Awake!, April 8, 1947

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Supreme Court Approves Uniting Church and State Rules taxes may be used to aid Catholic schools

Mental Institutions: A Growing Problem

Adequate care needed for rising numbers of insane

Bulbs Are Spring Favorites

Their splashy colors set the flower garden ablaze!

Your Heavenly Hopes, Right or Wrong?

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CONTENTS

Supreme Court Approves

Uniting Church and State

The Majority Opinion

Fallacies Riddled by Dissents

History of First Amendment

Parochial Schools Primarily Religious

Discrimination in Unneutral New Jersey

Congressmen Seek to Unite

Church and State

First Step Back to Inquisition

Rising Tide of Crime

Menial Institutions: A Growing Problem

How Many Are Mentally Ill?

Causes of Different Forms of Insanity

Faster than Sound

Bulbs Are Spring Favorites

Planting and Caring for Bulbs "Psychoanalysis and Confession’'’ Washing Blood from Clergv Hands “Thy Word Is Truth” ’ ,

Your Heavenly Hopes, Right or Wrong?

Bible School Graduates Eighth Class, Enrolls Ninth

Watching the World '

fNow it is high time to awake.Romans 13:11

Volume xxviii

Brooklyn! N.Y.r April 8, 1947

Number 7

Supreme Court Approves Uniting Church and State

PRESIDENT Ulysses S. Grant, in 1875, proclaimed:

Encourage free schools and resolve that not one dollar appropriated for their support shall be appropriated to the support of any sectarian schools. Resolve that either the state or the nation, or both combined, shall support institutions of learning sufficient to afford to every child growing up tn the land the opportunity of a good common school education, unmixed with sectarian, pagan, or atheistical dogmas. Leave the matter of religion to the family circle, the church, and the private school supported entirely by private contributions. Keep the church and state forever separate.

President Theodore Roosevelt, in his book American Ideals, declared:

Wc stand unalterably in favor of the public school system in its entirety. We believe that English and no other language is that in which all the school exercises should be conducted. We arc against any division of the school fund and against any appropriation of public money for sectarian purposes. We are against any recognition whatever by the state in any shape or form of state-aided parochial schools.

Heated controversy has swirled about this issue. When Grant and Roosevelt

spoke as they did, both had in mind the historical background of the First Amendment on separation of church and state. But on February 10, 1947, the Supreme Court majority displayed an utter lack of appreciation of this basic American principle. They approved the use of taxes for public schools to pay for the transportation of pupils to Catholic parochial schools. Clearly .they violated the First Amendment of the Constitution, which readi: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof . . .” This restraint upon the federal government was extended to state government by the Fourteenth Amendment.

Notwithstanding this, many states have violated such restraints by passing legislation bestowing special favor upon parochial schools. The unconstitutional trend has been pressured along at accelerated pace by the Roman Catholic Hier-a r c h y. Tn sixteen states and the District of Columbia some form of transportation to church-operated schools is provided, expense being borne by the public treasury. In four states parochial schools receive

APRIL 8,1W

free textbooks, at public expense. This misuse of public funds for sectarian school hooks wag upheld by the Supreme Court in 1930. Since then the Catholic Hierarchy has untiringly pounded on this opening wedge to widen the breach, that she might dig still deeper into the public purse for support of her Catholic schools. Now, seventeen years later, the Supreme Court is again her pawn in maneuvering another Vatican victory; but the cost to Americans has been the abrogation of the First and Fourteenth Amendments and the shelving of 'the principle of separation of church and state.

Unsatisfied, the greedy Hierarchy presses hungrily on for further funds, for needed equipment, for essential buildings, and for teachers’ salaries. Already there are communities in Maine so under the papal thumb that they see nothing amiss in dipping into the public funds to pay the salaries of nuns and priests at parochial schools, and in forcing non-Catholic children either to attend these sectarian schools or to travel at great inconvenience to remote schools more nearly matching the American pattern. It is disturbing to see constitutional barriers to cburch-and-state rule bowled over and the public school system imperiled. But what is more disturbing to note is the little protest raised over the felling of American principles to give way to Catholic plotters. If you think the issue involved has been overdrawn, carefully read the review of the Supreme Court decision and of the dissenting opinions.

Facts of the Case

A New Jersey state statute authorizes its local school districts to make rules and contracts for the transportation of children to and from schools. The board of education of the township of . Ewing thereby authorized reimbursement to parents of money expended by them for bus transportation, on regular public busses, to get their children to school, Part of the reimbursement went to parents of children transported to Catholic schools. These schools are for the primary purpose of imparting instruction in the Catholic faith. The school superintendents are Catholic priests. Arch R, Everson, as a taxpayer, filed suit in a state court challenging the right of the board of education to reimburse parents of parochial school attendants, claiming such action violated the state and federal constitutions. The state court decided in bis favor, but a New Jers^ Court of Errors and Appeals reversed it and the case reached the Supreme Court,

The Majority Opinion

Justice Black handed down the majority opinion on February 10. In it he was 3’oined by Chief Justice Vinson &nd Justices Reed, Douglas and Murphy. The contentions raised were that for lie state to take by taxation the private property of some and bestow it upon others to be used for private purposes violates the due process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, and that such action constitutes state support to sectarian schools in contradiction of the First Amendment forbidding the state to establish a religion. These contentions were overruled by the majority opinion on the ground that, though tax money so used was necessarily an aid to the parochial schools, it contributed to the public welfare. The gist of the majority decision is, quoting:

New Jersey cannot consistently with the f'establishment of religion clause” of the First Amendment contribute tax-raised funds to the support of an institution which teaches the tenets and faith of any church. On the other hand, other language of the amendment commands that New Jersey cannot hamper its citizens in the free exercise of their own religion. Consequently, it cannot exclude individual Catholics, Lutherans, Mohammedans, Baptists, Jews, Methodists, Non-believers, Presbyterians, or the members of any other faith, bc-

cause of their faith, or lack of it, from receiving the benefits of public welfare legislation. , , . Measured by these standards, we cannot say that the First Amendment prohibits New Jersey from spending tax-raised funds to pay the bus fares of parochial school pupils as a part of a general program under which it pays the fares of pupils attending public and other schools- . . . That amendment requires the state to be a neutral in its relations with groups of religious believers nud non-believ* era; it does not require the state to be their adversary, State power is no more to be used so as to handicap religions than it is to favor them.

