Even though this Messias-Denier speaks for the cultural elites in the speech, the informed Catholic reader will see a lot of errors/lies but it would take too much time to correct them all.
The only specific falsehood I respond to is the Call To Action claims.
https://www.catholicculture.org/culture/library/view.cfm?recnum=4544
GUEST EDITORIAL: Issues That Divide: The Triumph of Secular Humanism
LEO PFEFFER October 1976 In Philadelphia. A speech that, according to Dr E. Michael Jones in “The Jewish Revolutionary Spirit, and its impact on word history,” that was his declaration ‘…the Jews had defeated the Catholics in their 40 years war over American Culture.”
Few observers of the political scene can escape the conclusion that some responses to sociopolitical issues can best be explained in terms of religious affiliation and belief and that in respect to these issues there is a fairly discernible division among the religious groups in the United States.
ISSUES THAT DIVIDE: THE TRIUMPH OF SECULAR HUMANISM
It need hardly be noted that in none of the areas explored either in 1956 or today has there been unanimity of position on any subject within the respective groups. Many Catholics, perhaps most, do not oppose abortion, and many Jews, particularly the Orthodox, favor aid to parochial schools. What the author now seeks to set forth in this essay, as in the earlier paper and book, is the positions of the religious groups as expressed by the institutions and organs which are generally accepted as reflecting those positions.
One final preliminary note is appropriate. What the author presents here is a broad overview. A deeper inquiry and fuller presentation must await a more feasible occasion and means.
CHURCH AND DOGMA
Almost from its inception the United States has been committed to the principle that religion is a private matter and that a person's religious beliefs and church affiliation or non affiliation are no business of anyone but himself. The American people have by and large been tolerant of differences in religious doctrines and practices.
Yet, in the pre-Vatican II era, dogma and theology were of significance in interreligious conflict. Protestants expressed considerable antipathy for such aspects of Catholic theology as the dogma that Catholicism is the one true faith and the Roman Catholic Church the one true church; the dogma that "outside the Church there is no salvation"; the dogma of papal infallibility; the elevation of Mary to a status almost of equality with Jesus; the pageantry and pomp of Catholic liturgy; and the non
acceptability of Protestant and Jewish clergymen as equals in public functions. Catholics considered these dogmas and practices an entirely internal matter and could not understand why they shouId be a source of interrelgious conflict, since they affected no one except those who voluntarily chose to believe in them or practice them and in no way prejudiced non-Catholics.
Today, these differences seem to have disappeared from the arena of inter-religious relations. American Catholicism appears to have accepted fully and to be quite comfortable with its position, that is, being greater in numbers than any other religion if Protestantism is not to be considered a single religion, but with all religions equal in and before the law. Catholic bishops and priests freely participate with clergymen of other religions and participate as equals in public functions.
The pre-Vatican II claim of Catholicism to be the only true religion, manifesting itself in the felt necessity of the National Conference of Catholics, Protestants, and Jews to change its name to National Conference of Christians and Jews, is now a matter of little more than distant memory. The dogmas of the one true church and papal infallibility, though never removed from official Catholic doctrine, seem today to be as remote as the practice of exorcism before it was discovered by Hollywood and are, no more than the latter, substantial factors in inter-religious relationships.
The spirit of Pope John XXIII and of Vatican II were undoubtedly major factors in this change. But in the United States at least, a secondary, though important, factor has been the practical consequences of the constitutional mandate of church- state separation.
In a suit which the writer tried in Maryland in
1965, the highest court of that state ruled that public funds could not constitutionally be appropriated for the support of sectarian colleges. Defendants in that suit included two Catholic colleges, and the trial evidence upon which the state court relied showed among other things that only Catholic theology was taught in these schools.
In a similar suit later brought against grants to Catholic colleges in Connecticut, the trial evidence established that while earlier these colleges had also permitted only Catholic theology to be taught, the situation had changed, and in more recent years Protestant and Jewish theologians, either as full-time or part-time faculty members, taught the theologies of their respective faiths. In this case, and in two subsequent cases, one involving a Baptist college in South Carolina and the other the two Catholic colleges in Maryland which had been defendants in the earlier suit, the U.S. Supreme Court held this fact to be of significance in upholding the constitutionality of the grants. In the context of the present consideration, what the Court held was that the concept of the one true faith was no longer a significant factor in Catholic education, at least at the college level.
