans." They have accepted the state and territorial boundaries as, in effect, administrative subdivisions of the land of freedom whither they had come. The oath of every naturalized citizen has presumed this freedom as one of the boons of the land of his adoption; the pledge of every school child implies this freedom; the oath of every civil servant is a solemn renewal of this compact to uphold the liberties of all, regardless of race, national origin, or creed. The whole trend and pressure of American historical experience, particularly the victory of the Union over Confederacy and the further reinforcement of the sense of national citizenship and national rights occasioned by the accelerated centralization accompanying the First and the Second World Wars with their attendant stress on the ideology of democracy, has deeply engrained, the, until recently unchallenged, assumption that complete liberty is one of the great freedoms, indeed the key freedom, for which our Republic stands, facing the quasi-religious totalitarianisms of Fascism and Communism. This complete religious freedom is more than toleration. It is the recognition of an inalienable right by virtue of the manner of God's dealing with man. Religious liberty as the American people have come to know it, raising high a standard for all peoples, is both personal and corporate, both active and passive. Insofar as it is a personal right, it is the freedom to worship and assemble and proclaim without let or hindrance; it is also the right to abstain from or oppose religion without suffering civil disabilities. It has been largely the Catholic Church which has clarified and implemented the concept of corporate religious liberty within the American democratic context. By good fortune, one of the Founding Fathers, who had had the benefit of a theological education -- it was James Madison -- gave eloquent expression to this regent principle at the birth of our Constitutional or covenantal democracy. Thus it has fallen out that for the most part the American court have consistently recognized the priority of the Church in matters of faith and morals. The Church is not granted freedom or sufferance from an omnicompetent State, but rather a limited State itself acknowledges the freedom of the Church and for the most part sees therein indirect benefits to the body politic, particularly to the democratic commonwealth, which is by definition an open society. This corporate or ecclesiastical liberty includes the right to educate its youth, to maintain its own polity, to place chaplains in the field to minister to its own, to maintain contact with fellow Christians abroad, and the right to criticize the State when the moral conscience of the church is sensitized. Such is our American conception of religious liberty. But let no Church convert this right into a privilege!
It is not then possible for Americans informed and sustained by, this comprehensive understanding of religious freedom which is corporate and personal, negative and positive, to agree that the present significance of the First Amendment is exhausted merely in a restriction upon a preferential establishment of one denomination and even this only on the national level, nor can they acquiesce in a common Catholic contention, more often acted upon than openly asserted, that on the state level the establishment of one denomination or the multiple establishment of the major groups is still a live option wherever the majority in one state or another should eventually succeed in modifying or openly repealing the diverse state provisions against the public support of religion. The whole trend of American experience and custom, of legal enactment and judicial decision, the ethos and theory of American democracy with its double rootage in dissent and eighteenth-century rationalism, is against any attempt to restore bit by bit those conditions here in the seaboard state at the beginning of our national history, when the American experiment was just getting underway, before the American people had fully launched its ambitious program for mass education, before the Continental and Irish immigration had massively enlarged the racial, cultural, and religious heterogeneity of the population. The reiterated provisions of the state constitutions of the constituents of the expanding Union -- with their very specific prohibitions of sectarian instruction in the public schools and public support of denominational schools, has indeed set up an induction current within Constitutional law, tending to define the First Amendment of the Constitution in the fresher and more specific terms of the more recent efforts to keep organized religion from serving in any way as the engine of civil policy. As a consequence of this ground swell of conviction and experience, the Supreme Court has been induced, as we have seen, to construe the First Amendment in the image of the more detailed state provisions and by means of the admittedly rather frail conduit provided by the Fourteenth Amendment to make it the ultimate guaranty of complete separation throughout the nation.
If it be argued that the Fourteenth Amendment was not originally so broadly conceived, it should be pointed out that the present judicial construction of the meaning of personal liberty and the immunities and privileges of citizenship safeguarded therein is not inconsonant with the convictions of the generation that fought the evil of slavery and the threat of dissolution and in the flush of victory incorporated this Amendment in the Constitution. Nor is this judicial expansion of the meaning of personal liberty lacking in cogency and pertinence for a generation which is still struggling on a global scale with systems of government having only truncated conceptions of personal and group freedom.
If it be argued that the proposed Blaine Amendment of 1875 failed to pass the Senate along with several kindred national efforts inspired by President Grant's pleas for strict separation of religion and public instruction, it should be pointed out that many Senators who eventually voted it down did so in the conviction that separation had already been sufficiently guaranteed by the Constitution, and that the very next year Congress proceeded to require the inclusion of a provision comparable to the First Amendment and inclusive of an interdiction of sectarianism in education in the constitutions of all territories thereafter admitted to statehood.
If it be argued that the Fourteenth Amendment is a Gerry built bridge whereby the Federal Government is enabled to obtrude itself into the legitimate social experimentation going on in the 1948 isolated control unit of the Republic, it should be pointed out that the epochal decision in the Oregon case (1925) which safeguards the parochial system as giving expression to an inalienable right of parent and church is also based upon the Fourteenth Amendment.
And turning then finally and briefly to the practical argument. Would you, Professors O'Neill and McCrossen, approve of textbooks, free transportation, and perhaps other aid for the following types of private schools on the analogy of your program for public aid to parochial schools, and if not, what would be your Constitutional arguments against such support?
It is conceivable, for example, that the refugees from such Iron Curtain areas as Lithuania and Poland, in order to preserve their national culture in the free environment of the new world, would band together with kinsmen longer established in America to set up Lithuanian-American or Polish-American schools. With the financial obstacles to such an enterprise reduced by tax exemption and by free textbooks in the three R's and with the serious problem of gathering together a comparatively slight population of nationals (disparately settled in some metropolitan area) solved by free buses, they could conceivably succeed in their entirely laudable effort to preserve something of their old world culture. But should the general American public be taxed for this purpose? Is it not a sufficient boon that America grants in permitting private education of this kind? France would never permit in Alsace publicly recognized, nay more, subsidized. schools employing German or Alsatian, nor would Spain tolerate schools for Protestants even when wholly supported by Protestants. Before closing this question off, let me increase its urgency by simply listing the types of schools that would surely arise in this freer land, if the principle Catholics have authoritatively proclaimed in conclave, popular press, and learned journal in defense of tax aid for parochial schools, goes unchallenged. Shintoist and Buddhist schools will develop in Hawaii and California, once the assembly of disparately settled Japanese farmers' children is facilitated by free public transportation; Zionist schools will become more numerous even outside the concentrations of Jewish population; private schools for the children of professional families will be multiplied in metropolitan centers. Bit by bit the public schools, the effective crucibles of America, the melting pot of the peoples of the world, will have been fractured. Through the impairment of the public school system through these diversionary tactics of special groups aided by free transportation and free textbooks, and tax exemption of their properties the disaggregation of American education will proceed apace. Sectarian and main-line Protestants, Orthodox Jews and the Greek Orthodox communions, despairing of the public schools and tempted by further subsidy, will attempt to set up their own parochial or interdenominational schools with the aid of free bus service from increasingly far-flung districts. Fancy here permits one to imagine airplane flights in the future assembling children of the Reformed Shintoist faith of the MacArthur Dispensation in a consolidated school of their particular persuasion. If it be argued that the expenses for transportation would be excessive, the argument will have long lost its cogency. A generation of overlapping and competing private, public, and parochial jurisdictions will have habituated citizens to put a low, premium on efficiency and on merely neighborhood instruction. The great American experiment in popular education will have failed. The tax burden will have become so great that public aid for instruction at the higher levels will have had to be abandoned. Education, reduced unwittingly to shambles, will be limited for the majority of children to the essentials, returned indeed to private groups, the, family, and the Church.