The sum of thin judicial floundering is that while tax-paid transportation aids it does not to any degree support parochial schools; that if New* Jersey (and hence all other states) did not so aid it would he hampering the free exercise of religion; that tax money allocated to a school fund should be misappropriated and shifted to "public welfare" expenditures; that any state that does not furnish transportation tu parochial schools out of the public coffers is not neutral in its relations with religionists and nonbelievers ; that the state withholding such aid is tho adversary of religion; and that states failing to switch school funds to

in parochial school seats for Catholic indoctrination arc guilty of handicapping religion. The majority opinion weaves a maze of sophistries about impartiality and state neutrality m religion, but it studiously overlooks the rank discrimination in this case whereby state aid goes to parochial schools but no other sectarian institutions. Unneutral New Jersey favors the Roman Catholic religion over other sects. It certainly is not neutral. The disRentors did not allow the majority's convenient oversight to pass unmentioned.

Fallacies Riddled by Dmeni*

The majority decision renders verbose but parrot-like lip-service to the First

Amendment and its historical background, and to the lofty principle of separation of church and state. But it blasts that high principle right out of the Constitution. The weakness of the majority opinion and its flagrant fallacies are manifest when one reads the sterling dissenting opinion written by Justice Rutledge and joined in by Justices Frankfurter, Burton and Jackson. Step by step, methodically and with sweeping power, Rutledge's dissent batters down the specious reasonings of the majority and gives a masterful lesson in American constitutional history. A further torpedoing of the majority holding comes in the dissent written by Justice Jackson, in which he remarks wryly:

The undertones of the opinion, advocating complete and uncompromising separation of church from state, seem utterly discordant with its conclusion yielding support to their commingling in educational matters. The case which irresistibly comes to mind as the most fitting precedent is that of Julia who, according to Byron’s/reports, ‘'Whispering ‘I will ne’er consent/—consented/’

The minority dissent by Rutledge probes to the very roots of the First Amendment ty fringing to light the circumstances ^utrounding enactment of the Virginia statute guaranteeing religious liberty and separation of church and state, which statute was* admittedly by the majority opinion, the basis for the First AniondTnpTi t jumIwp Rntlwlgn quoted from the Virginia bill for religious freedom, and continued:

“To compel h. man to furnish contributions of money for the propagation of opinions which h^/BfibelievcSi is sinful and tyrannical,” I cannot believe that the great author of those words, or the men who made them law# could have joined in this decision. Neither so high nor so impregnable today as yesterday is the wall raised between church and state by Virginia's great statute of religious freedom ,and the First Amendment, now made applicable to all the states by the Fourteenth.

New Jersey’s statute sustained is the first, if indeed it is not the second breach to be made by this Court’s action. That a third, and a fourth, and still others will be attempted, we may be sure. For just as Cochran v. Board of Education, 281 U. S. 370, has opened the way by oblique ruling for this decision, so will the two make wider the breach for a third. Thus with time the most solid freedom stead1 ily gives way before continuing corrosive decision.

History of First Amendment

After these introductory words and a sketching of the facts of the New Jersey case, the minority dissent plunges into the historical background of events giving birth to the First Amendment. It was James Madison who waged a long struggle in the Virginia legislature against bills taxing the people for support of religions. The climax came over the Assessment Bill, which was guilty of no discrimination but allowed aid to all sects and even permitted the taxpayer to indicate which sect should receive his tax. Nevertheless, its passage was killed by Madison’s historic Memorial and Remonstrance, and the way was paved for passage of Jefferson’s bill establishing religious freedom- That was in 1786. The next year Madison became a member of the Constitutional Convention, and when he later fought for ratification of the Constitution he pledged that he would work for a Bill of Rights guaranteeing religious freedom. It was on the basis of this pledge that Virginia and other states ratified the Constitution, He fulfilled that pledge in the form of the First Amendment as the first article of the Bill of Rights. Thus after his Remonstrance had bowled over efforts for state-established religions Madison continued to spearhead the hattie for religious liberty right down to the adoption of the First Amendment. Hence the

* The case wherein the Supreme Court decided that the state might use public funds to provide textbooks far parochial schools.

struggle for religious liberty in Virginia became warp and woof of the First Amendment, and Justice Rutledge accordingly draws heavily upon Madison’s Remonstrance to give solid foundation to the dissent. The minority opinion continues :

Jfadwon’a Historic Remonstrance

As the Remonstrance discloses throughout, Madison opposed every form and degree of official relation between religion and civil authority. For him religion was a wholly private matter beyond the scope of civil power either to restrain, or to support. Denial or abridgment of religious freedom was a violation of rights both of conscience and natural equality. State aid was no less obnoxious or destructive to freedom and to religion itself than other forms of state interference. “Establishment" and “free exercise” were correlative? arid coextensive ideas, representing only different facets of the single great and fundamental freedom. . . . With Jefferson, Madison believed that to tolerate any fragment of establishment would be by so much to perpetuate restraint upon that freedom. Hence he sought to tear out the institution not partially but root and branch, and to bar its return forever.

