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PAGE 2—The Southern Cross, September 13,1973
Pennsylvania Attorney Discusses School Aid
WHAT DOES THE FUTURE HOLD FOR non-public schools, supporters of Catholic schools may
SCHOOLS LIKE THIS ONE? If U.S. courts continue have some hard choices to make in the near future.
aid children in
William B. Ball, an attorney from
Harrisburg, Pa., has been involved in
several cases before the U.S. Supreme
Court concerning the relationship
between church and state.
Recently Ball was interviewed by
Msgr. Norbert Gaughan, chancellor of
the diocese of Greensburg, Pa. on the
subject of public aid to private schools
and the teaching of religion in public
schools.
Q. Mr. Ball, you see the recent move
of the Supreme Court on schools as
more than a blow to Catholic schools.
Do you regard it as a statement about
secular values over religious values?
A. What the Supreme Court has done,
by saying that parents cannot be aided
in any respect in the education of their
children in any kind of private school,
really means that the vast majority of
American children will, in a short while,
be forced into public education unless
their parents are willing to make very
heroic sacrifices. But in public
education the Supreme Court has also
held that there may not be any
affirmative teaching of religion. This has
the effect of forcing great numbers of
children into public education, and
relates to Catholic, Protestant, Jew, or
any religious person. The more deeply
committed a person is to religion, the
more he is conscious of the kinds of
values-religiously related values-which
he receives in his education. I know, for
example, parents who belong to the
Church of the Nazarene. They are very
emphatic in their view that the Bible is
the word of God. They consider it
absolutely an abomination if the public
school utilizes the Bible as literature,
not acknowledging it to be the word of
God, and merely saying that the Bible is
good literature. They believe this is a
perverse use of the Bible because you
should never refer to God’s word as
anything but God’s word.
But the present theory is that in our
public schools we have a religious
neutrality-no religion is attacked; no
religion is supported.
Q. Is that what the Founding Fathers
wanted?
A. I think not. There is nothing in
history that justifies that assumption.
Some of the Founding Fathers were
deists, at worst. That is to say, they
believed in a sort of general God. But
most of them were actually Christian.
All of them believed in God. Education
in our country, to the extent that we
had it at that time, universally taught
the reality of God, recognized the Ten
Commandments as the teaching of God,
recognized the Bible. And a teacher in
those days wouldn’t be found dead
relativizing those matters.
Q. You stated once that the
Northwest Ordinance said something
about religion.
A. The Northwest Ordinance of 1787
was the congressional enactment which
was to be the charter of the whole,
enormous territory of the now United
States, which was the Northwest
Territory. The Ordinance has a
recitation which is extemely important,
relating to religion: “Religion, morality
and knowledge, being necessary to good
government and the happiness of
mankind, schools and the means of
education should be forever
encouraged.” When you analyze the
wording, it is simply this: since religion
and morality and knowledge are
necessary for good government and the
happiness of mankind, education should
be publicly supported. Public support of
education was recognized by the nation
in that year in a national document. But
publicly supported education was aimed
at affording not mere knowledge but
religion and morality.
Q. You also said that some of the
state constitutions, the earliest ones,
had similar statements?
A. If you read the preamble of the
Constitution of Massachusetts, it is
virtually a piece of religious writing. The
same applies to those in New York,
Pennsylvania, Ohio. In Ohio there’s a
sort of realization of the ideals of the
Northwest Ordinance. There they set up
a specific provision for an allocation of
state property for ministerial uses. The
laws of 1838 of Pennsylvania provided
specifically for aid to sectarian schools.
We were definitely a very Christian
nation and we taught, and encouraged
and inculcated religion zealously.
Q. But now we have come to these
years. By the Supreme Court decision
we no longer can promote religious
values in public schools. Is that a fair
statement?
A. That’s exactly right.
Q. Then what is left for parents to do
who want religious values?