I wish to say that the Catholic parochial schools (let me repeat), are thoroughly American, in that the American people have made the irreversible decision in their legislative chambers and their courts that denominational and private instruction shall enjoy full recognition alongside the state-supported system. Moreover, this is a right recognized as inherent in the Church and in the family and not a permission vouchsafed by a power of superior competence. But the Roman Church, having insisted always by appeal to the First Amendment and the allied asseverations and documents of American freedom that it may instruct its children not as a boon from the state but as a right of the Church recognized by a self-limiting State, should not now, grown great and influential by virtue of this comprehensive liberty, endeavor, by citing that same First Amendment, to convert this right into a privilege or a claim upon the public revenue. The parochial school system is just as American as the public school system, but to be American does not necessarily imply the privilege of public tax support.
PROFESSOR HOMANS: Thank you, Dr. Williams.
Our second speaker, I think strangely enough, will be in opposition to Mr. Williams. He is Professor, he tells me, of Roman Literature at Boston College. He, in particular, teaches the subject of Russia at Boston College, a subject which I didn't know was tolerated there. Previous to being at Boston College he taught at Marietta College and at Bucknell. He has written extensively on the subject under discussion. . . . It gives me great pleasure to introduce Professor Vincent McCrossen. . . . (Applause) . . .
PROFESSOR McCROSSEEN: The opponents of public aid to parochial education include men and women, fellow Americans, of almost every conceivable viewpoint and motivation. There are some Catholics and Jews and agnostics and atheists among them. Almost certainly the great majority of the opponents are Protestant, although there has been a significant number of very prominent Protestant leaders who have expressed themselves critically against the opponents of aids for parochial schools.
The motivation of the opponents of such public aid for parochial education is equally varied. Many of the opponents are motivated by highest sincerity and patriotism, deep conviction of conscience. Some are motivated by a muddled confusion, an inaccurate belief concerning what is or what is not in the American Constitution, what is or what is not in the American tradition of religious education, or by an emotionalism of fear and hate which has never examined the reasons or lack of reasons for its position. Finally and most unfortunately and most difficult to deal with, a few of the opponents are motivated by bigotry which sees in any Catholic position merely something to attack. The historical roots of such bigotry are varied and numerous. For us of predominantly Anglo-Saxon culture it is most important to realize that the Big Lie is nothing invented in the twentieth century by Uncle Joe from the Kremlin. The Anglo-Saxon Big Lie was one invented by Queen Elizabeth and her pirates and thieves and marauders to justify a position before men which was not justified before the immutable law of God. The Big Lie of Queen Elizabeth was against Catholics, Spanish Catholics above all, yet Catholics in general, against what they believe and teach and hold to be true, against their faith, their priests and Bishops, and the Holy Father. The Big Lie wrought tremendous harm and brought tremendous ignorance to the Anglo-Saxons as a Big Lie is bound to do. It has grown with the telling down through the centuries so that the contemporary Anglo-Saxon bigot in blindness and fanaticism simply hates the Catholic position. It is an example of the way that evil works. If Satan were to appear among us in his reality, we should all be so frightened as to flee in terror. It is much more logical and effective for him to use human instruments. Bigotry and bigots are high in his lists. The Bigotry at stake here is based on the lurid imagination that Lucifer in the disguise of the Pope is at large in the Vatican, plotting to bring spiritual Armageddon to America by inciting the American Catholic hierarchy to infiltrate American education and eventually to destroy democracy in this country. But great as it is, the power of bigotry and of Satan is limited: God's graces are infinite. The result is a battle of the exhaustible with the Inexhaustible, of measurable hate with Immeasurable Love. Sauls can always become Pauls.
But of whatever sort are the opponents of public aid for parochial education and whatever their motivation, their arguments follow somewhat similar patterns. The Harvard University Law Forum recognizes the importance to contemporary America of these arguments and the answers to them. It recognizes the importance of presenting both sides of a controversy. Free discussions like this are held to air differences of opinion and to help prod consciences of both majorities and minorities. People, even the majority of people, can be insensitive to objective justice. It takes time and patience to make the cause of justice known.
One of the most universal arguments against public aid to parochial schools is couched along the proposition that it would be a violation of the principle of separation of Church and State. The argument has so many facets and many answers. Let us examine several of the more essential.
The First Amendment to the Constitution of the United States states:
"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof."
By the first half of the above sentence Congress is prohibited from establishing the Catholic Church, or the Methodist Church, or any Church as the preferential State Church of our nation. By the second half of the sentence Congress is forbidden from any federal act that prohibits the free exercise of Catholicity or Methodism or any other religious faith. There is not a word in the above provision about the separation of Church and State and still less any word against the use of public aid for religious schools of any denomination. What is all the fuss about? We need to look elsewhere . . . into historical roots, doctrinal teachings, developing traditions, to gain a proper perspective.
In prohibiting the establishment of one sect as a National Church, the Constitutional fathers were trying to prevent what had happened universally in the European Protestant lands and what had already largely happened in the Protestant established colonies (later become states) in our own country. Let us underline the fact that such measures were historically rooted in a suspicion against the record of Protestant groups. The State Church in Western Europe was a development of Protestant lands, not Catholic ones. The State Church, with the head of the State ipso facto also the head of the Church, is a Protestant darling, not a Catholic one. It is repulsive to the Catholic mentality. In every single Protestant land of the Old World, there was a State Church; in Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Germany the Lutheran Church, in England the Anglican, in Holland the Reformed. And as the Protestants came to our country fleeing, if they came for religious reasons (as frequently they did not) , almost always Protestant tyranny, the restrictions of Protestant groups against other Protestant groups, rather than fleeing from restrictions imposed by Catholics, the Protestants brought with them their Protestant darling, the State established Church. For example, the Puritan in Massachusetts, the Episcopalian in Virginia. Our Constitutional fathers had reason to suspect the motives of the Protestant groups toward the establishment of a State Church. The Protestants had a one hundred per cent record in the Old World and almost as bad a one in the New World of establishing, whenever they could wrest the power to do so, their own sect as the Church of the State.
But such is not the Catholic way. We reject the National State Church with the head of the State the head of the Church as repugnant. What Catholic thought often holds up as an ideal is quite different. A Catholic ideal is a Church state, that is, a state which rejects every purpose that is not in harmony with the principles of Christ. That even in the most Catholic countries such an ideal is almost never found is obvious. Catholic rulers and Catholic leaders are often many degrees removed from sainthood. They are very fallible. In their fallibility they often fail a Catholic ideal. But our ideal remains in spite of frequent failure. "Ah, but a man's reach should exceed his grasp; or what's heaven for?"
BUT the Catholic viewpoint holds such an ideal to be attainable ONLY when approximately the ENTIRE population is Catholic. I n a country like our own, where religious allegiance was divided from the beginning, Catholic thought agrees with our Constitutional fathers. No one religion should be established because of the difficulty of conscience involved for the many who are not of that religion. This traditional teaching of the Catholic Church has often been re-emphasized in America by our Catholic hierarchy. It is so stated in our Catholic Encyclopedia. No honest man of good will could misquote it or misapply or misinterpret our teaching if he would take the time to consult as universally available a set of volumes as the Catholic Encyclopedia. This fact is too little understood and it should help to clarify the issues for those who sincerely believe that the Catholic Church is on a campaign to establish itself as the State Church in this country and is using the school as the opening wedge. We repudiate the State Church. We recognize it as the Protestant oversimplification of the relations between Church and State. But it is not our "baby." The paternity is not ours.
The paternity of the State Church lies within the Renaissance and the Protestant. Revolt. As the Renaissance looked backward to a rebirth of ancient values, there was in the Southern and Mediterranean lands an impressive ancient culture. But in the Northern lands when one looked backwards one thousand years, there was only barbarism and primitivism. The Northern lands without great ancient cultures distorted the Renaissance into the Protestant Revolt. In looking backward they faced a simple barbarism and primitivism that colored their religious outlook. They simplified relations between Church and State which were not simple but rather inextricably complex. Their distortion among other phenomena assumed the form of the State Church.