In no phase was he more unrelentingly absolute than in opposing state support or aid by taxation. Not even “three pence” contribution was thus to be exacted from any citizen for such a purpose. Remonstrance, Par. 3. Tithes had been the life blood of establishment before and after other compulsions disappeared. Madison and bis coworkers made no exceptions or abridgments to the complete separation tbey created. Their objection was not to small tithes. It was to any titlies whatsoever. “If it were lawful to impose a small tax for religion the admission would pave the way for oppressive levies.” Not the amount but “the principle of assessment was wrong.” And the principle was as much to prevent “the interference of law in religion” as to restrain religious intervention in political matters. In this field the authors of our freedom would not tolerate “the first experiment on our liberties” or “wait till usurped power had

strengthened itself by exercise, and entangled the question in precedents.” Remonstrance; Par. 3. Nor should we.

Transportation an Essential Part

The dissents written by both Rutledge and Jackson riddle the majority opinion contention that transportation to the parochial schools can be separated from support of religion. Tax-paid transportation brings the pupil to the Catholic schools where they get, not just some secular instruction, but the religious instruction that is the very purpose of the parochial school. The public funds are used to fill the seats of the sectarian schools, to put the pupils within reach of the school facilities and the instructing nuns. Hence when a non* Catholic is taxed to convey a child to be so indoctrinated with Catholicism he is furnishing "contributions of money for the propagation of opinions which he disbelieves”, a sinful and tyrannical exaction. Transportation of children to puhlic schools is not considered public welfare, but ia reckoned with as a part of the public school system function and is paid for out of public school funds, not public welfare funds. The cost of transportation is a part of the cost of education. The minority dissent declares:

Payment of transportation is no more, nor is it any the less essential to education, whether religious or secular, than payment for tuitions, for teachers' salaries, for buildings, equipment and necessary materials. Nor is it any the less directly related, in a school giving religious instruction, to the primary religious ubjuuliYc all those essential items of coat are intended to achieve. No rational line can be drawn between payment for^mich larger, but not more necessary, items and payment for transportation.

This strong logic throws the majority in tho position whero^ to bo consistont, they must agree to the use of public school funds for all other educational expenses of parochial schools. If the transporting of children to a Catholic school for education is public welfare, how much more bo is the education itself! That is why they are taken there; that is why the transportation becomes "public welfare"'. In recent years politicians courting religious favor have clamored for "more religion” as essential for the public welfare. Perhaps the five justices of the majority decision would like to subsidize.all religion, on the basis of their "public welfare” creation. This new "public welfare” fable of interpretation was ably refuted by the dissenters, but before leaving the matter of transportation to investigate such refutation we should note a strong point made in Jus-tice Jackson’s dissent. The majority opinion splits off the secular from the religious instruction given in parochial schools and reasons that puhlic funds convey children to Catholic schools for the secular education. Jackson’s dissent shows the primary aim of parochial school training:

Parochial Schools Primarily Reltffious

They [parochial schools], in fact, represent a world-wide and age-old policy of the Roman Catholic Church. Under the rubric "Catholic Schools.” th« Canon Law of the church by which all Catholics are bound, provides:

"1215, Catholic children are to be educated in schools where not only nothing contrary to Catholic faith and nerals is taught, but rather in schools When?Religious and moral training occupy the nrst place. - < - (Canon 1372.)”

"1216. Irf every elementary school the‘children must, according to their age, be instructed in Christian doctrine. The young people who attend the higher schools are to receive a deeper religious knowledge, and the bishope shall appoint priests qualified for such wort by their learning an^ piety, (Canon 1373.)”

"1217. Catholic children shall not attend non-Catholic, indifferent, schools that are mixed, that is to say, schools open to Catholics and non-Catholics alike. The bishop of the diocese only has the right, in harmony with

the instructions of the Holy See, to decide under what circumstances, and with what safeguards to prevent loss of faith, it may he tolerated that Catholic children go to such schools, (Canon 1374.)” . , .

I should be surprised if any Catholic would deny that the parochial school is a vital, if not the most vital, part of the Roman. Catholic Church. If put to the choice, that venerable institution, I should expect, would forego its whole service for mature persons before it would give up education of the young, and it would be a wise choice. Its growth and cohesion, discipline and loyalty, spring from its schools. Catholic education is the rock on which the whole structure rests, and to render tax aid to its Church school is indistinguishable to me from rendering the same aid to the Church itself.

It is of no importance in this situation whether the beneficiary of this expenditure of tax-raised funds is primarily the parochial school and incidentally the pupil, or whether the aid is directly bestowed on the pupil with indirect benefits to the school. The state cannot maintain a church and it can no more tax its citizens to furnish free carriage to those who attend a church.

Catholic confirmation of the fact that in parochial schools religious instruction takes first place and secular subjects are secondary comes from the former educational director of the National Catholic Welfare Conference, George Johnson. He said: “In the Catholic school, religion is not regarded as just one branch in the curriculum. It is not confined to mere religious instruction. It is the foundation, the heart and soul of all other disciplines?”

“Public Welfare* Lefftelation

The majority opinion holds that the appropriation for parochial school transportation is for a public, not a private purpose, namely education (but ignores that the primary education given is religious). The minority opinion reasons that c<if that is true and the Amendment's force can be thus destroyed”, then there can be no possible basis for “the state's refusal to make full appropriation for support of private religions schools, just as is done for public instruction” But this bickering over “public welfare” is beside the real question and serves only to “obscure the all-pervading, inescapable issne. Stripped of its religious phase, the case presents no substantial federal question. The public function argument, by casting the issue in terms of promoting the genera] cause of education and the welfare of the individual, ignores the religious factor and its essential connection with the transportation, thereby leaving out the only vital element in the case”. After pointing out that “education which includes religious training and teaching, and its support, have been made matters of private right and function, not public, by the very terms of the First Amendment”, Justice Butledge exposes the court as contradicting itself:

It was on this basis of the private character of the function of religious education that this Court held parents entitled to send their children to private, religious schools. Pierce v. Society of Sisters, supra. Now it declares in effect that the appropriation of public funds to defray part of the cost of attending those schools is for a public purpose.

