Court Opinion

ID: 9694128
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-25 17:25:32.385252+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:19:56.797101
License: Public Domain

Concurring Opinion by
Mr. Justice Pomeroy :
While I concur in the decision of the Court, my reasons are somewhat different, at least in emphasis, from *176those of my brethren. Because an important constitutional issue is involved, I consider that I should state what my reasons are.
It is well to recognize, at the outset, that the duty of the Supreme Court of the United States, and likewise of state courts, to expound the meaning of the Constitution has, in the words of Mr. Justice Brennan, “encountered few issues more intricate or more demanding than that of the relationship between religion and the public schools.” Abington School District v. Schempp, 374 U.S. 203, 230, 10 L.Ed.2d 844, 863 (concurring opinion). As Mr. Justice Goldberg put it, concurring in the same case, “delineation of the constitutionally permissible relationship between religion and government is a most difficult and sensitive task, calling for the careful exercise of both judicial and public judgment and restraint”. 374 U.S. at 305. And Chief Justice Burger has said that “candor compels the acknowledgment that we can only dimly perceive the boundaries of permissible government activity in this sensitive area of constitutional adjudication”. Tilton v. Richardson, 403 U.S. 672, 678, 29 L.Ed 790 (1971).
There can be no doubt that the Mt. Lebanon School Board directed that prayers be said at the commencement exercises. The program was to include “an audible invocation and benediction”.1 The stipulation of *177facts makes clear, moreover, that one or the other or both of these utterances would be delivered by a clergyman. An invocation is an invocatory prayer or plea, addressed to a divine being, or, more specifically, “a prayer, often a prescribed prayer, offered at the beginning of a service, a part of such, or a sermon”. Webster’s New International Dictionary, 2d Ed. (1942). Another dictionary states that an invocation is “a form of prayer invoking God’s presence, said especially at the beginning of a public ceremony”. Random House Dictionary of the English Language (1966). A benediction also is another word for prayer, specifically, “The short prayer or blessing, pronounced by a minister or priest, with which public worship is closed”. Webster, supra. While it is true that the precise words to be used could not be known at the time this litigation was commenced, it cannot be assumed that they would be other than religious in nature, especially since a clergyman would deliver them. As Dr. Buttrick has concisely put it, “prayer is the heart of religion”;2 in the words of William James, it is “the very soul and essence of religion”.3 It is the act of prayer, not the words themselves, that is the basis of the present complaint.4 The problem, therefore, is to determine whether these prayers, mandated by the School District to be said at an important school function conducted on *178school property, are in violation of the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment, which prohibits any “law respecting an establishment of religion”.5
In Schempp, as is well known, the Supreme Court struck down as violative of the First and Fourteenth Amendments a 1959 statute of Pennsylvania which required that “At least ten verses from the Holy Bible shall be read, without comment, at the opening of each public school on each school day. Any child shall be excused from such Bible reading, or attending such Bible reading, upon the written request of his parent or guardian.”. In the consolidated companion case from Maryland decided at the same time (Murray v. Curlett), the Court held invalid a “rule”, authorized by Maryland law, which provided for “reading, without comment, of a chapter in the Holy Bible and/or the use of The Lord’s Prayer”. In so doing, the Court in Schempp relied, inter alia, on the only other major holding of the Court, either then or now, dealing directly with school prayers, Engel v. Vitale, 370 U.S. 421, 8 L.Ed.2d 601 (1962).6 In that case, the Court held that the prayer ordained by the New York State Board of Regents violated the Establishment Clause. The prayer *179was as follows: “Almighty God, we acknowledge our dependence upon Thee, and we beg Thy blessings upon us, our parents, our teachers and our Country”. It is difficult to say that the invocation and benediction here involved would be any less prayers because they do not rise to the nobility or sanctity of The Lord’s Prayer, or, on the other hand, because they might be, like the New York Regents’ Prayer, “a pathetically vacuous assertion of piety”. L. Pollak, Public Prayers in Public Schools, 77 Harv. L. Rev. 62, 63 (1963). If the prayers here are to be distinguished from those in Schempp and Vitale, I think the difference must lie in the settings involved.
In Schempp, as the Court found, 374 U.S. at 223, the proscribed exercises of Bible reading and recitation of The Lord’s Prayer were part of the curricular activities of students who were required by law to attend school. They were held in the school building under the supervision and with the participation of teachers employed in those schools. The Court found (as had the trial court also in the Pennsylvania case), that the opening exercise was “a religious ceremony”. In Vi-tale, the Regents’ prayer was ordered to be said aloud by each class in the presence of a teacher at the beginning of each school day. If Mt. Lebanon had ordained that each school day, or a particular convocation each day, were to be opened with an invocation and closed with a benediction, the conclusion would be inescapable that they were constitutionally proscribed. In contrast, however, the graduation exercises at Mt. Lebanon take place but once a year, are attended primarily by senior class members, their families and friends, and are not part of the school curriculum or normal routine of the school. While School Boards are legally required to issue diplomas to qualifying students, the commencement session is not a required method for so doing; all required sessions and studies have been previously com*180pleted, and diplomas can be otherwise obtained. The prayers, moreover, are not to be spoken by the audience, as they were by the students in Schempp and Vitale. If what occurred in Vitale and Schempp were “random tidbits of religious activity”, see Pollack, op. cit., supra, at 75, the relatively isolated and abbreviated Mt. Lebanon activity shrinks almost to a de rrmdmis stature.
The Supreme Court in Schempp stated that “to withstand the strictures of the Establishment Clause there must be a secular legislative purpose and a primary effect that neither advances nor inhibits religion”. Abington School District v. Schempp, supra, 374 U.S. at 222.7 I agree with Chief Justice Jones that the stipulated facts which form the record before us are totally unenlightening as to either the purpose or the primary effect of the prayer requirement that the appellee School Board ordained.8 While the challenged activity may lie in the penumbra of the constitutional command, I do not think we can declare as a matter of law, on this scanty record, that there is a per se violation. As Mr. Justice Frankfurter has well stated, “It is the Court’s duty to enforce this principle [separation of Church *181and State] in its full integrity”, but it is also true, as Justice Frankfurter acknowledged in the same opinion, that we are not here dealing with a principle “having the definiteness of a surveyor’s metes and bounds”. Illinois ex rel. McCollum, 333 U.S. 203, at 231 and 217, 92 L.Ed. 649 (1948). (Frankfurter, J., concurring.) Until we are presented with a clearer demonstration of non-secular purpose or of an effect which advances religion, or until the Supreme Court has occasion to delineate further the sweep of Engel and Schempp, I am satisfied that this Court would not be warranted in enjoining the activity here involved. This is not because that activity may not be religious in nature, and not because it may be a vapid ritualistic exercise to promote “dignity” and solemnity, but because even though religious and perhaps intended so to be, it is too remote from the classroom or any required educational program to be constitutionally impermissible ; in its total setting, the activity does not do violence to the principle of neutrality by the government in church-state relationships.

