Battle Over Schools

Amid the muffled clank of advancing legal artillery and the kindling of beacon fires from pulpit and platform, the U.S. was lining up for a major debate over federal assistance to religious schools. Ironically, the commander of the forces opposed to aid for private schools was the nation's first Roman Catholic President, and his principal opponents were the hierarchy of his own church.

At issue was the Administration's request to Congress for federal aid to U.S. education: $3,327,500,000 over the next five years for undergraduate scholarships and for college classrooms and dormitory construction, $2,298,000,000 more in three-year grants to states for public school construction and/or teacher salaries. Fortnight ago, the 13 members of the administrative board ruling the National Catholic Welfare Conference--composed of more than 200 cardinals, archbishops and bishops who guide church policies in the U.S.--met quietly in Washington (TiME, March 10). After the meeting, Archbishop Karl J. Alter of Cincinnati announced that the church would oppose the bill unless it was amended to include longterm, low-interest loans to the nation's private schools, more than 12,000 of them run by Catholic groups. *To that demand, John Kennedy, at his sixth presidential press conference last week, gave a qualified no.

The Softer No. Kennedy's no was a shade softer than the noes of his 1960 campaign. Knowing that all-out Catholic opposition could kill the chance for any education bill this year, the President edged away from his campaign position that all aid to parochial schools is unconstitutional. Although Supreme Court decisions have clearly outlawed direct grants to parochial schools, he said: "There is obviously room for debate about loans . . . This has not been tested by the courts." He made a further distinction between aid to higher and lower education, pointing out that grants for specific purposes to church-run colleges, e.g., the G.I. Bill, have long been accepted in law.

But "across-the-board" loans to non-public schools, as the Catholic bishops were demanding, said Kennedy, raises "a serious constitutional question which, after reading the cases and giving it a good deal of thought, in my opinion would be unconstitutional." Although obviously unhappy about the prospect of a loan amendment, Kennedy declined to say whether he would veto an education bill with the bishops' rider attached. The message to a watching, listening Congress was: Pass the Administration's school aid bill as it is, consider private school loans in separate legislation, if at all.

To many constitutionalists, the President's insistence that Government loans to parochial schools would be unconstitutional was debatable at best. They saw it as a political argument, made to keep a campaign agreement. But the questions raised by the debate went well beyond the issue of one specific Administration bill. They clearly indicated that the whole subject of federal aid to private schools needed a lot more rational thought, and firm national decision, than it has been given so far.

From Cochrane to Zorach. In their verbal war, both Kennedy and the bishops could draw deeply upon the obiter dicta of a Supreme Court that has carefully tried to serve the claims of two strong, and sometimes conflicting, principles. The first is the Jeffersonian "wall of separation between Church and State," the second, the modern-day belief that the "right" of all children to an education entitles any and all students to Government assistance on an equal basis.

As far back as 1930, in the Cochrane decision, the Supreme Court upheld a Louisiana statute providing for distribution by the state of nonreligious textbooks to children in public and private schools alike. In 1947's Everson v. Board of Education--a judgment that Kennedy used heavily in his arguments--the court approved a New Jersey law permitting free bus service for parochial school children but laid down a stiff distinction between service to student and service to school.

Wrote Associate Justice Hugo Black for the majority: "No tax in any amount can be levied to support any religious activities or institutions." In 1948 the court further bricked up the wall of division between church and state: the McCollum decision rejected the Illinois practice of permitting religious education in public school buildings during the school day. But four years later, in the Zorach case, some of the bricks came loose when a six-man majority ruled in favor of a New York program that released public school children for religious instruction outside state property.

The First Amendment, wrote Justice Douglas for the majority in Zorach, obviously cannot mean that there must be a complete separation of church and state.

"Otherwise the state and religion would be aliens to each other--hostile, suspicious and even unfriendly . . . Prayers in our legislative halls; the appeals to the Almighty in the messages of the Chief Executive; the proclamation making Thanksgiving Day a holiday; 'so help me God' in our courtroom oaths-- these and all other references to the Almighty that run through our laws, our public rituals, our ceremonies would be flouting the First Amendment." When the state cooperates in religious instruction, he wrote, ''it follows the best of our traditions."