A. They have these possible
alternatives. One is to maintain their
own schools. If they do this they must
at the least be unthreatened by the state
in doing so. The non-entanglement
doctrine of Lemon V. Kurtzman cuts
two ways: that the state not become
to void legislation designed to
intermingled in the affairs of church
schools through financing; and the other
side is that the state may not regulate
church schools in matters that affect
their very being, their religious life.
Therefore, there cannot be,
constitutionally, in my view, much
public regulation of religious schools,
especially because the imposition of
extensive regulatory and administrative
burdens upon them will not permit
them to carry out their religious
commitments.
The second course that they have is
to contest impositions of religion in the
public schools. What do I mean by that?
I just got done saying you can’t have
religion in public schools. But, indeed,
we do have a religion of secular
humanism, which masks itself as
neutrality, which is considered to be
non-religion in public schools. But
everything you do positively, and
everything you omit to do, teaches, and
much of what is done and not done in
the public schools teaches values.
Q. Can a teacher speak in a public
school, in a way, about non-God, that
there is no God-purely scientific
humanism? He is allowed to do that,
isn’t he?
A. Probably the courts would
interfere with his telling the children
there is no God. Yet doesn’t he do the
same thing when he teaches a course
which deals with matters closely related
to creation, or matters closely related to
justice, and may not mention in any
manner God as a positive idea? This
crops up, for example, in .. .let’s take
the sample area of teaching race
relations. Some child, inquisitive as
children are, may well ask: “Well, my
dad doesn’t like black folks. Why should
I be fair; You say we have to be fair to
blacks? But my dad says they’re no
good.” What does the teacher answer?
He’s faced with the question, why treat
blacks fairly? He could say, “Well, the
law requires it,” which is poor teaching.
Anybody can see right away that the
law can be changed. Even the
Constitution can be changed. Well,
perhaps the teacher says, “It’s because
the majority of the people want it.” Yet
majorities don’t make right. The child
will very readily realize that today’s
majority may be totally wrong, as was
so in Nazi Germany. Or the teacher may
say something vague, that “Democracy
demands this of us.” Strange, the
teacher can say all those things, but he
cannot say, “Be fair to blacks because
they were made in the image and
likeness of God.” He may not affirm
that.
Q. Mr. Ball, you have said you see a
new threat arising now too. You say
that schools are moving into family
problems.
A. The schools lately-public
schools-are embracing programs in
many states, which in my view,
constitute a direct violation of family
privacy. I don’t think there’s any right,
in any public agency, including a public
school, to get children into sessions on
so-called “family life,” or “democratic
bring,” or “sex education,” in which
the child may be asked by the teacher,
with all the authority the teacher
commands psychologically over the
child’s mind, “What sort of conflicts do
you have in your family?” “How does
your father treat your mother?” '‘Who
usually begins the arguments?” But this
kind of thing is definitely taking place.
Q. When do these teaches ask these
questions?
A. They ask them in subjects which
are masked as courses on “family life,”
for example. There are other invasions
which are even worse in my opinion-the
invasion of the child’s sexual privacy.
The teaching of group sex education at
best, presents tremendous problems.
When the public authority decides it’s
going to take an 8-year-old child and
teach it about a thing called
“sexuality,” very excellent
psychologists have testified that this
produces a very, very disturbing effect
on the child.
Q. Nowadays many are questioning
lawyers' ethics. People say, “We have to
teach more ethics.” But can we teach
ethics without religious values?
A. The answer is, no. Any way you
teach it, you are teaching religious
values. You are teaching either secular
humanist values or somebody else’s
values.
Q. But is it not true that secular
humanists values are the values of
Watergate and all its related matters
-getting ahead, power?
A. Yes, yes they are. Well, at least
they can result from an explanation of
life and conduct and behavior and
society without God. Incidentally, the
Supreme Court has said in the Torcaso
case a few years ago that secular
humanism is a religion in the meaning of
the Constitution.
Q. One last question: Are you
pessimistic about the future of our land
in this matter, or do you still feel there
is hope? You have fought these battles
in the courts, yet you have not given up
hope. Why?
