Catholic Keynotes: 1952-53

Each November, the 190 Roman Catholic bishops of the U.S. hold a meeting in Washington, D.C., and afterward issue a joint statement. The statement is for practical purposes the voice of U.S. Roman Catholicism, commenting on the moral state of the nation and key-noting issues which the church believes deserve special attention in the coming year. This year's statement, released this week, explores the relations of church & state. Excerpts:

U.S. Religious Traditions. "In the beginning of our own nation, at the very time when the revolutionary movement on the continent of Europe was planning to destroy all influence of religion on public life, it is a remarkable fact that our founding fathers based their own revolutionary action on the rights inherent in man as a creature of God, and placed their trust in His divine providence. [Their] concept of man ... is essentially a religious concept--a concept inherited from Christian tradition . . ."

Secularism. "[There is the] constant temptation for this country to turn away from God and to become immersed in material pursuits . . . Widespread yielding to this temptation has given rise to an even greater danger--the way of life we call secularism. Those who follow this way of life distort and blot out our religious traditions, and seek to remove all influence of religion from public life. Their main efforts are centered on the divorce of religion from education . . .

"To teach moral and spiritual values divorced from religion and based solely on social convention, as these men claim to do, is not enough . . . Without religion, morality becomes simply a matter of individual taste, of public opinion or majority vote . . . Without religious education, moral education is impossible . . .

"Let it not be said that we are enemies of public education. We recognize that the state has a legitimate and even necessary concern with education. But if religion is important to good citizenship--and that is the burden of our national tradition--then the state must give recognition to its importance in public education . . .

"To one who cherishes the American tradition, it is alarming to hear all non-public education denounced as divisive. Not all differences are divisive, and not all divisions are harmful."

Irreligion & Faith. "A religious people is a people which prays. If the spirit of religion has declined in our times, it is because many, immersed in worldly pursuits, have ceased to pray ....

"One of the constant dangers to the religious spirit in a country such as ours is the tendency to regard religion itself simply as the fruit of pious sentiment; or to hold, as the doctrinal basis of religion, what we may call the common factor in the religious opinions held by various groups; or to be content with the great religious truths of the natural order which can be known by unaided human reason. It is true that the founders of this country . . . gave as the religious foundation of their work only the truths of the natural order--belief in God as the Omnipotent Creator; belief in man as God's free creature endowed with inalienable rights; belief in the eternal truth and universality of the moral law. But it is also true that these convictions were part of their Christian tradition. Historically these truths had been received and elaborated by intellects illumined by faith . . .

"All the religious truths, natural and supernatural, are parts of one integral whole. Ultimately in man's mind they must stand or fall together . . . Only the life of Christian faith can guarantee to man in his present state the moral life; and the Christian life is lived in its entirety only through the one true Church of Christ."

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