Groups favoring aid to private schools can cite some respected constitutional authority. Harvard's Arthur Sutherland, an Episcopalian and Republican, shrugs off Kennedy's distinction between loans and grants, argues that existing private school aid is ample precedent for the bishops' request. Says he: "If I were President. I could think of no clear constitutional rea son to veto a bill aiding church and private schools." The National Defense Act permits loans to parochial schools for the purchase of teaching aids in science classes. The National School Lunch Act grants money to states to buy food for non profit lunches in both private and public schools. Kennedy's answer is that such legislation carries out one narrowly defined purpose of the Government: to help student welfare. Boston University's Albert R. Beisel Jr., a Unitarian, endorses this argument as in tune with the kind of distinctions the court is inclined to make.

Baptists for Kennedy. If U.S. Catholics had legal precedent for their stand, they got scant support from Protestants and Jews with parochial schools of their own. Both the National Council of Churches and the American Jewish Congress have gone on record in support of Kennedy's stand. So last week did the President's wary old campaign enemy, Protestants and Other Americans United for Separation of Church and State, and a spokesman for the nation's Baptists, many of whom have traditionally feared the idea of a Catholic for President. "Baptists in the United States," said Executive Director Emanuel Carlson of the church's Joint Committee on Public Affairs, "are overwhelmingly in agreement with the views of the President that aid to sectarian institutions is clearly unconstitutional." Harvard's ex-President James Bryant Conant, an educators' educator, placed himself "in agreement with those who feel that public funds--tax monies --should not be spent on private or church-connected schools."

In Congress the tide of Catholic pressure was rising fast. Without a word to the President, influential House Majority Leader John McCormack, a Massachusetts Roman Catholic known in Congressional cloakrooms as "Archbishop," came out for parochial school loans. (Montana's Mike Mansfield, Senate Majority Leader and also a Catholic, carefully stayed neutral, told newsmen with a worried smile: "I'm just waiting for the Bells of St. Mary's to peal.") The 99 Catholic Congressmen (twelve in the Senate, 87 in the House), as well as Protestants from heavily Catholic districts, eyed a growing pile of mail in favor of the bishops' stand. Organization was showing through. Democratic Senator Eugene McCarthy, a Minnesota Catholic in favor of the loans, reported a suspiciously sudden burst of letters from tiny (pop. 6,000) Little Falls, Minn.; many of the writers accidentally included printed instruction sheets on how they should phrase their letters.

Search for Compromise. To the shaken floor leaders of the education bill, the bishops' all-or-nothing stand further jeopardized a bill that at best will narrowly escape the defeat handed to last year's school aid legislation. Although carefully drawn to please all factions, the Administration program already faces opposition from 1) conservative Southerners opposed to any aid at all, and 2) Northern liberals who want to use federal aid to education as a wedge to further school integration. Administration backers are hopefully looking toward a compromise that would first see a vote on parochial school loans (outlook for passage: poor), then a decision on Kennedy's request for aid to public schools.

Whatever the fate of the President's bill or the bishops' demand, the growing national need for education of all kinds is bound to force a long-overdue review of the uniquely American interpretation of aid to church-related schools. "This terribly pervasive problem," noted Boston Professor Beisel, who supports Kennedy, "has been growing on us in recent years.

No real attempt has been made to formulate the principle in this matter. Congress must make sure it is on the right grounds constitutionally, and come to proper decisions." Added Boston's Roman Catholic diocesan weekly, The Pilot : "Plainly we have been moving on the edge of this large question for many years but we have never probed it. Now is the time for Congress to take the initiative and seek a definitive answer."

* Both parties to the debate have had something of a change in heart. As a Massachusetts Congressman, John Kennedy at first supported some kinds of federal aid for parochial schools, but changed his stand shortly before his election to the Senate. Until six years ago--when it asked to share in any federal aid given to public schools--the Catholic hierarchy has generally regarded federal assistance to private education as the first evil step toward federal control. New York's Francis Cardinal Spellman claimed in 1949 that "we do not ask nor can we expect public funds to pay for the construction of parochial school buildings." Even in 1955, Boston's Archbishop (now Cardinal) Richard Gushing claimed: "We are not looking for any federal or Government aid to build our schools."

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