Spanish Split

Last week an influential Roman Catholic weekly, The Commonweal, made news by urging U. S. Catholics to be impartial on the Spanish civil war. Under Editor Michael Williams, The Commonweal rooted for a Franco victory. But three months ago Michael Williams stepped out as editor-in-chief and a cooler triumvirate --Philip Burnham, Edward Skillin Jr. and Harry Lorin Binsse--took charge.

Well aware that this about-face would strew some wigs on the green, The Commonweal's editors assured their readers that they did not favor the Loyalist cause, which, they said, has ''permitted the murder of priests, nuns and lay people" and has allied itself with Soviet Russia. But they denounced Spanish Rightists for: 1) bombing defenseless civilians in spite of "protests from the Holy Father," 2) uttering "totalitarian views very similar to those which have been condemned by the Church in other countries," 3) allying themselves with the Fascist and Nazi nations. The Commonweal urged Catholics to avoid stirring up hate and violent partisanship in the U. S., to stave off anti-Christian totalitarianism by making the U. S. "a thoroughly decent place to live in." Michael Williams, still a special editor of The Commonweal, protested in the same issue against this change of front, declared he was satisfied by the available evidence (principally the joint letter of the bishops of Spain) that Spanish Leftists had planned to wipe out the Catholic religion.

Commonweal's reversal last week called attention to a widening split among Catholics over Spain. The publications of the British Dominican order (Blackfriars) and the French Dominicans (La Vie Intellectuelle), and the (Dominican-inspired) secular Temps Present in Paris also have attacked Franco, plumped for nonpartisanship. Recently Author Georges Bernanos, French Catholic and Rightist, assailed Franco in a book (Grands cimetieres sous la lune), and last week he was joined by another Catholic writer, Victor Montserrat, who defended the Loyalist Basque clergy (Le Drame d'un peuple incompris). The split was dramatized after the recent World Eucharistic Congress in Budapest. Pro-Franco Spanish Cardinal Goma went to visit pro-Hitler Cardinal Innitzer in Hitler's Vienna, anti-Fascist Cardinal Verdier, of Paris, to attend a demonstration in his honor in democratic Czechoslovakia's Prague.

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