The Cardinal Says No

Again last week, President Kennedy asked Congress to provide massive help for U.S. education. In a program much like last year's, he proposed to spend $5.7 billion over five years for buildings, scholarships and raising teachers' salaries. Parts of the program are already going through: the House has passed a bill for college-classroom construction; the Senate has passed a similar bill that authorizes 212,500 scholarships as well (the two versions must now be compromised). What the President wants to add is aid for grade and high schools. He proposed spending $2.1 billion over three years for building schools and raising teachers' salaries. "Our crucial needs at this level have intensified," said the President.

Roman Catholic Kennedy again omitted aid to parochial schools, the issue that killed last year's federal aid bill. Kennedy drew fast support from Senate Majority Leader Mike Mansfield, himself a Catholic. If aid to public schools is ignored, said Mansfield, "the nation will pay an enormous price in the years ahead." And though he favors aid to parochial schools, House Speaker John McCormack, also a Catholic, promised to "do everything possible to get the school bill out on the House floor."

But one more Roman Catholic had still to be heard from: New York's Francis Cardinal Spellman. He immediately called Kennedy's program "a dagger threatening our very existence." In a speech to 1,500 teaching nuns, brothers and lay teachers, Spellman said: "If the Federal Government should favor the public schools and put an additional tax on us, from which we would receive no benefit, then, my dear friends, it is the eventual end of our parochial schools."

The Administration reads the Supreme Court's interpretations of the First Amendment as flatly prohibiting aid to parochial schools. Kennedy said at his news conference last week that he will maintain this stand "unless there is a new judgment by the Supreme Court." But no legal test is now under way, so the issue will be fought out in Congress. As he did in a similar statement last year, Cardinal Spellman has signaled a rising Catholic pressure that can overwhelm the President's bill by adding Northern Catholic Democratic votes to basic Republican-Southern Democrat opposition.

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