By the eighteenth century, our Constitutional fathers had caught up with the Catholic teaching and rightly refused to sanction a National Church. We Catholics agree with their wisdom .
We need next to examine the matter of separation of Church and State which is supposed to clinch all arguments against public aid for parochial schools. This phrase does not occur in the First Amendment nor in the Constitution as a whole. Jefferson is the author of the clichéd phrase "wall of separation," but he used it in a private letter fourteen years after the Constitution was adopted. It is not in our Constitution. Jefferson was not even in the country when the First Amendment was formulated. He was in France. Madison is the mover behind the First Amendment.
Did either Jefferson or Madison subscribe to an absolute wall separating Church and State? We can assuredly find the answer in the project probably of all closest to Jefferson's heart: the University of Virginia. He proposed for the University that the various denominations should AT PUBLIC EXPENSE set up elaborate religious arrangements for their students, that there should be a theological school for training clergymen, that there should be a part of the University set aside as a place of religious worship. He stated:
"the relations which exist between man and his Maker and the duties resulting from these relations are the most interesting and important to every human being and the most incumbent on his study and investigation."
Mr. Madison was one of the visitors at the University of Virginia who approved Jefferson's plan. That tradition of NO unbreachable wall of separation between Church and State delineated by Jefferson and Madison has lived on. By it our National Government contributes directly or indirectly to religion in supporting in the military forces Chaplains of various faiths. More recently in N.Y.A. aids and G.I. "bill of rights," in ROTC programs, it has contributed directly or indirectly to the maintenance of men and women in religious institutions, including schools of theology. It grants postal subsidies to religious publications. State and local governments grant tax exemptions to religious institutions and supply them with fire and police protection, with water and disposal services. The opposition to parochial school aids on the national level is asking our government to reverse its traditional American policy, start discrimination, and violate the First Amendment.
A second common argument against public support of parochial schools maintains that religious schools are not in the American tradition. Actually the religious school was the original American school. The schools set up by the colonists and operated for a considerable period after the republic was formed shows that the majority recognized the importance of religious education. The religious school is enshrined in the hallowed tradition of the infant republic. It is no late arrival upon the American scene, no foreign importation. It reflects the genius, the temper, and the religious earnestness of the early settlers. Public funds were commonly appropriated for such schools. The REAL truth is that the non-sectarian school is not the traditional American school. It was an impasse into which we were forced.
A third common argument against public support of parochial schools maintains that they are divisive and undermine the uniform democratic ideal. This is a dangerous argument and bluntly a totalitarian one. It fails to distinguish between uniformity (which is totalitarian) and unity. America needs to awaken to the danger inherent in the preachment of those who suggest that the parochial or the private school is divisive and that there should be only one type of school supported by public funds. This preachment reaches even such absurd extremes as to suggest that there is a totalitarian threat in Catholic education and that it is in Catholic lands that totalitarianism finds the readiest ear. Such a preachment betrays an abysmal ignorance of European history and of the teaching of the Catholic Church. To be very blunt, the beginnings of modern totalitarianism go back to the founder of Protestantism, to Martin Luther. Luther stressed the subordination of the individual to the community will. Developing Luther's idea further, the real founder of modern totalitarianism, J. J. Rousseau, from Calvinist Geneva, maintained that the general will is always right, that all that the people do is legitimate, all that it orders is sacred. Hence, Modern Totalitarianism true to its Protestant root does not permit of individual deviation. The individual must goose-step to the general will. "Gemeinutz geht vor Eigennutz" (The good of the community takes precedence over the good of the individual) ran the most important of Nazi slogans. But Catholic philosophy emphasizes that man; although he must contribute to the common good, is not its goose-stepper. Man has individual rights that do not provene from his membership in the community but from the fact that he is created in the image and likeness of God, that he has a soul; an infinite dignity because he is a child of God and destined, if he reach his proper goal, to enjoy an eternity with Him.
Furthermore, from the Catholic viewpoint man was not created to serve the State but the State was created to help man. The Nazis understood their debt to Luther only too well. They often named Luther their historical founder. Their forte was a quotation of Luther's reply when he was reprimanded for a mistranslation of the Bible. When Luther was questioned why he had translated "through faith and works" shall man work out his salvation by "durch den Glauben allein" (by faith alone) his answer was: because it is in the German way, it is in the German spirit. Such Nazi authorities as Ernst Krieck and Fritz Sollheim upon the party's descent from Luther seriously suggested that the Number One Card of party membership should be an honorary one . . . to Martin Luther. Modern Protestants may object that they no longer care about the primacy of faith: it doesn't make much difference what one believes as long as one's works are good. Ah yes, but that assumption means either that the original Protestant position was wrong, or the contemporary one is wrong, or they are both wrong. But at any rate, in examining this argument against parochial schools, it is terribly important to stick by history and original sources and to shout back at those who attack the parochial school as divisive, un-American, probably totalitarian, that they babble nonsense. In lands where totalitarianism establishes a complete sway, one of the first victims is the parochial school. The complete totalitarians begin by shutting off its state support and then they close it entirely, and the argument that they use is that it is divisive. But certainly no education in America (which, thank God, is not yet completely totalitarian) is divisive in any proper sense when it aims at the Catholic goal of education: to turn out a good citizen for this life so that he may love, honor and serve God here below so as to enjoy an eternity with Him in Heaven.
A final argument against parochial school support is: the government supplies free education for all; if an individual doesn't like it, he can hardly complain if the government tells him he can have other education only at his own expense. As a person who for the past third of a century has had long personal experience with American education at every level, I refuse violently to subscribe to the idea that the only American school which performs a public function worthy of public support is the public school. If I were an atheist, I should still say that the public school which year in and year out turns out thousands upon thousands of graduates (as anyone who employs them knows to be true who have not learned disciplines, who have not learned to understand, who often cannot write and read and spell, who not only cannot think, but not even FOLLOW a thought, hasn't any monopoly upon public support. I would as a mere atheist even suggest that the Harvard Law Forum might for the poor taxpayer in many an American community add to tonight's subject another one; it might well be debated, at least for many an American community, whether there is a justness of public support for public schools. But since I am not an atheist, I have even more vital arguments against the monopolistic position of the public school. As a Christian, I think that education should include a great deal of instruction in religion. I think that Christ was right in His emphasis that the values of God come first. If parents paid the government to supply food for their children and the government food lacked vitamin C, there would be no reason why the parents should pay again privately for their children's food. If the government says religion is not as important for education as vitamin C is for food, then it is deciding a religious issue in violation of the First Amendment. This is the position in which American Catholics often find themselves today. They cannot in conscience send their children to the public school because so often it is Protestant in character or secular or because it leaves out that which Christ said is of first importance. In being denied access to public funds, such parents are being penalized for exercising their freedom of religion. If it is the national government which penalizes them by refusing to allow money for bus rides or health aids or lunches or non-religious textbooks (the only areas in which either the constitutions of 47 states or two Supreme Court decisions permit federal monies to go to parochial school students) , then the Federal Government is interfering with the free exercise of religion. The basis for the support of parochial schools with tax funds rests solely on the principle of distributive justice. Distributive justice imposes an obligation on governments to disburse its tax revenues to the persons and institutions which render a public service. Hence to the extent that parochial schools render a public service, they are entitled to a share in the public funds. To fail to recognize this fact renders students in parochial schools untouchables. Those who oppose parochial school aid threaten to introduce an Oriental caste system into America and make a part of our children untouchables, untouchable by distributive justice. This is scarcely in the spirit of a God Who is the synthesis of all Justice and Whose recurrent emphasis upon children is: to suffer them to come unto Me for of such is the Kingdom of Heaven. (Applause)
PROFESSOR HOMANS: Next, I have to introduce to you an extremely well known American. He is a graduate of Boston University·, School of Theology. He was one of the presidents of the World Council of Churches, and he is Bishop of the Methodist Church in the New York area. It gives me pleasure to introduce Bishop G. Bromley Oxnam. . . . (Applause)
BISHOP OXNAM: Mr. Chairman, and members of the Forum -- I have made it a rule never to take a manuscript to the platform, but this evening is an exception; my colleagues have used a manuscript and there are certain quotations I would like to read. It has always seemed to me that if Mary Martin and Ethel Merman could learn their lines, I ought to be able to learn mine. But (Laughter) I come to the theme, and we have approximately twenty minutes.