In the closing paragraphs of Justice Jackson's separately written dissent (in which Justice Frankfurter joined) additional battering-rams of logic find fit-tie resistance in the flimsy “public welfare” concoction of the majority opinion. Consider their logic;

It [the state] may make public business of individual welfare, health, education, entertainment or security. But It cannot make public business of religious worship or instruction, or of attendance at religious institutions of any character. There is no answer to the proposition more fully expounded by Mr. Justice Rutledge that the effect of the religious freedom Amendment to our Constitution was to take every form of propagation of religion

out of the realm oi tiungs which eorid di* ?wtly or tadirestly be nod* petite hadnm and thenbr b* supported in wtate o* In pert ai taxpeycM' aspens* That fa ■ differaws which the Constitution seta up between nii-gion and akaoct *v*ry otter «b>rt matter of legiatalfan, a diflsnnM which g*n to ita very nx< c*f ivdigtaM freedom and which the Cotrt h crerloaUDK today, Tbfa freedom frat in the BW of Rights beeauar it wn flrrt in tta fore fatter*’ miwte; it ww act frrtli iu eosoluto twm, mJ Ite Mrwigth b Ite rigidity. It wifl intended not only to keep the Btat*rr handa out el religion, but to i«p rtligicn'a hands off th* Mata, end ebon all, to beep bik ter ntigteus aoatrermy tert of putite lift by denying to miy dsnoiriastkm any advantoge from getting coated of public policy or ita pubHe pum Thom great ends 1 cannot bet think are xatMMnrably eomprmieod by t> day's dwteion.

, . . Rciigicw teaching cannot bo arrival* a Ta Ir when the state seels to Impose regular which infringe on It irxlirwily, arid a public affair when n euiun to taring dtinne of one faith tc akl another. or Ihoee of no faith tc aid all. . . . If tbc vtntc nwiy aid thesr religion Scoook it may therefore regulate LhtRL Many groups have sought aid front tax frnda only tn Find that it mrrted pplhteri w-'.roll with It . . I ea&Brt read tba history of ths struggle to separate political from «ede-eisstleal affair*, wail racuiariaed in tta opinion of Mr. Justice Ratledge in which I gcua^ ally concur, without a emriotka that the Court today is uneonariomiy givta( he clock's hsnde a backward turn.

MecrMwzftafl fa Vwrrtrri New Jtnqf

Catbulic political prelates wt±il llmt it ■fa discrimination against Catholics not to support parochial schools cut of the public troBitury, Il may be a hardship for Catholic parents to pay taxes to the public school fund and also support parochial m&ooK Bpt that fa not-duKiimina-tion against them; it is their free right The state ptwidee noTMUaorimfawtory schools far tecufar educatHMU Catholic* are welcome; miUioDS do attend tbdee

AFXtL a w

puhtie aehoote. Students prof eaaing many different religion* attend; born ar* discriminated against Their religious beliefs and instruction are their private, affair, to be shaped privately oy the home or church. The state does ant interfere. Secular education divorced from all religion meets the principle of separation of church and state. But the very fact that religion in a private right has jLiade way for private sectarian schools, and if parents wish tv send their children there that fa their free choice. However, th& cost of fixerciring that choioe must be borne by the parent, het the state.

Nevertheless,, there is dbcriminaticuL hnt It in against all ofher religious and secular private sehrnr arid favors Catholic echoofau Juetiw Jadcson streak out at it in matting th* majority opinion's strained analogy that providing transportation1 to eenm^ras like providing police sod fire; protection to children and tthoofa. Aftefr Showing Ui« absurdity of a policeman’s haring to Mk whether a parson is a Catholie before he profit* him, or A fireman** asking whether a burning building is n Catfrohc institution before he fights the femes, Jack-Mm eauekhes the majority eoatentioa thnat

Bol befar* these seteri awtfwrttiM drw a cteoh to famboFM for a sludsiil's firs thgy must vfc Jn*t that qMtioo, and if th* acteri Is a Csthdie see thty nay rtnfar rid bs-mose it b soeh> white if it is of any otter frith or b nm fur prodt. ihe relp nrurt te wUh-hdd. To Murider the wmrmc of the Qmrfs TTAjanmg will beM divkwe its frilasy. Th*t there is no parallel between polio* md ftr* proiertioQ and this plan ci rrimboraen<dt ie apparent ft™ ite frietrngruity of the Inrits-Hon nf this Art if applied to poHdC and fire strvkre. Could ws sustain on Art that srid the prfes stall protect papite an th* w«y to ar from pub Be *eteota>*nd Cathptic sataab tert not white goto< to and oceatef Crao otfi«r Khosla aad fitaiwea atafi aOtegriah a Ufan in public or Catholic aaboai Duildingi btt shall not put cut a H*a* ta PjvuwteAt whveh

schools or private schools operated for profit? That is the true analogy to the case we have before us and I should think it pretty plain that such a scheme would not be valid.

Earlier in his dissent Justice Jackson drew notice to discrimination:

The Court also insists that we must close our eyes to .a discrimination which does exist. The resolution, which authorizes disbursement of this taxpayer’s money limits reimbursement to those who attend public schools and Catholic schools. That is the way the Act is applied to this taxpayer, . . . Thus, under the Act and resolution brought to us by this case children are classified according to the schools they attend and are to be aided if they attend the public schools or private Catholic schools, and they are not allowed to be aided if they attend private secular schools or private religious schools of other faiths.

Issue Broader than Discrimination

In the minority opinion Justice Hutledge did not overlook this discrimination, either:

I have chosen to place my dissent upon the broad ground I think decisive, though strictly speaking the case might be decided on narrower issues. The New Jersey statute might be held invalid on its face for the exclusion of children who attend private, profit-making schools. I cannot assume, as does the majority, that the New Jersey courts would write oft this explicit limitation from the statute. Moreover, the resolution by which the statute was applied expressly limits its benefits to students of public and Catholic Schools.

