Evening star., 1948-11-22
A Moving Statement

A Moving Statement
Americans of all creeds should find it
profitable to read the statement just is
sued by the Catholic bishops of the United
States. It has to do broadly with the
most serious spiritual problem of our time
namely, the growth of secularisna, the
| materialistic viewpoint that excludes the
idea of God from human life and holds
that mans moral standards and deport-
ment Should be determined without any
| reference to religious faith. More spe-
cifically the statement is temperate but
trenchant discourse on how our highest
tribunal has contributed to the spread of
that viewpoint.
Referring chiefly to the McCollum de-
cision, which has outlaWed an interdenom-
national program of voluntary religious
instruction in the public schools of Cham
| paign, ILL.,, the bishops cogently argue that
| the Supreme Court has adopted an en-
tirely novel and ominously extensive in
depreciation of the 'establishment-of-
religion clause of the First Amendment"
AS they see it, that amendment was added
prevent the creation of an official church
of the United States; it was not meant to
| exclude the idea of God from tax-sup-
| ported education or to prohibit limited
| cooperation between organized religions
and Federal, State or local governments
| In projects like the one banned in Cham
| paign.
In impressive support of their argu-
ment, the Catholic leaders make the
historically sound point that 'The essen
tial connection between religion and good
citizenship is deep in our American tradi-
tion' and law. Our earliest colonial doc.
uments serve as good proof of that. So
also does our Declaration of independence,
in which men are recognized as children of
God endowed by their Creator with Ger
tain unalienable Rights" Moreover, the
| bishops renew the contention that the
| legislative record of the First Amendment
shows that in enacting and ratifying it the
Congress and State legislatures regarded
1t purely as safeguard against the
founding of an official, preferred Federal
church. not as measure to prevent or
| interfere with programs Of the Champaign
| type. Yet our highest tribunal has ruled
otherwise in narrow Interpretation of
the so-called wall of separation between
church and state"-a phrase first used by
Thomas Jeferson who never meant 1t in
the sense now current and who himself
strongly favored a thorough going pro-
gram of religious instruction at the
University of Virginia.
In effect, in the McCollum case, the
court has said that one atheistic mother
(who was perfectly free to keep her child
out of such classes) was constitutionally
entitled to supporting decision when she
demanded that Protestants, Catholics and
Jews be forbidden to undertake voluntary
program of brief religious instruction in the
public schools. This has been interpreted
by qualified students as being much more
than the affirmation of a single individ-
uals right to disbelieve; unwittingly or
not, 1t also gives to that individual the
power to deny to others the right to have
| tax-supported education of a kind that
includes some religious instruction Ger
tainly, in view of the spiritual under
pinning Of our laws and traditions, the
Catholic bishops seem to be on thoroughly
sound ground in urging the legal pro-
fession as a whole to pay active attention
to this issue.
The basic point emphasized by the
bishops-and essentially the same point
has been made by the leaders of other
faiths-is that secularism is having an
increasingly corrosive influence" on
society everywhere. In its strictest form
1t is the dialectical materialism of Marxist
Communism-a philosophy that rejects
God altogether and regards man as being
merely a bit Of soulless and purposeless
flesh coming from nothing and going back
to nothing. This viewpoint has won wide
| spread acceptance in our own country
and throughout the world. Yet carried
| to its logical extreme, 1t endows a human
| being with dumb beasts ultimate destiny
and thus tends to exalt the idea of jungle
law or tyranny under which the fittest
and most ruthless can work their will
| against the mass, without any feeling of
| an unseen moral restraint.
Secularism, of course, is not solely re-
sponsible for the sickness in our society
today. But 1t is one of the contributing
causes. For without an adequate, religious
sense, without disciplining awareness of
the SOLDERING mystery of the infinite
humanity may find itself degenerating
into race of vipers caught up in anarchy
| or crushed under the weight of omni-
potent statism. That is why the Catholic
bishops, besides calling for a greater
measure OF Christian morality in the
homes, the business places and the civil
affairs Of the Nation, have appealed for
recon neid erati0n of the Issue 1nherept
| in the McCollum case.