The Archbishop's Way

At all masses in all churches throughout the archdiocese, the Roman Catholics of New Orleans listened to a pastoral letter that may prove to be a milestone in the school history of the city. "Racial segregation as such," Archbishop Rummel declared in the letter, "is morally wrong and sinful because it is a denial of the unity and solidarity of the human race as conceived by God in the creation of man in Adam and Eve." Thus did German-born Joseph Francis Rummel, sometime (1924-28) pastor in New York's Harlem, serve notice that he had every intention of desegregating the parochial schools.

Since the archdiocese's parochial schools enroll about 37% of the city's elementary and high school pupils, New Orleans is in effect the first major city in the Deep South to become officially committed to integration on any sizable scale. Just when the races would begin mixing the Archbishop did not say, but he made it clear that the church could take drastic action against Roman Catholic legislators now backing a bill to enable the state to use its police power to keep the parochial schools segregated. Last week he endorsed an editorial in Catholic Action in the South which said that such laws "would be an entering wedge for the control of Catholic education by political leaders . . . If the laws were put into effect, automatic excommunication [could] be incurred by those who worked for and voted for their passage . . ."

State Representative E. W. Gravelot Jr., one of the Roman Catholic backers of the proposed segregation bill, promptly announced the "we intend to go ahead with it, certainly." Governor-nominee Earl Long (a Baptist) said that he felt that the archbishop was "a little too advanced." Nevertheless, he added, "from a religious standpoint, he is undoubtedly right." The archbishop was undoubtedly also going to have his way.

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