Religion: End of an Awkward Affair

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With a reprimand for his overzealous clergy, Puerto Rico's Roman Catholic Archbishop James P. Davis last week strategically retreated from the island's church v. state battleground. In a statement issued in Chicago Archbishop Davis declared that no Catholic who voted for Governor Luis Muñoz Marin's Popular Democratic Party would be subject to canonical penalties, thus flatly contradicting Puerto Rican priests who were prepared to deny the sacraments to those who had voted against church instructions until they confessed their "sin."

In their pre-election pastoral letters, Archbishop Davis and two other Puerto Rican bishops had warned that voting for able Governor Muñoz was a sin, but did not attach ecclesiastical penalties. Two weeks ago, while all three bishops were absent from the island, Father Thomas Maisonet, pastor of San Juan Cathedral, took it on himself to attach a penalty: he warned that Catholics who disobeyed the pastoral letters must not only confess but must also promise, as a condition of absolution, not to support Muñoz' party in the future unless it changed its "anti-Catholic, antiChristian" philosophy, e.g., its opposition to religious instruction in public schools. When Doña Felisa Rincon de Gautier, the mayoress of San Juan, announced that she would defy his edict Father Maisonet told her she must do public penance before she could receive Communion. Realizing that the situation had got clearly out of hand, Archbishop Davis cabled moderation from Chicago. Said Davis: "No sanctions or penalties were ordered, and no one is to be refused the sacraments."

"The bishops made a tactical error with their pastoral letters," commented one U.S. Roman Catholic theologian. "In this instance they misjudged their own influence and the temper of the people. Archbishop Davis' statement is a compromise that saves an awkward situation." In an obvious gesture of reconciliation, Governor Muñoz and 76 of his party leaders issued a statement assuring everyone that the party platform "does not embody . . . any concept whatsoever which is in contradiction with the Christian doctrine upon which the civilization of our people is based."