Religion: Corrosive Influence

To the U.S. Supreme Court, the First Amendment† means that there is a "wall of separation between Church and State." In the Vashti McCollum case last spring, the court told an Illinois school board not to allow the teaching of religion in the public schools (TIME, March 22). Last week, meeting in Washington, D.C., the Roman Catholic bishops of the U.S. denounced the court for this "entirely novel and ominously extensive interpretation."

As the bishops see it, the First Amendment makes only two things unconstitutional: 1) "the setting up by law of an official church"; and 2) "discrimination between religious bodies." The founding fathers, said the bishops, were God-fearing men who knew that "national morality cannot long prevail in the absence of religious principle." They never intended to prevent "free cooperation" between government and organized religion. Any contrary interpretation is "an utter distortion of American history and law."

Concluded the bishops: "On this basically, religious [U.S.] tradition . . . secularism has [increasingly] exercised a corrosive influence . . . If this secularist influence is to prevail . . . such a result should ... be achieved by legislation . . . and not by the judicial procedure of an ideological interpretation of our Constitution. We therefore hope and pray that the [present interpretation] will in due process be revised."