Catholic Heat

Asked to comment on federal aid for parochial schools at his news conference last week, the first Roman Catholic President of the U.S. said: "There isn't any room for debate on that subject. It is prohibited by the Constitution, and the Supreme Court has made that very clear."-At that very moment, a strong, if predictable, dissent was brewing across town in a quiet meeting of the highest prelates of the U.S. Catholic Church. Sitting as the top board of the National Catholic Welfare Conference were all five U.S. cardinals plus eight bishops and archbishops. Subject: a "Catholic position" on the Kennedy school-aid bill.

Past performance made the position plain in all but degree. In 1949 the hierarchy insisted on federal funds for books, buses and health aids. In 1960 it pressed for federal loans to nonpublic schools. Congress refused, and federal bills died partly because Catholics opposed them.

Last week's meeting produced a manifesto by the N.C.W.C.'s board chairman, Archbishop Karl J. Alter of Cincinnati: "In the event that a federal aid program is enacted which excludes children in private schools, these children will be the victims of discriminatory legislation. There will be no alternative but to oppose such discrimination." The N.C.W.C.'s counterproposal, which it holds to be "strictly" constitutional, is that "longterm, low-interest loans to private institutions could be part of the federal aid program." The hierarchy will push to attach such an amendment to the Kennedy bill.

Many of the nation's 580 Catholic periodicals warmed to the campaign, citing an estimate that "doubly taxed" Catholics, by running parochial schools, now save non-Catholic taxpayers nearly $3 billion a year. Protestants backed the Catholic President. Seventh-day Adventists were well pleased that the Kennedy bill excludes church schools, even though they have the highest ratio of students to church members (one for every seven members v. the Catholics' eight). "Kennedy is keeping his campaign pledge magnificently," said one Adventist official.

*By interpreting the First Amendment ("Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof") to mean exclusion of direct aid to nonpublic schools. In the Everson case of 1947, the court upheld by 5 to 4 a New Jersey law authorizing free bus service for parochial schoolchildren. But this was interpreted as aid to children, not to schools.

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