National Affairs: Fuss in Puerto Rico

The one charge in the argument over church-state relationship that Jack Kennedy has worked hardest to beat down is that the Roman Catholic Church has a moral right to interfere in political decisions—telling its members how to vote, or its communicants what to do in office. Last week the point was abruptly revived in sharp specifics—not by evangelical circuit riders spreading bigotry, but by the Roman Catholic bishops of Puerto Rico, two of them born and raised in the continental U.S.: San Juan's Archbishop James Davis (Tucson); Bishop James McManus of Ponce (Brooklyn).

In a pastoral letter ordered to be read in the island's 479 churches this Sunday, the bishops denounced reform-minded Governor Luis Munoz Marin's Popular Democratic Party (no kin to the U.S. Democratic Party). "It is our obligation," they wrote, "to prohibit Catholics from giving their vote [in the island's Nov. 8 election] to a party that accepts as its own the morality of a 'regime of license,' denying Christian morality . . .

"It is evident." the bishops noted, "that the philosophy of the Popular Democratic Party is anti-Christian and anti-Catholic, and that it is based on the modern heresy that popular will and not divine law decides what is moral and immoral. This philosophy destroys the Ten Commandments of God and permits that they be substituted by popular and human criteria."

As evidence, the prelates cited the lack of religious training in public schools and Munoz Marin's "antidemocratic attempt to limit clergy solely to religious functions." The bishops did not indicate what ecclesiastical penalties might be dealt out to the many islanders who presumably will ignore the prohibition. Asked point-blank if it would be a sin to violate the injunction, Archbishop Davis said it would not.

Clinics & Training. Three-term Governor Munoz Marin, who was brought up a Catholic but seldom attends Mass, has long been at odds with the bishops. The principal quarrels are over birth-control clinics, instituted by Munoz' predecessors but continued by him, and his refusal to grant public school children time off for religious training.

Last summer fiery Bishop McManus helped organize a new Christian Action Party, which he urged all Catholics to support. Caught in a squabble over the validity of the signatures it collected to get on the ballot, the party stands little chance of keeping well-liked Governor Munoz Marin from his fourth term. Even so, Munoz was still angry enough to denounce the bishops' letter as an "incredible medieval interference in a political campaign," promised to bring up the bishops' conduct with Vatican officials after the election.