 The relevant excerpt from the minutes of the meeting of the school directors is as follows: “Dr. Green requested that the Board consider the recommendations transmitted to him from the High School Commencement Program Committee. He then presented the program. It was moved by Sherman and seconded by Thomas to accept the program as presented. After comments were heard from Township residents, students, clergy and Board members, it was moved by Thomas and seconded by Dougherty to amend the proposed commencement program to include an audible invocation and benediction. The amendment was unanimously approved by roll call vote. A roll call vote was then taken on the motion, as amended, and was unanimously approved.” (Appellant’s Brief at 20a.) We *177have not been informed of the nature of the comments referred to in the quoted minutes.

 G. Buttrick, Prayer, 16 (1941).

 W. James, The Varieties of Religious Experience, 352 (Mentor Book Ed., 1958). James goes on to say that “Prayer is religion in act; that is, prayer is real religion. It is prayer that distinguishes the religious phenomenon from such similar or neighboring phenomena as purely moral or aesthetic sentiment.” IMd.

 The approach taken in the concurring opinion of Mr. Justice Roberts seems to me quite untenable; it would mean that the saying of a prayer could never be enjoined unless one had an advance copy of the text, which as a practical matter would never occur.

I agree with the Court that the voluntary nature of the commencement exercises serves to eliminate any claim that the Free Exercise Clause of the First Amendment was violated.

 There have been, of course, a number of other Establishment Clause decisions by the Supreme Court involving the relationship between religion and education. For citations, see notes 29 and 30 to Mr. Justice Powell’s opinion for the Court in Committee for Public Education and Religious Liberty v. Nyquist, 413 U.S. 756, 37 L.Ed.2d 948 (1973). While the opinions in these cases are relevant in any discussion of a problem such as is here presented, they cannot be said to be controlling on the issue before us, and space does not allow discussion of them. See, in general, J. Choper, Religion in the Public Schools: A Proposed Constitutional Standard, 47 Minn. L. Rev. 329, 408 (1963); K. Hodges, Comment, Religious Exercises and the Public Schools, 20 Ark. Law Rev. 320, 352 (1967).

 In Committee for Public Education and Religious Liberty v. Nyquist, 413 U.S. 756, 37 L.Ed.2d 948 (1973), a case involving state financial aid to non-public schools, Mr. Justice Powell noted a third part to these guidelines, via., that the legislative provision in question “must avoid excessive governmental entanglement with religion”. 413 U.S. at 773, 37 L.Ed. at 963. See also Tilton v. Richardson, 403 U.S. 672, 29 L.Ed.2d 790 (1971).

 The School Board asserts, dehors the record, that the invocation and benediction “are to serve secular purposes by providing ‘an air of dignity’ to the occasion, and developing a ‘serious and solemn atmosphere’ ” for it. (Appellee’s Brief, p. 10.) To many, this relegation of prayer to a meaningless ritual will seem a shabby purpose indeed, quite incompatible with communion with a Supreme Being. Contrast the motivation for corporate prayer on public occasions as advocated by George A. Buttrick in Prayer, op. cit., supra, n.2, at 277.