I am opposed to the use of public funds for parochial schools, whether such schools be Roman Catholic, Protestant, or Jewish. Neither Protestant nor Jewish bodies are demanding public funds for the support of parochial schools. The demand comes from the Roman Catholic hierarchy that has sought and continues to seek such public support.
After Cardinal Spellman had sought to excommunicate a Protestant by declaring, when referring to Mrs. Roosevelt, "I shall not again publicly acknowledge you," it will be recalled that he made an apology trip up the Hudson, and the nation was advised that the Roman Catholic hierarchy no longer seeks public funds for the operating expenses and further extension of its school system. It is now to be content with a few pennies -- actually several million dollars -- for bus rides, school lunches, and medical attention. This announcement will be given consideration when it is confirmed by the Vatican.
From the beginning, the demand has been for full support. Bishop Hennessey of Dubuque in 1871 said: "In opposing the public schools, I believe that I am promoting the principles and teachings of Christianity. . . . When the state takes upon itself the right to mold and fashion the minds of children . . . the result is a species of infidelity of the most insidious and deadly character.
. . . Let the Catholics have their own schools and the Protestants have theirs, subject to uniform inspection and examination, and let each have equal proportions of the school fund. This is all we are contending for." A letter from the National Welfare Conference, dated May 24, 1943, addressed to Senator Elbert D. Thomas during the hearings on the question of federal aid, stated, "The Catholic position is one of opposition to any measure for federal aid to education that would: (a) interfere with local control of the purposes and processes of education and (b) fail to make mandatory the inclusion of Catholic schools in its benefits." A request similar in nature was filed by the Very Rev. Monsignor Frederick G. Hochwalt with the President's Commission on Higher Education October 29, 1947. This issue is before us because the Roman Catholic hierarchy wants to get its hands in the public treasury. If we are to take Cardinal Spellman's statement at face value, and if his suggestion that it is not constitutional for the parochial schools to receive public funds for teachers' salaries and other operating expenses is to be heeded, it must be remembered that the hierarchy itself has attacked the decisions of the Supreme Court in the Everson case, for instance, and has announced its intention to secure change.
I am opposed to the use of public funds for the support of parochial schools because it would result in the building up of a score of competing tax-supported parochial systems, and, I believe, the eventual destruction of the public system. Roman Catholic statistics should be scrutinized carefully. Each church has the right to determine its method of accounting, but the public should know that the methods differ. A child is counted in the Roman Catholic figures when baptized, and, unless excommunicated, appears to be counted as long as he lives. Some other communions do not count membership until a child comes to the age of decision and joins the church. If we take the Roman Catholic statement that there are approximately 26 million Roman Catholics in the United States, a figure that Roman Catholics themselves have said is 10 million too large, we must face comparable figures in other communions. The Methodist Church, for instance, has approximately 9 million members. There are other Methodist bodies which will bring the total to approximately 11 millions. If we were to use the same method of membership tabulation as used by the Roman Catholic Church, we would multiply this figure by about two and one-half. In other words, the Methodist constituency in the nation is approximately equal to the Roman Catholic. Do we wish a Methodist system of education? An Episcopalian? A Baptist? All to be supported by public funds? There are more than 700 colleges and universities related to the churches of the United States and more than 500 of these are Protestant. A decision to grant public funds for the support of one church may mean the granting of similar funds for all the churches, thus fragmenting the American public educational system and, I think, eventually destroying it.
I am opposed to the use of public funds for parochial education because public money can thereby be spent to undermine the basic principles upon which the democratic order rests. The Roman Catholic hierarchy does not believe in our public educational system. Pope Pius XI, in an Encyclical dated January 16, 1930, wrote,
"Attendance at non-Catholic, neutral, or mixed schools -- schools, that is to say, indifferently open to Catholics and non-Catholics without distinction -- is forbidden to Catholic children and can only be tolerated at the discretion of bishops in special circumstances of place and time and under special precautions. Neither is it admissible for Catholics to attend mixed schools - worse still if obligatory for all -- where religious instruction is provided and pupils receive the rest of their teaching from non-Catholic masters, together with non-Catholic children. . . . For a school to be acceptable, it is necessary that the whole teaching and organization of the school - namely, the teachers, the curriculum, and the books -- be governed by the Christian spirit, under the maternal direction and vigilance of the church."
The President's Commission on Higher Education enunciated a policy that I believe to be American. It said,
"Sound public policy demands, furthermore, that state and local public educational bodies be able to exercise at all times the right to review and control educational policies in any institution or agency for which public monies are appropriated and expended. Public responsibility for support of education implies public responsibility for the policies that are supported. It follows, therefore, that the acceptance of public funds by any institution, public or private, should carry with it the acceptance of the right of the people as a whole to exercise review and control of the educational policies and procedures of that institution. Such acceptance by privately controlled institutions would, in the opinion of this Commission, tend to destroy the competitive advantages and free inquiry which they have established and which are so important in providing certain safeguards to freedom. It would be contrary to the best interests of these institutions as well as to those of society in general." . . .
The culture of a nation is determined in its schools. I do not want public money spent to teach children the ideas contained in the following catechisms. I quote first from Nuevo Ripalda, the catechism used in all religious instruction in Spain:
"Q. What are the freedoms which liberalism defends?
"A. Freedom of conscience, freedom of worship, and freedom of the press.
"Q. What does freedom of the press mean2
"A. The right to print and publish without previous censorship all kinds of opinions, however absurd and corrupting they may be.
"Q. Must the government suppress this freedom by means of censorship?
"A. Obviously, yes.
"Q: Why?
"A. Because it must prevent the deception, calumny and corruption of its subjects which harm the general good. "
"Q. Are there other pernicious freedoms?
"A. Yes. Freedom of education, freedom of propaganda, and freedom of assembly.
"Q. Why are these freedoms pernicious?
"A. Because they serve to teach error, propagate vice, and plot against the Church.
"Q. Does one sin gravely who subscribes to a liberal newspaper?
"A. Yes. . . . Because he contributes his money to evil, places his faith in jeopardy, and gives others a bad example."
This catechism is introduced by the statement that "The principal errors condemned by the Church are thirteen," and it lists among them Protestantism, Liberalism, and Free Masonry.
It may be said that, after all, that is Spain, this is America. Roman Catholic policies are determined in Rome, not in the United States. However, the Catechism entitled "Manual of Christian Doctrine" which is used in parochial schools in the United States and carries the imprimatur of Cardinal Dougherty of Philadelphia is very similar:
"Q. What more should the state do than respect the rights and liberties of the church?
"A. The state should also aid, protect, and defend the church.
"Q. What then is the principal obligation of the heads of states?
"A. Their principal obligation is to practice the Catholic religion themselves, and, as they are in power, to protect and defend it.
"Q. Has the state the right and the duty to proscribe schism or heresy?
"A. Yes, it has the right and duty to do both for the good of the nation and for the faithful themselves; for religious unity is the principal foundation of social unity.
"Q. When may the state tolerate dissenting worships?
"A. When those worships have acquired a sort of legal existence, consecrated by time and accorded by treaties or covenants.
"Q. May the state separate itself from the church?
"A. No, because it may not withdraw from the supreme rule of Christ.
"Q. What name is given to the doctrine that the state has neither the right nor the duty to be united with the church and to protect it?