Discrimination, however, is not the vital point here. Remove it, and the New Jersey statute remains unconstitutional. The discrimination only shows that the abuse Madison fought against and claimed would surely arise, that is, the favoring of one religion over others, has arisen in this uniting of church and state. But whether the aid is to one religion, or to every religion, it is still unconstitutional. If aid were indiscriminately given to all religious schools it would still force non-believers to pay for teaching things they do not believe. It was the furnishing of “contributions of money for the propagation of opinions which he disbelieves” that the constitutional lawmakers outlawed, The Constitution requires, not the identification of the state with one religion or several religions or all religions, but complete separation of the state from each and every religion.

The American public should not be asleep to the shrewdness of the Roman Catholic Hierarchy's assault on the Constitution and the public school system. The amount of bus fares may be trivial, and for that reason objections to it may be takem indifferently, or answered by sentimental arguments, or brushed aside with such belittling remarks as “Don’t be stingy”. That is cunning papal strategy, Jesuit scheming aims to crack the constitutional principle where it will excite no great concern or notice, and where sentimentalism will tend to obscure the breach. Breached once, the second breakthrough is easier, and successive onslaughts eventually level the constitutional barrier and the nation is saddled tri th the Catholic Church and her parochial schools.

Unlike the dozing Supreme Court majority, Madison was awake to such religious tactics. He warned: "At least let warning be taken at the first fruit of the threatened innovation.” Seventeen years ago the Supreme Court allowed the first innovation. Now comes the second. Only the gullible -simpleton will believe the Hierarchy will not attempt a third and fourth and persist till separation of church and state is no more. Justice Black contends that the Court does not mean to go farther than transport. But the Hierarchy means to go farther, much farther. And on what legal basis can the Supreme Court stop her? The court has destroyed the only basis on which rational distinction can be made. They have ruled that education at parochial schools is public welfare meriting public sup-

port by getting children to it. On that un-American foundation public taxes could be used to cover all Catholic educational expenses. Exercise has strengthened the breach; corrosive precedents have set in.

Only the Beginning

The majority opinion rules that transportation to parochial schools is “within the state’s constitutional power even though it approaches the verge of that power”. The minority opinion puzzled over this bit of rationalization, not being able to “understand why the state cannot go farther, or why this ease approaches the verge of its power” if the majority holding remains in force. With the corrosive precedent established and the First Amendment by-passed, it is obvious that the state has not approached the verge of its power, but has battered through constitutional restraints and stands at the very edge of an open field for uniting of church and state. Greedy papal religion will not view the transportation concession as the verge of the state’s power; she is poised on the verge of a continued and more far-reaching drive for state aid to establish religion. This bit of appeasement will only sharpen the Hierarchy appetite. Proving that the Supreme Court has helped the Hierarchy advance another step along a planned divide-and-conquer road of conquest over the public school, note the following paragraph taken from The Parochial School, a book written by a priest and copyrighted in 1905:

I have had many conversations with members of the American Catholic Hierarchy during the past eighteen years about the public and parochial schools in America. The ecclesiastical champions of the latter have stated that the insistent demand of the Catholic hierarchy for a division of the public school money would eventually be granted; that the American people would grow weary of the school contention and to escape it would adopt the Catholic view; that then every effort would be made to secure the largest possible grants of public money; that the other sects would, out of envy, demand similar grants for their various schools, and that they would be encouraged by the Catholic dignitaries to press their claim; that the consequence would be the disruption of the public school system by the competition and antagonism of such sectarian bodies; and that the ultimate result would be the supremacy of the Catholic Church in secular teaching by virtue of her strong organization and great resources through her various teaching orders. [Page 83]

Congressmen Seek to Unite

Church and State

But the Supreme Court is not alone in pushing the Hierarchy along its Jesuitic course. At the last Congrpss, the 79th, the Mead-Aiken Bill was introduced, which, if passed, would have authorized federal funds for sectarian schools as well as public schools. However, at committee hearings on the bill it was revealed that literature and drafts that were distributed among teachers and other groups concealed the fact that aid would go to sectarian schools. In this way support was mustered under false pretenses. Backing this bill, and opposing a federal bill that would have aided only the public schools, was a primarily political priest, “Monsignor” Frederick G. Hochwalt, educational director of the National Catholic Welfare Conference. It was this same Hochwalt that predicted, in 1944, that a federal aid bill for education would eventually be passed, and that instead of opposing federal aid (as the Hierarchy had been doing) Catholics should work for it on the condition that it benefit parochial schools also. And, as many states either by constitution or statute forbid the use of public funds for parochial schools, he advised concerning these federal bills that Catholics “demand that some provision be included that would allow the federal government to by-pass the states and deal directly with the non-tax-supported schools”.

This Mead-Aiken Bill dutifully (to the business firm of Hoch wait & Hierarchy) provided a subterfuge to circumvent state laws prohibiting church-state schools. When witnesses before the committee holding hearings were asked who prepared this provision, they just did not know. “Shield the priests" is the inviolable maxim. A witness opposing the bill castigated this maneuver to outflank the state constitutions, saying; “What a flagrant misuse of federal power is here proposed! . . . ‘They [the state constitutions] are not to be ignored or circumvented by Congress/ ” Proponents of the Mead-Aiken Bill readily admitted it was designed to elude state prohibitions.

The bill did not pass, but that did not discourage the Hierarchy. If it does not succeed at first try, then it tries and tries again and again to batter down constitutional restraints and burst open the public money-bags and to dip its greedy paws into the public purse. Now the 80th Congress is in session, and onee more Senator Aiken has introduced a similar bill providing federal support for parochial schools. These proposed federal grants are to be distributed to the various state educational authorities who will distribute the sums proportionately to public schools and sectarian schools. And when it says “sectarian” it means primarily “Catholic”, for five-sixths of the sectarian schools are Catholic. Like its predecessor, this bill provides that if any state authority is not allowed by law to distribute the sums to the parochial schools, then the federal authority will deliver the public tax money to such schools direct. Representative Welch has introduced a similar bill in the House. In addition, Senator Taft has introduced a bill to the 80th Congress on federal aid to education. This bill would give federal tax money to the various states, and the state would be free to distribute* it to public or parochial schools, according to the state policy. Thus this bill would only breach the federal constitution and not state constitutions, if the Catholic agitators cannot blast the big hole by passing the Welch-Aiken version, it will content itself for a short time with a smaller rent. In either event, these bills would open the federal pocketbook to a scramble of religious sects, grabbing and fighting for public funds.