A. Well, I have hope, but the hope is
based upon other people haring hope. I
think that people are going to have to
decide to stand up for their rights; they
are going to have to carefully monitor
what’s happening to their children in
public education, and Catholics have got
to be Catholics. If it looks as though
Catholics are going to have separate
education in the future, they must make
certain that it is very Catholic and
orthodox. Then, secondly, they must be
willing to sacrifice for it.
Bishop Re-dedicates Augusta’s Holy Trinity Church—
(Continued from Page 1)
and personal holiness, he called on the
congregation to be “a community of
love.”
“What greater scandal is there,”
Bishop Lessard asked,” than to see
Christians sharing in the Body of Christ
and yet unwilling to accept each other
as brothers in Him because of
distinctions that do violence to Christ’s
Gospel and are an outrage even to the
enlightened pagan?”
Referring to the missionary aspect of
the parish family, he declared that “it
must radiate its characteristics of love
and unity to all those with whom it
comes in contact.
“ . . .for the family does not consist
only of the devout and the regulars, it
includes also the disenchanted, the lax
and the lapsed, the unbelievers, the poor
and disadvantaged, the suffering and
oppressed - for whom so much can be
done and should be done.”
Bishop Lessard also reminded the
congregation that the parish “cannot be
self-sufficient and unconcerned for the
total community in which it lives.”
“Its model,” he said, “is nothing less
than Christ Himself, who as the
suffering servant gave Himself for all
men without distinction, without
restriction.”
The dedication of Holy Trinity
church was a unique event in the
diocese in modern times. For, Holy
Trinity parish first began serving
Augusta’s Catholic community in 1811
when it was chartered by the Georgia
General Assembly as “The Roman
Catholic Church of the Most Blessed
Trinity.” And the church which was
dedicated on Aug. 29th, 1973 was
consecrated 100 years ago by Bishop
Augustine Verot. But this is how, a
century later, the church was dedicated
again.
Somewhere along the line - no one is
certain when the change came about -
the church became known as St.
Partick’s, and has been known by only
that name as long as anyone now living
can remember.
With the passage of* years and the
growth of Augusta’s Catholic
population, new parishes sprang up.
Among them were Sacred Heart,
founded in 1874, and Immaculate
Conception which began in 1909.
All three were urban parishes and, at
one time, comparatively large and
flourishing ones. However, all three fell
victim to the mass exodus from city
dwelling to suburban living that has
taken place over the past decade.
In June of 1971, Bishop Gerard L.
Frey, former Bishop of Savannah,
announced that Augusta’s three
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downtown parishes would be merged to
form a single new parish comprising the
area of the city formerly contained
within the boundaries of all three.
The new parish was to be known as
Most Blessed Trinity and would have, as
the center of its worship and services,
the church formerly known as St.
Partick’s.
On July 4, 1971, the merger became
official. Sacred Heart and Immaculate
Conception churches were closed and
St. Patrick’s became the center of all
parish services in center-city Augusta.
Then, on December 12,1971, Father
William Simmons, pastor of St.
Partick’s, announced that on January 1,
1972, the name of the parish would
officially revert to its original title of
Most Blessed Trinity.
In the intervening months, the
interior of the church has been
renovated in preparation for its
re-dedication.
Thus, the spiritual heritage of the
predominantly French and German
immigrants who formed Augusta’s first
parish more than one hundred and sixty
years ago, and which has been enriched
by the religious traditions and
experiences of the Irish immigrants who
formed Sacred Heart parish, and of the
former slaves and their children who
founded Immaculate Conception parish
has become the common patrimony of
all. And the history and rich heritage of
Catholic life in the old city of Augusta
has come full circle.
KARATE CLUB of Queen of Angels parish,
Thomson, Ga., (Archdiocese of Atlanta) recently
captured the Georgia State Karate Championship,
winning 20 of the 48 trophies which were awarded.
The club was begun in 1971 and has about 35
members of all faiths and races. Virgil K'mmey, holder
of a Fourth Degree Black Belt, is their teacher. Father
Edward Randall, pastor, is the chaplain (or chop-lain?).
(Photo courtesy The Georgia Bulletin)