Religious Bus Ride

Most U.S. clergymen jump at an invitation to deliver the invocation or benediction at a major party's state political convention. But last week, in search of a Roman Catholic priest to share religious honors at the Republican convention late this month, Maine's Republican leaders tried seven priests, got seven turndowns. Both church and state knew why: at the legislature's special session in January, the G.O.P. majority in both houses defeated a drive by the Democratic minority to change the state school law, allow local communities the option of providing public-school bus service for parochial schools. The heavy Republican vote against the bill irritated Catholic clergy and laity, impatient after years of supporting church schools by contribution, public schools by taxes. "Can we always turn the other cheek?" demanded an editorial in the Portland diocese's official Church World. "Tolerance doesn't mean submission to everything."

Some irate customers took dead aim on ex-Dairyman Earle M. Hillman of Bangor, Republican senate president, who cast the deciding vote to defeat one version of the bill after a senate tie. So many customers canceled orders from Bangor's Footman-Hillman Dairy that the dairy's owners started painting Hillman's name off their trucks and explained that they had bought him out more than four years ago. Next, boycotters turned on another Bangor dairy owned by Hillman's son, heckled him, his family and his customers until he went out of business last week.

Democrats, whose prime vote getter is U.S. Senator Edmund S. Muskie, a Catholic, exploited the issue for a while; e.g., Congressman Frank Coffin, a Baptist, upheld the defeated local-option school bus bill the day after announcing for Governor. But the harsh weapon of the boycott raised a cry of "intolerance" in the Bangor News and among Protestants, who make up 74.9% of Maine's population. Key Democrats decided that they must water down their school-bus proposal before their state convention opens April 22--featuring an invocation by a rabbi, prayer by a priest, benediction by a Congregational minister--or reap their share of trouble from the hottest religious division in state politics since the vote-strong Ku Klux Klan rode around heckling Maine Catholics in the '20s.

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