Spirit v. Reality

The Roman Catholics of the Deep South cry out against the "moral sin" of school segregation, but they do not end it in their own schools. Last week in every church in Georgia and South Carolina, parishioners heard a promise from their bishops: "Catholic pupils, regardless of color, will be admitted to Catholic schools as soon as this can be done with safety to the children and the schools." But then came the hedge: integration will be carried out "not later than the public schools are opened to all pupils."

The Tiny-Minority Plea. In four Deep South states (Alabama, Georgia, Mississippi, South Carolina), public school integration at any level is limited to the two Negroes who recently entered the University of Georgia. Roman Catholic integration is confined to one elementary parochial school in South Carolina, a seminary in Mississippi and the Jesuit-run Spring Hill College in Mobile. It is likely to remain so. Charleston's Bishop Paul J. Hallinan gives his church's explanation: "The Catholics are 1.3% of the population in our state. If the full federal power cannot carry this off, it's fatuous to think we can. I would take the risk on high moral principles, but it would be a hollow victory if it wrecked our school system or did harm to our children."

But if the tiny-minority argument is valid in Georgia and South Carolina, what of heavily Roman Catholic New Orleans, where Catholics have wound up in the same dilemma of spirit v. reality? New Orleans' ailing, octogenarian Archbishop Joseph Rummel spoke out sharply and clearly against school segregation as early as 1954. The Sisters of the Blessed Sacrament recently advertised in the New Orleans Times-Picayune: "Forced segregation violates both justice and charity." But when the school crisis came last fall, the archbishop postponed parochial school desegregation until public school integration "has been effectively carried out." The wholly temporal reason was that parochial schools, which enroll half the white pupils in New Orleans, get tax-paid books and supplies from the segregationist state legislature. The archbishop's flock also includes some of the South's most fervent racists, among them Boss Leander Perez, who threatened to withhold money and students if parochial schools even began to integrate.

The Catholic Negro View. The paradox of vigorous support for integration but inaction in carrying it out is particularly irksome to Negro Roman Catholics. In the Catholic monthly Interracial Review, the Very Rev. Harold R. Perry, Negro rector of Mississippi's St. Augustine's Seminary, wrote recently: "Catholic institutions could have won great respect among Southern Negroes if they had dropped segregation long ago. In many instances, segregation continues up to and including the Communion rail. We have missed a real opportunity to impress the Negro with the true attitude of the church."

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