"A. The doctrine is called liberalism. It is founded principally on the fact that modern society rests on liberty of conscience and of worship, on liberty of speech and of the press.
"Q. Why is liberalism to be condemned?
"A. Because it denies all subordination of the state to the church; because it confounds liberty with right; because it despises the social dominion of Christ and rejects the benefits derived therefrom."
Is a Jew to pay taxes for the support of Roman Catholic parochial education when he believes that in some quarters the emphasis is of such a nature as to contribute to anti-Semitism? Such matters would sooner or later be in the courts. It is interesting to ask in this connection whether the late Most Reverend John T. McNicholas, Archbishop of Cincinnati, and prior to his death the President General of the National Catholic Education Association, had thought through the statement he made in a pamphlet entitled "Federal Aid for American Education." He said, "Marriage implies the right to procreate and to educate children. This right does not come from the state or from any civil or ecclesiastical authority; it comes from nature and from God." Note that he includes ecclesiastical as well as civil authority in that statement. The Roman Catholic position logically calls upon every parent to determine the education of his children, and, if schools satisfactory to the views of the parents are not available, then the parents must associate themselves with other parents and establish schools to their liking and call upon the people to support these schools. Does the hierarchy really mean this? If so, does the hierarchy honestly hold that a Communist parent has the same duty and should be granted the same privileges? Is the Communist father to determine the education of his child, to build Communist schools and call upon the rest of us to pay the bill?
Personally, I do not want public monies to be used to support Communist schools, fascist schools, Roman Catholic schools or Protestant schools. Public monies should be used to support public schools. (Applause)
I am opposed to the use of public funds for parochial education because I believe the people themselves would thus be driving a divisive factor into the national life and thereby contributing to the destruction of national unity. I do not disagree with the American policy that has properly within the conditions of freedom permitted the development of the private school system. The issue is whether the public should pay for private schools. It must be evident that if such funds were available to the Roman Catholic Church, all Roman Catholic students would be withdrawn from the public school system and reared by themselves in accordance with the views of the Roman Catholic Church, not only upon the subject of religion but likewise of politics and economics. Personally, at the elementary level I prefer the public schools. I am proud of the fact that my Protestant sons and daughter had the privilege of sitting beside their Roman Catholic and Jewish friends - Jew by gentile, black by white, native born by foreign born, and thus learned how to live together. How far are we to go in this division of the community life? (Applause) I admit the full right of Roman Catholics to organize as they see fit. Personally, I want the same liberty for every Roman Catholic that I desire for myself. I wish the Roman Catholic hierarchy believed in religious liberty, and in those lands where it is in the majority, I wish that the same liberty we gladly grant them here might under their influence be granted to Protestants there. (Applause) But I must ask the question, "Why Should There Be Roman Catholic Veterans, Roman Catholic Trade Unions, Roman Catholic Firemen, Roman Catholic Policemen?" After all, my sons fought side by side with Roman Catholic soldiers. Why not American veterans, American workers? Is all this separation but preparation for the building of a Roman Catholic political party in the United States? Are we to have a political party here that follows the dictates of the Vatican line? Bear in mind there are official Roman Catholic parties in European countries. (Laughter) Don't laugh, there are Roman Catholic political parties in Europe exercising power at the moment. That is the pattern that Roman Catholicism follows wherever it has power to do so. The Roman Catholic Church insists upon being both a state and a church. The Pope is not only the head of a church, but also the head of a State. In the light of what was said a few moments ago, I am fearful that Martin Luther must have rolled over in his grave. (Laughter) He speaks as the head of a world church with spiritual interests, and also speaks as the head of a state with political and financial interests. Unfortunately, this setup means that the Roman Catholic Church seeks to advance its political interests as a state and the Roman Catholic state seeks to further ecclesiastical interests as a church. Thus Roman Catholic political parties in European nations follow the Vatican line just as Communist parties follow the Moscow line. We do not wish to add to this political power the power that would lie in a vast educational system under the dictates of a hierarchy and support it from public treasuries.
I resent the attacks that are being made today by the hierarchy upon the public school system of the United States. It was Archbishop McNicholas himself in his 1945 Christmas message who said, "A long-range program should make us see that our political educational system, devoid of everything pointing the way to man's eternal destiny, is a menace to our country, because it excludes God and a fixed code of morality." That is a libel upon the public school system of America, and I suggest that those who so falsify read the remarkable document entitled "Moral and Spiritual Values in the Public Schools," just off the press. It was prepared by the Educational Policies Commission of the National Education Association of the United States and the American Association of School Administrators. I resent likewise the deliberate attempt to question the patriotism of the public school teachers of this nation. We are being told that in every little red schoolhouse there is a little Red teacher. (Laughter) I know the teachers of this nation and believe that there is no group of citizens in the community more loyal to the basic concepts of our democracy and more devoted to the good of the republic than are the schoolteachers of this nation. (Applause) I would like to say further that it has yet to be shown that the product of the parochial school is a better citizen, a cleaner person, or more patriotic than is the student who comes from our homes, passes through our public schools, and moves to his service as a citizen. I must say further that when I note the product of the schools in Italy, in Spain, and in other Catholic-controlled countries, I am of the opinion that the American public school system is producing a graduate far better qualified to maintain freedom, use it to move to justice, and thus be on the way to fraternity.
To sum up, I am opposed to the use of public funds for parochial schools whether such schools be Roman Catholic, Protestant, or Jewish. I am opposed to the use of public funds for parochial schools because I believe we would thus build up a score of competing sectarian systems and eventually destroy the public system. I am opposed to the use of public funds for parochial education because under such a system public money can be spent to undermine the basic principles upon which the democratic order rests. I am opposed to the use of public funds for parochial education because we thereby drive a divisive factor into the national life. I hold to the American practice, developed experimentally, whose wisdom has been proved, namely, that public funds shall be kept for public education. We do not wish a situation in this land in which a church becomes the greatest landholder of the community and a political factor of such a nature as to control the minds of our people. Clericalism is furthered by this recommendation. By "clericalism" I mean the pursuit of power, especially political power, by a religious hierarchy, carried on by secular methods for purposes of social domination. The American way is better. Let's hold to it! (Applause)
PROFESSOR HOMANS: Thank you, Mr. Oxnam. I have moments here of wondering whether my services as moderator won't seriously be required. . . . (Applause). Now, in accordance with our alternating principle, I am presenting to you our last speaker who is Professor of Speech at Brooklyn College; the author of "Religion and Education, Under the Constitution." Professor James M. O'Neill. . . . (Applause) . . .
PROFESSOR O'NEILL: Mr. Chairman, Ladies and Gentlemen: I came here with the understanding that I was to discuss one aspect of this question, and I'm going to stick pretty closely to that, after a few introductory remarks which seem to me necessary.
I would not be for or against any bill for federal aid to education without carefully studying every provision of the bill. For I am not tonight for or against any bill for federal aid of any kind to any schools. I do happen to know that there is no such thing as a Catholic position in regard to federal aid to education, or to parochial schools. There are at least six positions, maintained by regular, orthodox Catholics, and every one of them is agreed to by non-Catholics, and by many non-Catholics. The idea that there is a division - a strict division - between Catholics and Protestants in regard to federal aid to schools or to parochial schools, is simply not true. And before you accept it, I think you should ask for dependable evidence.
Now I want to state my position on a few other ideas. The idea that American Catholics can be held responsible for the practices, the policies, or even the Catholic catechisms of Spain, is nonsense. (Applause)
I happen to know, because I went to a great deal of trouble last summer to find out (and it was difficult to find out) exactly what are the religious restrictions on Catholics in Sweden. I got the documents through the intercession of my friend Senator Wayne Morse of Oregon, (Applause) who got them from the Swedish Embassy. I'm publishing them along with the restrictions on Protestants in Spain, in parallel columns and I think you may be interested to see that they are almost identical. (Applause)
The idea that an establishment of religion is today a Catholic phenomenon and not a Protestant phenomenon is more nonsense. If you want that from the hands of a distinguished Protestant scholar, get a monumental book published by Harpers about five years ago by Prof. M. Serle Bates, Professor in the Union Theological Seminary, of New York City. You will find in his long discussion and his tabulation at the end, that the situation is so nearly 50-50 that you can hardly make a distinction between the Protestant countries that have restrictions on dissenters, and the Catholic countries that have restrictions on dissenters.
