Fuss in Puerto Rico

The one charge in the argument over church-state relationship that Jack Kennedy has worked hardest to beat down is that the Roman Catholic Church has a moral right to interfere in political decisions--telling its members how to vote, or its communicants what to do in office. Last week the point was abruptly revived in sharp specifics--not by evangelical circuit riders spreading bigotry, but by the Roman Catholic bishops of Puerto Rico, two of them born and raised in the continental U.S.: San Juan's Archbishop James Davis (Tucson); Bishop James McManus of Ponce (Brooklyn).

In a pastoral letter ordered to be read in the island's 479 churches this Sunday, the bishops denounced reform-minded Governor Luis Munoz Marin's Popular Democratic Party (no kin to the U.S. Democratic Party). "It is our obligation," they wrote, "to prohibit Catholics from giving their vote [in the island's Nov. 8 election] to a party that accepts as its own the morality of a 'regime of license,' denying Christian morality . . .

"It is evident." the bishops noted, "that the philosophy of the Popular Democratic Party is anti-Christian and anti-Catholic, and that it is based on the modern heresy that popular will and not divine law decides what is moral and immoral. This philosophy destroys the Ten Commandments of God and permits that they be substituted by popular and human criteria."

As evidence, the prelates cited the lack of religious training in public schools and Munoz Marin's "antidemocratic attempt to limit clergy solely to religious functions." The bishops did not indicate what ecclesiastical penalties might be dealt out to the many islanders who presumably will ignore the prohibition. Asked point-blank if it would be a sin to violate the injunction, Archbishop Davis said it would not.

Clinics & Training. Three-term Governor Munoz Marin, who was brought up a Catholic but seldom attends Mass, has long been at odds with the bishops. The principal quarrels are over birth-control clinics, instituted by Munoz' predecessors but continued by him, and his refusal to grant public school children time off for religious training.

Last summer fiery Bishop McManus helped organize a new Christian Action Party, which he urged all Catholics to support. Caught in a squabble over the validity of the signatures it collected to get on the ballot, the party stands little chance of keeping well-liked Governor Munoz Marin from his fourth term. Even so, Munoz was still angry enough to denounce the bishops' letter as an "incredible medieval interference in a political campaign," promised to bring up the bishops' conduct with Vatican officials after the election.

Right & Duty. It seemed doubtful, despite the fuss, whether Munoz Marin would get much relief from the Vatican. Last winter, at a diocesan synod of Rome (TIME, Feb. 8), Pope John XXIII asserted the right and even duty of the church to advise the faithful on how to vote in elections. In practice, the Vatican seems to prefer that this right be exercised with great restraint by the hierarchy of the United States, to which the Puerto Rican bishops belong. But 90% Catholic Puerto Rico, though a part of the U.S., has a Spanish-speaking population and Spanish traditions, and is considered by Rome and by the island's bishops a part of Latin America, where prelates are more active and less discreet in politics.

When the Kennedy camp got word of the Puerto Rican bishops' prohibition, they worriedly sought advice from Roman Catholic theologians. The advice: no Roman Catholic prelate in the continental U.S. is likely to issue an open contradiction, but few are likely to agree with the Puerto Rican action. Press Sec retary Pierre Salinger rushed out a statement on Kennedy's behalf: "Senator Kennedy considers it wholly improper and alien to our democratic system for churchmen of any faith to tell the members of their church for whom to vote or for whom not to vote." Thus, once more Candidate Kennedy had helped blaze a trail for American Catholics in their evolving effort (TIME, Oct. 10) to get the church-state relationship in a democracy clarified once and for all.

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