President and Pope

Franklin D. Roosevelt has often been accused of misjudging the mind of the U. S. churches. Many a clergyman remembers Mr. Roosevelt's maladroit "How'm-I-doing?" letters to churchmen in 1935, plagiarized in part from a letter by Wisconsin's Philip Fox La Follette, and productive of an extraordinary number of blasts at the New Deal. And Protestants have latterly been irked by Mr. Roosevelt's preference for consulting Roman Catholic ecclesiastics.

Last week, more than a month after announcing his appointment of Myron C. Taylor as his private Ambassador to the Pope, the President had cause to stop, look and listen. Representatives of 15,000,000 U. S. Christians (Baptists, Lutherans, Seventh Day Adventists) let their uneasiness be loudly heard. The National Lutheran Council, representing two-thirds of 4,867,124 Lutherans, formally objected to the Taylor appointment. Meeting for the first time since the President's announcement, the executive committee of the Federal Council of Churches (24 denominations) approved the appointment in so far as it is "strictly temporary, unofficial and centrally concerned with efforts for world peace." But the Council warned Mr. Roosevelt against attempting to take up diplomatic relations with the Vatican.

The Federal Council felt that it had been jockeyed into a false position of apparent sympathy with the Taylor mission. Reason: the Council's President George Arthur Buttrick,* upon receiving the President's Christmas greeting and an invitation to consult periodically at the White House, had telegraphed immediate acceptance. Because Mr. Roosevelt explained that he was sending "a like greeting" to the Pope, Dr. Buttrick innocently added the Council's "cordial greetings to His Holiness. ..." The White House released this message simultaneously with the announcement of the Taylor appointment. Thus Dr. Buttrick, who knew nothing of the Taylor appointment until he read it in the papers, was taken for a ride. The Christian Century, revealing these facts last week, let Dr. Buttrick and the Council off with a chiding: "A little reflection must have told them that the 'like greeting' which the President said he was sending to the Pope could hardly have been another invitation to drop in at the White House whenever His Holiness felt like having a chat."

In St. Louis last week Jewish reaction to the Taylor appointment wrecked the local branch of the best U. S. good-will agency, the National Conference of Christians and Jews. One of the founders of the St. Louis "Round Table" of the N. C. C. J. is Rabbi Ferdinand Myron Isserman, a big, sometimes brash Jewish liberal. Dr. Isserman's Temple Israel is across the way, on "Holy Corner," from two big Protestant churches, St. John's Methodist and Second Baptist. "Brotherhoods" of the three meet jointly. Last fortnight, at a Brotherhood meeting, Rabbi Isserman joined the two Protestant pastors in criticizing the Taylor appointment. He was quoted as saying it would result in "mutual encroachment" of Church and State.

Rabbi Isserman denied that he had used these particular words, but the damage was done. The five Catholic board members of the Round Table resigned at once. Said the angriest of them, Surgeon R. Emmet Kane: "It has been very difficult to stimulate enthusiasm among the Catholics of St. Louis for the Round Table. . . . Rabbi Isserman has torn down everything we have been striving for." Thereupon Rabbi Isserman resigned, too, asked the others to reconsider. At week's end,, none had.

*Pastor of Manhattan's big, busy Madison Avenue Presbyterian Church.

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