If anybody can point out to me and identify an American Catholic, now, or in the past, who has ever believed in the establishment of the Catholic Church in this country, or in any special privilege given to the Catholics that isn't available to the members of every religion, I should like to know about him; I have never heard of one. Neither has any of my distinguished colleagues on this panel tonight. There isn't any such thing.
The idea that the policies, political and economic, are dictated to American Catholics from Rome, which was what I understood Bishop Oxnam to say, has absolutely no relation to fact. It is flatly contrary to Catholic doctrine. Anyone can find that out, who wants to take the trouble to find out what Catholic doctrine is. (Laughter) The idea that all Catholic theologians believe that the state should repress heresy, is simply not true. If I had the time and my files here (I left my files in New York) , (Laughter) I could quote you Catholic theologians by the handful, and among them the most distinguished ones alive today, who take exactly the opposite position. Now are they all mistaken? I don't believe so.
The idea that the Catholic hierarchy in America doesn't believe in the system of religious liberty as it has developed in the country is contrary to nearly 170 years of unbroken record. I have had occasion recently to go into the subject also. I can't give all the evidence to you in a twenty-minute speech, but from the very beginning when our system of the relationship of government to religion was hammered out in the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia in 1787, and later in the first Congress, it was done with the assistance and active participation of distinguished Catholic citizens. Among the most distinguished and active men, in association with James Madison, and George Washington, and Benjamin Franklin, were Daniel and Charles Carroll of Maryland, and Thomas Fitzsimmons of Pennsylvania. They participated actively in the preparation of the Constitution, and specifically in the framing of the Bill of Rights. As soon as the Bill of Rights was adopted, the first Catholic Bishop of America, John Carroll (who was the brother of Daniel, who participated both in the Constitution convention and the First Congress, and was the cousin, as well, of Charles Carroll, who was one of the committee of three who had charge of the Bill of Rights in the United States Senate) endorsed it unequivocally. I do not believe anyone can find a Catholic Bishop in our history, and we've had something like 552 of them (I'm not going to read you all their works tonight) , (Laughter) but if anyone will find one Catholic Bishop who has ever questioned the validity, the propriety of that system, I'd like the Bishop's name. I haven't been able to find him. The people who are talking about the Catholic hierarchy not believing in religious liberty have, to my knowledge, never cited anything to prove it.
It doesn't do any good to quote a few fragments from the Syllabus of Errors of 100 years ago. That, incidentally, was a list of topics each of which referred to a specific document. No scholar should pretend to know what any one of these topics means until he reads the documents where it is discussed. There isn't a phrase in them that means that any Catholic is supposed to or does oppose the system that we have in the United States of America. What is that system? It isn't very complex. And it has been universally upheld in this country until very recently. T he First Amendment provides "that Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof." The First Amendment was written in answer to petitions by a majority of the young states most of whom adopted the exact phraseology of the Virginia Bill of Rights asking that no religious sect or society be preferred by law over any other. That's an establishment of religion. Congress responded to that request and spelled out what was the actual situation. They all agreed, of course, that the Federal government had no authority in that area, but they wanted it spelled out. Jefferson said he wanted a text by which to try future federal governments if they got out of line. I don't know if they used the phrase "out of line"; that may have been too informal for Jefferson, but that was the idea. We lived under that idea, that concept of what an establishment meant from the beginning down to the decision in the McCollum case. There was some language in the dissenting opinion in the Everson case which said that the purpose - mind you, the purpose - of the First Amendment, was to create a complete and permanent separation between the spheres of religious activity and civil authority by preventing any kind of government aid to religion, in any guise, form, or degree. I have been accused by four people at least, of some 50 or 60 who reviewed a recent book of mine, of using intemperate language, when I characterize that expression of the justices as fanatical and historic nonsense. I've considered the reprimand, and looked up the words again, and decided that my statement was a temperate, literate, accurate description of the languages used by the Justices. The purpose of the First Amendment was to prohibit government in any guise, form or degree of religion of any kind. The purpose of any language that has a purpose can exist only in the mind of the person using the language. It couldn't possibly be anywhere else. The purpose isn't in the black marks on the paper, it's in the minds of the people using the language. (Laughter)
So we're told that Madison and Jefferson, the men of the First Congress, and the people who ratified the Bill of Rights, had as their purpose to prohibit any use of any government aid in any guise, form or degree. Now the acceptance of that historical and fanatic nonsense, and I still insist anyone can prove it to be both historical and fanatic (Pause) nonsense (Laughter), the acceptance of that today, has tentatively stopped every rational debate on government aid to education. Whether or not any particular bill is good enough to get my support, or anybody else's support, is a question of what's in the bill. When the last bill, the Taft bill, got before the House Committee on Education and Labor, where there were six Catholics and it came to vote, they divided exactly three to three. There were three for it and three against it. This proves there is no such thing as a Catholic position on those things. Every debate that has started in the last 15 years in regard to federal aid to education has been blocked by the cry, "Oh, you can't talk about that; the Constitution of the United States forbids it. It's against the principle of separation of Church and State." I think that is one of the most serious things impeding education, unity, harmony, all sorts of things, in the United States. It is an absolutely mythical monster that has no relation to reality.
Is there any evidence on which I can stand when I say that the Justices of the Supreme Court were talking nonsense in saying that the purpose of the First Amendment was to forbid any use of government money in aid of religion in any guise, form, or degree? Well; the libraries are stacked with it, stacked with it. The Amendment was written by the First Congress. The sponsor in the First Congress was James Madison. Within three weeks after they finished writing the Bill of Rights, James Madison was a member of the Joint Committee of the two Houses which set up the chaplain system to spend United States money for chaplains in the House and Senate. We've been spending it ever since. Shortly after that, George Washington sent a memorandum from his War Secretary Harrison asking Congress to send Christian missionaries to Christianize and civilize the Indians. And in order that we should not have any doubts that it involved money, the Congress was reminded that it costs less to send missionaries than to send soldiers. We began in the 1780's to spend money to Christianize the Indians, and I have read pages, and pages, and pages, in the State Papers on Indian affairs, of the itemized bills of Christian missionaries and missionary societies that spent United States money Christianizing the Indians from 1781 to 1900. And when it ended in 1900, we were spending a half million dollars a year that way. Now that may be peanuts today, but it wasn't in 1900. (Laughter) That half a million dollars was U. S. Government money and we were spending it to that tune to aid Christian missionaries to spread religion among the Indians.
The United States Government has spent money in aid of religion every day since it came into existence. So has every state in the Union, and every one of them is doing it today. The McCollum decision only decided that you couldn't have voluntary religious education in school buildings during school hours. It did not decide anything else; and it is the only decision in the history of the Supreme Court that even looked in that direction. Every president of the United States from George Washington to Harry Truman, inclusive, has spent government money, United States money, in aid of religion in various guises, forms and degrees. I think that the Justices of the Supreme Court ought to know that, and if they are going to say that it has been unconstitutional since 1791, they ought to explain how it happened. I should like to see one of them take a list of the Presidents of the United States from Washington to Truman, and just put after each President's name whether in the opinion of the Justice each President didn't know what the First Amendment meant, or wasn't honest enough to live up to his oath of office and support the Constitution. Every President we've ever had either had to be too dull to know what the First Amendment was about, including Madison and Jefferson, both of whom were Presidents for eight years: or else they had to be too dishonest to live up to their oath of office.
