Court Opinion

ID: 9855110
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-09-24 06:19:38.835184+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:23:40.799055
License: Public Domain

Fitzgerald, J.
(concurring specially). While it
has been written that, “It is a foolish thing to make a long prologue and to be short in the story itself,”1 I cannot refrain from briefly observing that strict application of the Mary Elizabeth Case2 catapults us to the ultimate irony that churches have been divorced from any statutory protections, from fostering influences furnished by state legislatures, and from all the benefits of law save perhaps those “marginal” few cited in Consoles.3
I do not believe Mary Elizabeth should be sanctified this far, and I specially adopt the concurrence of Mr. Justice Harlan in that case.
The instant case, however, is amenable to the imminent prohibitions of Mary Elizabeth since the core decision here revolves around the question: What is Congregationalism? No around-the-mul*253berry-busli reasoning can remove us from tbe fact that the question is ecclesiastical or, perforce, one of faith and creed, and thus precluded to us.

 The Apocrypha, 2 Maccabees I.I, 32.

 Presbyterian Church in the United States v. Mary Elizabeth Blue Hull Memorial Presbyterian Church (1969), 393 US 440 (89 S Ct 601, 21 L Ed 2d 658).

 Gonzalez v. Roman Catholic Archbishop of Manila (1929), 280 US 1 (50 S Ct 5, 74 L Ed 131).