Religion: Catholic Faith & Power

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Replied Hartnett: "This charge that the Catholics don't believe in the separation of Church & State ... is simply false . . . Cardinal Gibbons set the tone for the American Catholics in an article he wrote ... in 1909 . . . 'American Catholics,' he said, 'rejoice in our separation of Church & State and I can conceive no combination of circumstances will arise which would make a union desirable for either Church or State.' "

According to Blanshard, the U.S. public school is "the basis of democracy." Catholic canon law, he pointed out, rules "that an American Catholic mother who sends her child to an American public school over the objection of a priest can be denied absolution in the confessional." This, he said, was "theological coercion" and added: "Segregation on the basis of creed can be just as damaging to American democracy as segregation on the basis of color."

Hartnett replied that Catholic parochial schools were not so alien from the public schools as Blanshard would have people believe. Protestant Professor Edward S. Corwin of Princeton, he said, had declared that the parochial schools are an "indispensable part" of the U.S. educational system and that "all schools, public or parochial, should be treated alike."

Freedom of Thought. We cannot have "real democracy," said Author Blanshard, "unless we have access to information on both sides of all important questions . . . The Catholic hierarchy, in Canon 1399, says that no Catholic can read, borrow, buy or sell . . . any book which attacks Catholic discipline or Catholic dogma."

Such control of Catholic judgment on the Church, as well as on "foreign affairs, social hygiene, public education and modern science," rejoined Jesuit Hartnett, is not a matter of Catholic political power but of the Catholic faith which Blanshard claims to respect. "It just so happens to be the personal belief of every Catholic that Almighty God, through Jesus Christ, empowered the hierarchy to apply moral judgments to all areas of human conduct, social as well as private. One of the rude errors of this whole thing is the impression that the bishops are herding the people around. People are Catholics because they believe the bishops have that authority. That's one of the reasons they want to be Catholics, to have something to stand for in a world that's coming apart at the seams. Someone to tell them what's right and what's wrong."