Every Congress we've ever had has appropriated money in aid of religion, including the one that's now sitting, or if it hasn't yet, it will. The last ones did, and all the others have. Three months after the McCollum decision was handed down, the Congress of the United States voted a half million dollars to build a chapel for religious activities at Kingspoint Marine Academy, and President Truman signed the bill. Even the cadets at West Point and Annapolis under the United States Government have to attend religious services under orders of the United States. The idea that we have anything approaching the complete and absolute separation of church and state, which Justices talked about in the McCollum case, and the dissenting opinion in the Everson case, is simply fantastic. We have never had anything approaching it.
In the first place, you could hardly find a more ambiguous expression than "the separation of church and state." If you ask it just as it was, everybody believes in the separation of church and state in America. I believe in the separation of church and state. I'm sure everybody in this room does. I don't know of a single person in America who doesn't believe in the separation of church and state . . . (Pause) . . . depending on what you mean by it. What I mean by it, is what Madison and Jefferson meant by it. I have been trying since 1945 (and I've been actively at work on this matter) to get just one citation (if anyone will give me the citation, I'll hunt it up and read it; they needn't copy it for me) ; if I can get one citation where either Thomas Jefferson or James Madison ever referred to an establishment of religion to mean anything else than a monopolistic position of favor for one religious group at the hands of the government, I'll be grateful. I have not found one, nor ever seen a reference to one.
Some people have said that James Madison opposed multiple establishments. There isn't any such thing. There never has been in the centuries of discussions of establishments of religion by Catholics, Protestants, theologians, and laymen. A multiple establishment is like a multiple monopoly. Giving an establishment to all the religions that want it is just like giving the monopoly in the automobile business to all the companies that want a monopoly. It's just the same sort of thing. The Encyclopedia Britannica and the dictionaries so define it. To lay historians, Protestant and Catholic, it always has meant that. That's what it meant to Madison and Jefferson. It has been said that Madison's Memorial and Remonstrance opposed the multiple establishments. It did nothing of the kind. It opposed the establishment of Christianity as the state religion of Virginia. The state of North Carolina had established Protestantism as the religion of the state. Jefferson and Madison, both, were opposed to any favored position for any one religion, and so am I, and so is every member of the Catholic hierarchy in the United States. They all said this in just as plain language as any person in this room can phrase it, in 1948. When they did, they said what I don't think any informed person can deny, that the McCollum decision violated the historical, traditional, position of America. They quoted with approval the statement of 27 very distinguished Protestant clergymen, up and down the country, who, the June before, had taken exactly the same position. Catholic position? Nonsense. That is also the position of the Journal of the American Bar Association. It is the position of Professor Corwin of Princeton. I heard him discuss it on invitation at a meeting at a big Methodist church in New York, where I was also a guest. He expressed his opinion, and others present agreed -- it was the general opinion -- that the McCollum decision was the most unpopular decision ever handed down by the Supreme Court.
Read Rev. Dr. Irving Shaver's report on the years since the McCollum decision. He is a Baptist clergyman who was very active in opposition to Mrs. McCollum in the International Religious Association. Read his report in a recent number of Religious Education. A Methodist minister, in Troy, N. Y., told me last year, that his father (who is also a Methodist minister) is chairman of the Committee on Released Time in the public schools of a Virginia city in which they were doing precisely what the Supreme Court outlawed in Illinois.
I think there is good argument for federal aid to education, particularly if it includes auxiliary services to all schools that want them and if it prohibits race segregation anywhere. I believe that it is largely an academic question at present because the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People is adamant in opposing any federal aid of any kind that permits racial segregation. I think that ends federal aid for some time to come, because they say that's their position, they're not going to change it, and I don't think you can force it on them in this country.
I think there are arguments on both sides of federal aid. My six children attended at times both public schools and parochial schools. I've been in public education all my life. I never attended a Catholic school even for a day, either as a student or as a teacher. My whole life, except for a little time in private schools and colleges, as a teacher, not as a student, has been in public education. I know that public education is not perfect. I know that parochial education is not perfect. I know that what makes a school worth while is the quality of the teacher and the quality of the student. I know there are public schools to which I wouldn't allow my children to go, and there are parochial schools to which I wouldn't allow them to go, and to which I didn't allow them to go. The majority of Catholic children in this country are in public schools. The idea that the Catholic hierarchy today (and I don't care what they were for in 1810, or what the Catholic hierarchy want in Spain or anywhere else) , the idea that the Catholic hierarchy today are opposed to public schools, is nonsense. It's false. How can it happen that we have tremendous Catholic parishes in this country that don't have parochial schools? Most Catholic parishes (or missions) in this country don't have parochial schools. Most Catholic children are in public schools. I don't know of a single Catholic who is attacking the public school. I know there used to be some. I know some people who are not Catholics who attack public schools in a way that would make your hair curl. I've heard them in faculty meetings for forty years.
Now there is no such thing as a perfect school system. Where there are arguments about any system I think we ought to argue it out, and follow the democratic process. I happen to believe in Constitutional democracy and I believe that we ought to have in the Constitutions of the states what the people of the states want, and I think we ought to have the Constitution of the United States that the people in the United States want. The people of the United States, through their representatives in Congress, acting on the responsibility put on them by the Constitution, have refused to allow this Rutledge doctrine of no contact between government and religion a place in the Constitution. This has been refused by Congress about twenty times. The last time it died in the 80th Congress (the Bryson Bill). Incidentally, my distinguished colleague tonight, Bishop Oxnam, approved of its dying in Congress, not of supporting it, not getting it ratified by the people. He preferred action by the Supreme Court. I think that is his privilege. I also think that the idea that when Congress refuses to allow a doctrine to go into the Constitution some twenty times (11 times between 1870 and 1888), and then the Supreme Court says therefore it's a great Constitutional principle, they are destroying Constitutional government.
If refusing to put a doctrine into the Constitution puts it there, then I should think putting it into the Constitution would leave it out. (Laughter) The Supreme Court seems lost in a sort of Alice in Wonderland theory of Constitutional Law. Why should the young men of the Harvard Law School study Constitutional Law? Why should they study Constitutional cases? There isn't a relevant case in the history of the Supreme Court that agrees with the McCollum decision. It's a violation of the Slaughter-house Cases of the early 1870's. In the case of Adamson vs. California, midway between the Everson decision and the McCollum decision, the Supreme Court flatly refused to accept the idea that the l4th Amendment was a shorthand summary of the Bill of Rights. And in the McCollum decision, without explanation or argument, they gave a decision which, if it has any Constitutional validity, rests solely on the idea that the l4th Amendment is a shorthand summary of the Bill of Rights. Then they took the opposite position again in June, 1949, in Wolf vs. Colorado. There Justice Frankfurter, speaking for the Court, said that the Fourteenth Amendment is not shorthand for the first eight amendments, but that it simply prohibits the states from violating that which is implicit in the concept of ordered liberty. The argument (which Justice Frankfurter concurred in a few months before) that released time in Champaign, Illinois, approved by the parents of over 800 children (and opposed by the parents of one child), and approved by the school board, the educational machinery of the state, the state legislature, and state Supreme Court, violates anything implicit in the scheme of ordered liberty, is too clearly absurd to require refutation. (Applause)
(Following the announcement that on Wednesday, March 2I, there would be an address on "Is There Justice in the Army?" and at the next regular meeting on April 13 an exchange of views on "Whether the Movies are Better Than Ever.") (Now being joined live by the WHDH radio audience):
MR. COUSINS (President of the Forum) : . . . Good evening, Ladies and Gentlemen. Whether there should be public aid to parochial education is a question about which there are many and varied points of view. The Forum wishes to announce that it has no point of view except to see that speakers who do have a point of view are afforded a public platform from which to express themselves.
Our Moderator for tonight's program is Professor George C. Homans, Professor of Sociology at Harvard University. The next voice you will hear will be that of Professor Homans.
