Religion: Light in Newton Grove

In the little North Carolina town of Newton Grove (pop. 450), two frame churches stand 200 yds. apart. Both are Roman Catholic. Until this week the Church of the Holy Redeemer had some 350 members, all white; the Church of St. Benedict had about 90 members, all Negro.

Last Sunday, they became officially one mixed congregation of 440. But for all three Masses only 58 people came.

The merger was anything but Newton Grove's idea. Bishop Vincent S. Waters of Raleigh, a Virginian by birth, ordered it in a letter read from the pulpits of both churches on April 19. The tiny farming community has been in an uproar ever since. "Why did the bishop do it?" asked 74-year-old John Monk, nephew and namesake of the founder of Newton Grove's first Catholic church, and plenty of his neighbors agreed with him. They petitioned Bishop Waters, and many of them said they would take their worship elsewhere.

To the first united service came the bishop himself, unannounced, and there were some pushing and hauling as about 40 white men tried to storm past a young assistant to see him in the rectory. He interviewed them two by two. Segregation, he told them, was a product of "darkness, and the time has come for it to end." Then Bishop Waters left Newton Grove still blinking angrily in the sudden light.