Across the Gulf

"The widening gulf between Protestants and Catholics has become an important national issue." With these words, the current American Mercury introduced a hammer & tongs Protestant-Catholic debate to bring the points of antagonism between the two faiths "into the open for public examination."

Spokesman for the Protestants, Dean Walter Russell Bowie of Union Theological Seminary, began by reminding readers that "Protestantism and Roman Catholicism are both in their own conception interpreters of one and the same gospel-- the gospel of God as revealed in Jesus Christ. Furthermore, Protestants can sincerely admire much that Roman Catholicism specifically represents . . . What then . . . are Protestants concerned about?"

They are concerned, said Dr. Bowie, because they believe that the "clearly stated Roman Catholic purpose 'to make America Catholic,' if it succeeded, would jeopardize the religious and civil liberties which have been the glory of Protestant countries and of Protestant culture. The Protestant holds that every soul is accountable to God, that religion can only be real when each man espouses that which he himself believes, and that, in the long run, where there is spiritual independence, truth can be trusted to emerge. On the other hand, Roman Catholicism is not only a religion but a type of organized religion which, because of certain implacable assumptions, claims not merely equality of life and opportunity, but dominance . . . [It] claims ... to be the only church of Christ . . . Bluntly, this means that Rome regards Protestantism as a perversion of Christianity. In every country where it is strong enough, the Roman Church will control, so far as it can, education, the laws concerning marriage and divorce, and regulations about morality generally, not only for its own communicants, but for the whole population . . ."

Divine Prerogatives. To back up his charges, Dean Bowie cited such modern instances as the Vatican's Lateran Treaty with Mussolini (which named Roman Catholicism "sole religion of the State"); the recent reports by New York Herald Tribune Correspondent Homer Bigart of discrimination against Protestants in Spain (TIME, March 7); the 1885 encyclical of Pope Leo XIII stating that "it is not lawful for the State ... to hold in equal favor different kinds of religion"; and an article in the Jesuit publication La Civilt`a Cattolica (TIME, June 28, 1948) which stated: "The Roman Catholic Church, convinced, through its divine prerogatives, of being the only true church, must demand the rights to freedom for herself alone ... As to other religions, the Church will . . . require that by legitimate means they shall not be allowed to propa gate false doctrine. Consequently, in a state where the majority of the people are Catholic, the Church will require that legal existence be denied to error . . . The Church cannot blush for her own want of tolerance, as she asserts it in principle and applies it in practice."

According to Dean Bowie, the Roman Catholic Church has attempted "to set up a censorship that reaches into the whole field of our public life." He cites the advice of Father Charles J. Mullaly, S.J., in the Jesuit weekly America in February 1928 on how to deal with newspapers' and magazines who publish material offensive to Catholics: "Do not attack a magazine or newspaper through its editorial department," he said, "but act through its business office [by boycotting the publication]."

Dr. Bowie summed up his charges against Roman Catholicism: "It is a fact that there is a growing religious tension in America, and this tension is deeply regrettable and may become dangerous. Accordingly, there is all the more need that the fact be clearly faced, with no smokescreen of evasive words. The fundamental reason for thai tension is that Roman Catholicism, as it impinges upon the community and the State, is totalitarian. Protestantism, which believes in the dignity of all human souls and in liberty of mind and spirit as the only guarantee of truth, is bound to recognize and resist totalitarianism, no matter how much it covers itself with a religious garb. We do not want political dictatorship, and we do not want ecclesiastical dictatorship either."

The Palsied Arm. In his reply, Father John Courtney Murray, S.J., professor of theology at Woodstock College, Md., characterized Dr. Bowie's bill of particulars as "faithfully following the familiar [Protestant] formula, with a literary accent that is, of course, quite Union Theological Seminary, rather than Southern Baptist or Boston Methodist." Said he:

"I am in agreement with Dean Bowie when he says that the issue of Catholic-Protestant relationships should be 'clearly faced, with no smokescreen of evasive words.' And this leads me to suggest that he is using an evasive word when he describes this issue in terms of 'tension' . . . To have a tension, both parties (not one) must be tense, as, for instance, are white and colored in certain sections. But today in the United States, and elsewhere, Catholicism is not tense, not polarized against Protestantism. In fact, every intelligent Catholic I know would agree that, in the contemporary spiritual state of the world, a polemic against Protestantism is practically an irrelevance, except insofar as this or that Protestant position manifests an alliance with secularist tendencies. Between Catholicism and secularism one may indeed speak of a proper 'tension'; but if Protestantism is caught in it, the reason is that it has itself entered the field between the two poles.

"One would therefore be less evasive if one said that what is happening today is simply another resurgence of the anti-Catholic feeling on the part of Protestants which has been a sociological phenomenon in the United States since, and even before, the repeal of the Maryland Act of Toleration . . . It is not, in fact, possible for Protestantism to situate itself historically, to define itself as a religious system, or to deploy itself as a cultural dynamic except, fundamentally, in terms of opposition to the Catholic Church . . .

"To put the matter ... in psychological terms, it seems that hostility to the Catholic Church is profoundly lodged in the Protestant collective unconscious, in consequence perhaps of some natal trauma . . . For here is the old enemy, at which alone Protestantism knows how to strike. Against other enemies--the real ones today--its arm is somewhat palsied."

A Few Bones. Father Murray accused Dean Bowie of taking all his examples meant to prove Catholic totalitarianism out of context. He pointed out that the America article advising Catholics to boycott offensive periodicals was written in 1928, the year of a "campaign of misrepresentation, calumny and vilification, launched against the Catholic Church because a great American [Al Smith] who happened to be a Catholic was seeking the presidency . . . And what were Catholics supposed to do--stand smiling at the crossroads while the dirty work went on? We were angry in 1928, not without reason; the situation was such as to call for means of last resort. And a metaphorical horsewhip was here and there used."

Father Murray likened Dr. Bowie's cited instances to "the bone or two out of which the Sunday-supplement archaeologist constructs the museum-piece prehistoric monster. Only Dr. Bowie wants to exhibit a monster of the future . . a

'Catholic America . . . exactly like contemporary Catholic Spain . . .'

"It is always a bit difficult to convince anyone that a bogeyman does not exist. And the difficulty is greater here because (to return to the previous metaphor) Dr. Bowie does indeed have his few scattered bones . . . What one would have to do, therefore, would be to prove that it is impossible or illegitimate to construct out of them his fearsome monster . . .

"If this is what Dr. Bowie would wish me to prove, I quite frankly give up. For one thing it is Hike being asked, 'When are you going to start beating your wife?' For another, as a Catholic theologian who knows a bit about political history, I have more sense than to regard past Catholic documents on Church and State as so many crystal balls in which to discern the exact shape of things to come."

Second-Class Religion. But, said Father Murray, "Protestants are not really afraid lest one day they become 'second-class' citizens in the United States, as they maintain their co-religionists are in Spain today . . . There is something deeper. They are wounded and angry because the Catholic Church considers Protestantism to be a second-class religion . . . What they really want, as Dean Bowie implies, is the repudiation by the Catholic Church of 'the flat assertion of her sole prerogative' of being the one true Church of Christ. At bottom, they are not seeking official papal assurance that Catholicism will never become in the United States 'the religion of the State' in the Spanish sense; they seem to want the Pope himself to take his seat, as an equal among equals, at the table of the World Council of Churches. This, if I understand it, is the heart of the matter -- the refusal of the Church to acknowledge the equality of the churches . . . This refusal will continue to be made . . ."

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