The Religion Question

"They said it couldn't happen in America, but it did," snapped Editor E. S. James's lead editorial in the Baptist Standard (circ. 361,116), the nation's largest religious weekly. "Puerto Rico is American soil." In Puerto Rico, three Roman Catholic bishops had declared it a sin to vote for a man opposed by the church. The man was three-term Gover nor Luis Munoz Marin, up for re-election on the same day the continental U.S., but not Puerto Rico, votes in a presidential election for Nixon or Kennedy (see THE HEMISPHERE).

In no time at all, Puerto Rico was being added as a horrible example in the anti-Catholic pamphleteering that is present in varying degrees across the U.S. But the concern was not confined to bigots. The bishops' ban raised anew the legitimate questions of Protestants (and some Catholics) who had heard Catholic Candidate Jack Kennedy pledge repeatedly that his church had no power to influence a Catholic's political decisions. As news of the first edict spread, Midwestern newspapers were peppered with questioning protests. In Denver widely respected Methodist Bishop Glenn R. Phillips announced that "on Nov. 8 I shall not mark my ballot for a Roman Catholic candidate for the presidency," added later that the Puerto Rican bishops' letter had doubly confirmed his stand.

Toward Futility. Nobody in the U.S. was more sensitive to the spreading Protestant worries than U.S. Catholic clergymen, some of whom have flatly stated their support for the constitutional separation of church and state (TIME, Oct. 10). Sharp criticism of the Puerto Rican bishops' pastoral letter came from an editorial in the Jesuit weekly America. "Such a prohibition," the magazine argued, "is unprecedented in American Catholic history. Catholics in the United States cannot but wonder about the na ture of a situation which would persuade church leaders to embark on a course of action so open to misinterpretation, not to say futility."

New York's Francis Cardinal Spellman formally denied that it would be a sin to disregard the Puerto Rican bishops' injunction. Archbishop Egidio Vagnozzi, the Vatican's Apostolic Delegate to the U.S., declared that "the Catholic bishops of the United States have never taken any position similar to that taken by the bishops of Puerto Rico. I am confident, also, that no such action would ever be taken by the hierarchy in this country." (But Archbishop Vagnozzi got no support from the Vatican, which reiterated the right and the duty of bishops to advise voters at election time.) Said Boston's Richard Cardinal Gushing, an old Kennedy family friend: "It is totally out of step for any ecclesiastical authority here to dictate the political voting of citizens." All the statements were received by the Kennedy camp in thoughtful, approving silence. Aware that any public comment might only stir up the already overworked issue, John Kennedy kept quiet--but prepared for a nationwide TV talk on church and state should religious feeling rise much higher.

Toward Excommunication. It was a speech that he might well have to make. At week's end came the second pastoral letter from Puerto Rico's implacable hiearchy. This time the bishops went out of their way to see that there was no mistaking their meaning: not only was a vote for Munoz "inevitably a sin" but Puerto Rican Catholics were bluntly urged to vote for the church-sponsored Christian Action Party rather than for the opposition Independence or Republican Statehood Parties. To this the chancellor of the Ponce diocese, Msgr. Victor Nazario, added a warning. "Any Catholic who preaches or publicly supports the program of the Popular Democratic Party . . . not only commits a mortal sin but also can be excommunicated."

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