Consequences to State and Religion

The unhappy truth is that the American public in general does not perceive the consequences closing in upon them. The Supreme Court first unlocked and then opened the door slightly for the use of taxes to establish a religion. Now legislators seek to open it still wider. The Roman Catholic Hierarchy hopes to eventually knock the door down. What then? Many sects will enter the stampede for state support. Each will desire more for itself, less for competitor sects. Inescapably, one or a few sects will benefit more than the others. The political squabbles over religion that will follow' will fester and swell. The various fighting seets and cults will seek to embroil the state in their dissensions. And they can dp it, too, because the state itself will have entered the field of supporting religion. Imagine the 256 sects in the United States operating state-financed schools! The public school would either die out or become an insignificant 257th. The state, in refereeing all the battles of the divisive 256 sectarian schools, would be forced to step in and to regulate, to control. That would end religions freedom. The First Amendment is religion's friend and protector. Religion had better not kill its friend, even by degrees.

Face facts. The principle of separation of church and state is being trampled under. Not only is religion grabbing public funds for sectarian schools, but it is invading the public schools. The attack strikes from several fronts. In fifteen states public schools have classes in sectarian religious instruction in the school buildings. In twenty-seven states the

public schools release time for sectarian training that should be spent in secular study. Hence forty-two states allow encroachment on public school time by religion. Each encroachment may be small, but totaled up they make a deep penetration in the bulwark separating church and state. Already drowsy Americans have delayed ‘till usurped power has strengthened itself by exercise and entangled the question in precedents’.

More lamentable, this religious attack comes when the public schools are under special strain. They need more money, and can ill afford a division of their funds to transport children to parochial schools for Catholic indoctrination. The rich United States spends 1.5 percent of its national income on public schools. Great Britain spends 3 percent; Russia, 7.5 percent. Many public school teachers are inadequately trained. Most of them are underpaid. There is a crying need for federal aid to public schools, but in the pathway of such assistance the Roman Catholic Hierarchy plants herself and refuses to budge to allow passage of a federal-aid measure unless her money-sucking parochial schools can be stuck onto it like leeches.

First Step Back to Inquisition

. Will the American public ever awake? Will it raise such a protest that the din will awaken slumbering court justices to dangerous encroachments? Will it check the papacy’s political puppets as they march like blind simpletons and shocktroops in the Hierarchy’s blitz against the First Amendment? Will the public complacently blink as bit by bit the clock’s hands are inched backward more and more, and come to its senses only when defeat is total and church and state are reunited? Yes, reunited; for then the clock’s hands will have been whirled back all the way to the dark Middle Ages, when kings reigned by “divine” right and popes were lords over all. Then any religious sects or sectarian schools other than Catholic ones will be pronounced heretical. Re-enter, Inquisition. A fantastic view? To most Americans and to many honest-hearted Catholics it will undoubtedly seem so; but the Hierarchy’s history justifies it. Moreover, that view of matters does not originate with Awake! It was the view of Madison, the American who figured so prominently in the First Amendment. On this very issue of taxing believers and non-believers (even if only “three pence”) to support religious teaching James Madison declared : “Distant as it may be, in its present form, from the Inquisition it differs from it only in degree. The one is the first step, the other the last in the career of intolerance.” Will the American people awake before that last step has been taken?

Teising Tide of Crime

J. Edgar Hoover, director of the Federal Bureau of .Investigation, recently reported That on an average every 5.7 minutes during 1946 there was a murder, manslaughter, rape, or assault to kill. During the average day thirty-six persons were slain. The report estimated that principal crimes

for the year totaled 1,685,203, the greatest number in ten years, and 119,662 more than in 1945. Between 1945 and 1946, murders and non-negligent manslaughter rose 23.3 percent; robbery, 15.7; rape, 5,0; aggravated assault, 12.9; larceny, 8.8; burglary, 11,3. Other statistics disclose that during 1945 boys and girls under twenty years of age committed two murders a day, a 25-percent increase over 1944. Preliminary figures for 1946 indicate another sharp rise in teen-age homicides. We live in perilous times.—2 Timothy

Mental Institutions

A Growing Problem

Notice has recently been drawn to mental illness and the institutions for care of the insane. Such books as Snake Pit and Private Worlds, The Crack-Up, Brainstorm, The Lost WeekEnd (which has been made into a picture), and the motion pictures “The Seventh Veil”, “Shock”, “The Lady in the Dark” and “Spellbound” have catapulted psychiatry into the news as much as have the many newspaper and magazine articles. Some of the above, such as The Snake Pit and The Lost Week-End (an alcoholic’s mental derangement), concern the experiences of the insane, who are said to be suffering from psychoses; while others, like “The Seventh Veil” and “The Lady in the Dark”, deal with those ‘borderline’ mental disorders known as psychoneuroses. whose symptoms are frequently imaginary illnesses and unnatural fears.

Spurred, no doubt, by these revelations, especially the sensitive dramatic novel The Snake Pit, the author of which, Mary Jane Ward, identifies herself as the character Virginia, institutionalized for several years, the pictorial magazines Life, Time and Newsweek have exposed some very horrible conditions found in state institutions for the insane. Particularly disgusting was the photographic exhibition of a “dilapidated, overcrowded, undermanned mental TiospitaF ” in Philadelphia known as Byberry. Life compares conditions in Byberry and the Cleveland State Hospital to horrors of the Nazi prisons and follows with this general indictment of American institutions for the mentally ill:

Pennsylvania is not unique. Through public neglect and legislative penny-pinching, state after state has allowed its institutions for the care and cure of the mentally sick to degenerate into little more than concentration camps of the Belsen pattern. Court and grandjury records document scores of deaths of patients following beatings by attendants. Hundreds of instances of abuse, falling just short of manslaughter, are similarly documented. And reliable evidence, from hospital to hospital, indicates that these are but a tiny fraction of the beatings that occur, day after day, only to he covered up by tacit conspiracy of mutually protective silence and a code that ostracizes employes who “sing too loud”.