PROFESSOR HOMANS: Good evening, Ladies and Gentlemen. We have had an interesting discussion here tonight, and what you will be hearing now is a two-minute summary from each of the gentlemen who have discussed, this evening, the question of public aid to parochial education. Now I am going to give their names.
First of all, next to me at the table is Professor James M. O'Neill, Professor of Speech at Brooklyn College. Next down the line is Professor Vincent McCrossen, Professor of Romance Literature at Boston College. Next down the line is Bishop G. Bromley Oxnam, of the Methodist Church in the New York area. And finally, at the end of the table there is Dr. George Hunston Williams, of the Harvard Divinity School.
Now, I am going to ask for summaries in the order in which the original speeches were made, and so I will ask first for Dr. Williams to speak briefly.
DR. WILLIAMS: I have distinguished, in effect, between two kinds of auxiliary aid to parochial schools - aid to children as children. For example, lunches, medical care. Also scholarships to veterans of national service. This I favor, along with tax exemption. Secondly, there is aid to children as school children. For example, free textbooks and free transportation. The latter is auxiliary aid in the proper sense, and I oppose it along with tax rebates to parochial school parents, and the more direct forms of tax assistance.
I have paid tribute to Catholic scholarship and apologetic in this area for obliging us to abandon any facile appeal to a slogan and to settle down to clear moral, constitutional, historical and practical argument.
I select for re-emphasis what I consider the most cogent argument from each of these three headings:
A moral argument: Parochial schools are thoroughly American. The American people have made an irreversible decision that denominational and private instruction shall enjoy full recognition alongside the state supported system. Moreover, this is not a boon vouchsafed by a superior power. It is a right, an inalienable right recognized by self-limiting state or democratic constitutional commonwealth. But the Roman Church should not seek for its own sake, and for the sake of our democratic health it should not seek to convert a right into a privilege and a claim upon public revenue. No taxpayer may be coerced, however indirectly or imperceptibly, for the support of a parochial system in which by definition it is improper to distinguish the purely secular from the sacred.
A constitutional and historical argument: Despite the frailty of that constitutional bridge, the Fourteenth Amendment, whereby the Bill of Rights is made available in application to the state, it is quite sufficient for the purpose of giving expression to the widespread American conviction that religious freedom, both personal and corporate, is a part of our national citizenship and cannot be infringed upon by the states or by the federal government.
And finally, a practical argument: Free bus transportation and textbooks and other more direct aids to parochial and private schools will lead to the disaggregation of the public schools, the principal crucibles of American democracy, the melting pot of the peoples of the world. (Applause)
PROFESSOR HOMANS: Thank you, Dr. Williams. The Moderator has his moments of wondering whether it is polite to interrupt over the radio.
I will now call upon Professor Vincent McCrossen.
PROFESSOR McCROSSEN: The fear of sincere opponents to public aid for parochial education that such a movement is the beginning of a putsch by the Catholic hierarchy to establish Catholicity as a state church in America is historically unsound. The state church is a Protestant darling, not a Catholic one. It was found in all European Protestant lands.
Catholic teaching agrees with our constitutional face that in a long history of divided religious allegiance a national church is a burden to countless consciences. There is, however, nothing in the American constitution that establishes a wall of separation between government and cooperation with religion.
Opposition to parochial school support which maintains that the religious school is not in our tradition of public support is likewise unsound. The religious school, the original American school, is enshrined in the hallowed American tradition of our infant republic and was often supported by public funds.
The argument that the parochial school is divisive or un-American or undemocratic is a totalitarian argument, and those using it deserve to be called American totalitarians. One of the first victims in a completely totalitarian country is a parochial school. Its public support is first cut off, then it is closed, and the argument against it is that it is divisive.
The basis for the support of parochial schools rests on the principle of distributive justice for institutions performing a public service. Those who refuse parochial schools public aid are setting up an Oriental caste system in America, rendering a part of our students, namely, students in religious schools, untouchables -- untouchables by distributive justice.
Such action is scarcely in the spirit of a God who is the semblance of all justice, and whose recurrent emphasis on children is to suffer them "to come unto Me for of such is the Kingdom of Heaven." (Applause)
PROFESSOR HOMANS: Thank you, Professor McCrossen. And now, Bishop Oxnam, will you sum up your position?
BISHOP OXNAM: I am opposed to the use of public funds for parochial schools whether such schools be Roman Catholic, Protestant or Jewish. I am opposed to the use of public funds for parochial schools because I believe we would thus build up a score of competing sectarian systems, and eventually destroy the public system.
I do not think we wish a Methodist educational system, a Baptist educational system, a Presbyterian educational system, or a Roman Catholic educational system in this land.
I am opposed to the use of public funds for parochial education because under such a system public money can be spent to undermine the basic principle upon which the democratic order rests.
I am opposed to the use of public funds for parochial education because we thereby drive a divisive factor into the national life. Personally I prefer the American way, as I see it, whereby my Protestant sons and daughter sat beside Roman Catholic friends and Jewish friends -- Jew by Gentile, black by white -- in the public school learn to live together.
I hold to the American practice, developed experimentally, whose wisdom has been proved, namely, that public funds shall be kept for public education.
I agree with the position taken in the President's Commission on Higher Education, namely, that public responsibility for support of education implies public responsibility for the policies that are supported. (Applause)
PROFESSOR HOMANS: Thank you, Bishop Oxnam. And now we would like to hear from our last speaker, Professor James M. O'Neill.
PROFESSOR O'NEILL: I suppose it is true that public funds could be spent in the parochial school system to develop subversive and antidemocratic and anti-Semitic ideas. They also can be spent -- and they have been spent -- in public schools to accomplish exactly the same purposes. And anyone who has lived in public education as long as I have will not deny that statement.
However, I am not advocating any particular bill or opposing any particular bill. My position is simply that there isn't a syllable in the Constitution of the United States that has the remotest bearing on the question because we have always used that. The Constitution never provided that we couldn't use money for aid of religion and religious education. Both the United States Government and every state in the Union has used money that way. Every one of them are using it that way today, not in every way, but each one in a number of ways.
The statements of the Supreme Court Justices that it has been unconstitutional for the United States Government so to use public monies since 1791, and for the state so to use public monies since 1868, is flatly false. It isn't true. It never has been observed and isn't being observed today in any state or in the United States Government.
I think we should get over this talk about a wall of separation in the Constitution of the United States. Read the Constitution, consider what the men who wrote it believed its purpose was, and go ahead under the Constitution in a democratic way. Make the constitutions what the people want and then let everybody live up to them. (Applause)
PROFESSOR HOMANS: Thank you, Professor O'Neill. And now, if I understand my duties correctly, I am to allow a period in which each of these gentlemen, if he wishes, may address to any one of the others any question on his position that he feels suitable.
DR. WILLIAMS: I should like to ask Professor O'Neill, in view of his final remark -- peoples may change their constitutions as they desire and should live up to them. I think the great concern of many of us is that in a small state like Rhode Island it would be possible to repeal constitutionally those provisions that prohibit the preference to any one religious group.
How is it possible to secure on a federal level those immunities and liberties and privileges which we regard as our natural rights in respect to religious liberty, corporate and personal, if there is no federal protection and we go back to the original meaning of the First Amendment in your sense of the word?
PROFESSOR O'NEILL: Well, I don't believe that we are in any danger of having our liberties taken away from us by the states any more than by the federal government. There is a respectable opinion today that the threat is from the federal government -- in depriving us of our liberties and not the states.
But suppose that the state of Rhode Island or the state of Vermont or Texas or California could pass laws that deprived us of some of our rights. What are we going to do about it?
The states are governments of inherent power. The states can do anything in the realm of government that their constitution or the Constitution of the United States doesn't forbid them to do.
The United States Government is a government of delegated power, and it can't do anything at all that it hasn't been authorized to do. Now, until the United States government is authorized to