Not one, but dozens of photographs depicted naked inmates in rooms completely bare except for the accumulation of filth and human excrement Pitiful indeed were the views of psychotics, their hands bound by long camisoles tied behind, or barefooted on concrete floors, with gaping sores untended. Down in the basement ward known as Byberry’s “dungeon”, on the wall there is a legend that tells its own shocking story: “George was killed here 1937.”

Many of the reports come from the 3,000 conscientious objectors, “Methodists, Quaker, Mennonites and Brethren,” who volunteered to help out in the mental institutions. One of their reports from a New York State hospital depicts it as hardly different from the Nazi Dachau: “The testimony revealed that these four attendants slapped patients in the face as hard as they could, pum-meled them in the ribs with fists, some

being knocked to the floor and kicked. One 230-pound bully had the habit of bumping patients ou the back of the head with the heel of his hand, and on one occasion had the patient put his hands on a chair, then striking his fingers with a heavy pass key." Time magazine of No-veniber 11 gives a brief but telling summary of the 180 state institutions crowded at present by more than 600,000 inmutes: “Patients arc beaten up and murdered by attendants . . . [They] are starved . . . [They] live in antiquated, unsanitary buddings [amid] filth, ver min and overcrowding . - . Care of the mon tally ill is a national disgrace.” The American Journal of Public Health,, in an article entitled 'A New Force in the Reform of Mental Hospitals", avers: “The status of our public mental hoepitala is one of the least admirable aspects of our civilization/ Dr. Fremont-Smith, vice-president for the National Committee for Mental Hygiene, declared in October; "Conditions in mental hospitals in nearly all states 'now border on disaster’/ and blamed shortage of buildings and personnel and "a policy of concealment of mental hospital inefficiency". Dr. George H. Preston, Maryland state commissioner of mental hygiene, laid the lag in mental care to lack of help.

However, the average in Maryland of one attendant to fifty patients is much above the national average. In many institutions one attendant takes care of 400 patients. Attendants in mental institutions start at pay below that of penitentiary guards, often leas than $1,000 per year, and, bcoauec of shortage of help, most often wdrk 60 hours per week. Mrs. Edith Stem, autho? of Mental Illness, A Guide for the Family, may have explained the large number of attendants in Maryland institutions when she charged that“mentally ill patients occasionally have been placed in charge of entire buildings at the Springfield State Hospital in Sykesville, M<t, because of the shortage of ward attendants'. In this

APRIL S, 1*47

same institution fourteen doctors must care for 3,000 inmates, and throughout the state the allotment for food per day per patient is only 26e. Collier's, in an editorial of January 25, hits the budgetary weakness: “The insanity problem is one of our big ones; yet in the entire country we spend only about $150,000,000 a year on state mental hospitals [for 600,000 inmates], whereas $3,000,000,000 u year would be about right.” In 1941 the total of expenditures in state hospitals was $142,282,480. Time estimates that approximately $400 per year per patient is allotted for the care of each patient, but this appears rather high nation-wide in view of the total nf 150 million dollars to care for more than a half million patients. In Maryland the allotment for each patient is only 92c a day.

Other authorities aimed their criticism at further defects in the care of mental illness. Owen J. Roberts, former justice of the Supreme Court, blamed "lack of informed citizens" for the sordid plight of “America’s 8,000,000 mentally ill". Dr, Paul H. Stevenson, U. S. Public Health Service, deplored the legal machinery for admission to a mental institution, wherein an affidavit is fiiud with the police or U. 8. District Court, then the party is “apprehended” like a.criminal; thereafter a court hearing is required wherein the psychiatrist treating the patient is excluded. He urges a clean sweep of present mental laws. (Washington, D. C., Times-Herald, May 19, 1946) Declaring that faulty diagnosis and care of the mentally ill are a medical scandal, Dr. A. 11L Bennett, head of A. E. Bennett Neuro-PsychUtric Research Foundation, -pointed out: “Above all, medical men must learn that psychoneuroses and psychoses are mental illnesses, and that no form of rest cure, Qrug therapy or any approach directed to treating an emotional problem at a physical level is scientific.” Several other doctors, inrinding Dr. R. P. Mackay, of Chicago^ and Dr. Walter C. Alvarez, of Mavo

Clinic, Rochester, Minn., disclosed that thousands of mental cases were receiving entirely useless and harmful medical and surgical treatment.

On the defense side of the ledger, analyzing why these conditions noted prevail, the condensation of “Facts Behind The Snake. Pit” (Readers Digest, December 1946, p, 121) points out that many of the insane are left without clothes because they foul and tear off all garments as soon as dressed. The description of the manic-depressive, third on the list of common types (which are given later consideration), reveals why some hospital rooms are kept bare:

Manic-depressive may rise to superhuman heights of fury and strength. At other times he sinks into an apathy as deep as death. In full manie fury his energy explodes like a bomb. He may tear his clothes, even strong canvass strait jackets, to shreds, or break hjg iron cot to pieces with bare hands. ... A manic has been known to tear his cheeks off by hooking his fingers in the corner of his mouth and jerking them. When he sinks to the depressive state he scarcely breathes. He cannot stand. He cannot eat, see, hear, feelt smell. He lies, a mere lump of lifeless_matter, sometimes for days,

Undoubtedly care of the violent and incontinent raises difficult problems, but the best hospitals use no form of mechanical restraint and even the most unrestrained receive a tunic so that none are absolutely naked. Danville, Pa., has one of the nation’s few “n on-restraint” institutions for the mentally sick. In general, the charges of abuse, neglect, overcrowding, starvation, and inefficiency, both as to diagnosis and treatment, all stand uncontradicted.

How Many A re Mentally III?

Actually hospitalized in state institutions there are approximately 6OO5OOO, according to some statistics. But this does not begin to answer the question. Dr. Carl Binger estimates that there is a total of 700,000 to a million in all institutions, adding, “There are probably three to five million non-institutional-ized eases/' Several other authorities agree that half the hospital beds in the country hre occupied by the mentally ill, and fifty percent of those applying to doctors have sick minds. “It can be stated conservatively,” said Dr. Thomas Par-ran, surgeon general and chief of U. S. Public Health Service, “that 8,000,000 persons, more than 6 percent of the population, are suffering from some form of mental illness.” (Chicago Sun, March 3, 1946) “One out of every 13 Americans will require hospitalization for mental illness at some time during his life!” (Parran, Chicago Sun, April 1, 1946) Owen Roberts, above quoted, corroborated this estimate and added: “In addition to the 8,000,000 mentally ill persons in the country, there are 2,000,000 mentally deficient . . . There are only 4,000 certified psychiatrists to care for them, as compared with 180,000 physicians for the physically ill.” Furthermore, the U. S. Public Health Service, repeating this almost unbelievable figure of eight million, forecast “an increase of mental cases out of proportion to the increase .in population” estimated. Many other organizations vouch for these astounding facts.

Draft boards, psychiatric reports from the armed forces, and veterans' *bu-reaus, bring forth facts indicating that it is the nation's youth that is cracking up! Twelve out of every 100 candidates for Selective Service were rejected because of “disorders of the personality”. For each 100 men rejected for all causes 39 were refused for this cause, a total of mental rejects, 1,600,000. Having thus weeded out the mentally diseased or deficient, it would4 seem that the armed forces would have a pretty high percentage of strong or normal minds. But even after this sifting process, the army admitted over one million men to the neuro-psychiatric wards, seven percent of which were actually insane. As for med-

ieal discharges 457,000 were released because of neuroses, anti-social behavior, inadequacy, mental deficiency and bedwetting. Three out of five disability claims in the Veterans Administration are due to neuropsychiatric disorders (mental ills), and the peak will not be reached, according to the Army, until 1975! This was roughly the situation in the armed forces, after screening and eliminating the unfit!

In regard to the increase in rate of insane the number has increased to twelve times in the past sixty years, w’hile the population increased by half that number. In 1880 there were about 183.3 psychotics per 100,000 population, which rate began to increase about the turn of the century until the 1943 average was 366.7. But even in 1943 there were only 430,958 patients in state institutions, according to the U. S. Department of Commerce bulletin Patients in Mental Hospitals, Table III, page 8; whereas reliable sources estimate the number as 600,000 in 1946. Tn 1934, just twelve years before, there were only 341,485 in state institutions. (In general, the number in the state institutions runs about 80-85 percent of the total number hospitalized, including those in government, private and city and county institutions.) At present there are more patients in hospital beds because of mental illness than all Americans killed in war from the Revolution through World War II! And the end is not yet!

Causes of Different Forms of Insanity

In view of this appalling increase at the present, the question arises as to what relation world conditions have to this mental decline. War, bringing its depleting pestilences and famines, its corroding fears, its burning hatreds, undoubtedly breeds psychoses, as well as the. border-mental disturbances called psychoneuroses or simply neuroses. (A neurosis is defined by Webster’s dictionary as “a functional nervous disorder,

without demonstrable physical lesion (diseased or injured region)”. Thus a man may complain of various pains, such as headache, lameness, etc., without anything theanatter with head or legs. Psychoanalysis may sometimes get at the root of this trouble, pointing out that some repressed fear or shame or aver-\ sion is responsible for the physical symptom. In all its combinations the form psych-, or psycho, has reference to the mind or mental processes. Thus psychiatry is defined as the medical specialty that deals with mental disorders, especially with psychoses (but also with neuroses). It is thus seen that of the neuroses especially each is an environmental disorder, and it is common to the armed forces because “the combat soldier exists in the world’s worst environment. Unable to escape it he is certain to become a psychiatric casualty if he is kept in the line long enough”. {Newsweek September 9,1946, p. 66; also note Science News Letter September 7, 1946: “The danger of being killed or maimed imposes a strain so great that it causes men to break down.”) It is no wonder that over a million soldiers had to be treated.

The great increase of insanity during fairly peaceful periods, however, indicates that war is not the entire answer. According to the Census bulletin the number of admissions, to mental institutions in the state hospitals were, in order of prevalence, first, dementia praecox (schizophrenia is the general term including dementia praecox appearing in three forms *. hebephrenic, characterized by silly behavior; paranoid form, delusions; and catatonic form, by taking rigid and often peculiar positions and. postures without moving for hours), 23,794; second, cerebral arteriosclerosis, 13,530; third, manic-depressions, 11,849; fourth, senility, 10,500; fifth, general paresis, and other forms of syphilitic central nervous system disease, 7,602; sixth, alcoholism, 4,966; seventh, involutional psychoses (those connected with

“change of life”), 3,829; all other causes, including brain tumors, trauma (injuries or shock), drug addiction, epilepsy, visceral diseases, gland diseases and tuberculosis, etc,,' 30,628. “In far more cases than would be supposed, insanity is precipitated by some actual physical condition, injuries to the brain, epilepsy, brain tumors, encephalitis (inflammation of the brain), cerebral palsy, and many others.” This bears out the truthfulness of the statement found in the work already mentioned, Mental Illness, A Guide for th& Family: “The most important thing for your patient's chances of recovery and for your own peace of mind is to realize that mental illnesses are illnesses like any others.” The author adds that the patients should be looked upon as ill, not wicked.

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