RELIGIOUS LIBERTY: PRINCIPLE AND PRACTICE
Twenty years ago a logical consequence of the doctrine of the one true faith was the traditional view of the Catholic Church towards religious liberty. Protestants frequently quoted from the
April 1948 issue of Civilta Cattolica, the official Jesuit organ in Rome, that "the Roman Catholic Church, convinced, through its divine prerogatives, of being the only true Church, must demand the right to freedom for herself alone, because such a right can only be possessed by truth, never by error.''7 There were dissenting voices within the Catholic Church. A small yet influential group of liberals headed by John Courtney Murray, S.J., contested the claim that such a position toward non-Catholics was even theoretically required. However, the more authoritative organs of the church adhered to the position expressed in Civilta Cattolica and justified in Ryan and Boland's Catholic Principles of Politics on the ground that "the fact that the individual may in good faith think that his false religion is true gives no more right to propagate it than the sincerity of the alien anarchist entitles him to advocate his abominable political theories in the United States, or than the perverted ethicaI notions of the dealer in obscene literature confer upon him a right to corrupt the morals of the community.’'
While accepting this position in principle, Catholics were quick to point out that the question was purely theoretical since the doctrine was applicable only to a Catholic state, that is, one in which all or almost all the inhabitants were Catholics.
Today this source of inter-religious conflict appears to have disappeared almost completely in the United States. Here, too, the major factor leading to this change was Vatican li, but a significant contributing factor was the strong, if somewhat indefinable, spirit of secular humanism which permeates American cultural and political life.
RELIGION IN PUBLIC EDUCATION
In American history the role of religion in education has been the most consistent and serious source of tension in inter-religious relations. There are two aspects of this subject: the role of religion in public education, and the use of tax-raised funds to support church or parochial schools. In respect to the first aspect, religion in the public schools has manifested itself primarily in specific teaching of religion, in prayer recitation, and in devotional Bible reading.
The origins of American public education are to be found in the New England church schools, which early in the nineteenth century were taken over by the cities and towns and became
public schools. The unacceptability of particular Protestant sectarian instruction to many of the pupils and their parents resulted in a modus vivendi in which what was deemed nonsectarian Protestant instruction, readings from the King James Version of the Bible, and nonsectarian Protestant prayer recitation were acceptable.
The influx of Catholics beginning in the early part of the nineteenth century led to a long period of tension and conflict between them and the Protestant establishment. The Catholics demanded exclusion of religious instruction, Bible read and prayer recitation the public schools and/or equal state financing of parochial schools.
The Jews, who began large-scale immigration to this country at the close of the nineteenth century, were also disturbed by religious holiday observances centering on Christmas and Easter but did not find themselves secure enough publicly to express their discontent until after World War II.
(Well, isn't that special? A extremely tiny -fewer than 3% of the American population today are Jews - group of extremist foreigners deigned to tolerate the history and praxis of the people of their host country until such time as the Jews grew strong enough to exterminate the Christian praxis they hate via the Judicial System).
The U.S. Supreme Court's 1948 decision in McCollum v. Board Education, which outlawed released-time religious instruction in the public schools, sparked a complete reversal of position on the part of Catholics. Almost overnight they became the chief opponents of the decision and thus the chief defender of religion in public education.
Fifteen years later, Catholic Church spokesmen and diocesan publications were the most vocal and hostile protesters against the Court's 1962 and 1963 decisions forbidding prayer recitation and devotional Bible reading in the public schools. After Vatican II, the bitter Catholic opposition to the decisions subsided almost dramatically; so much so that the bishops publicly refused to support proposed constitutional amendments to overrule the decisions. In 1973 there seemed to be another turnaround when the bishops publicly came out for an amendment, but their hearts obviously were not in it, and they have not since pressed the matter.
Just as American Catholicism turned about on the question of religion in the public schools, so did Protestantism also. Whereas the latter had been the mainstay of Bible reading and prayer in the public schools, during the period under examination it too reversed itself and surprisingly either defended or at least accepted the Court's decisions and opposed proposed constitutional amendments seeking to overrule them. So too, of course, did American Jewry and organizations, such as the American Civil Liberties Union, which reflect the secular humanist spirit of American society. While at the present writing there is an effort, which has already proved successful in a number of states, to enact laws providing for meditation and, in some cases, silent prayer in the public school, it is not likely that it will prove a major factor in inter religious relations. On the whole, it is fair to conclude that during the period under review the subject of religion in the public schools has become, at least for the present, a substantially less serious problem in inter religious relationships than it was twenty years ago.
GOVERNMENTAL AID TO PAROCHIAL SCHOOLS
Throughout the years no issue has so seriously and continuously impaired harmonious inter-religious relations as the issue of governmental aid to parochial schools. Ever since Bishop John Hughes in the 1840s first brought the matter to the fore in New York, going so far as to encourage the establishment of a short- lived Catholic party to press for aid, the Catholic claim to a share of tax-raised funds for the support of Catholic schools has seriously affected relations between Catholics and non-Catholics in the United States. As in the case of other issues, not all Catholics are on one side and not all non-Catholics on the other. In 1967 there was a referendum on whether to adopt a new state constitution in New York. The major controversy revolved about a provision which would have allowed more liberal aid to parochial schools than in the existing constitution. The referendum resulted in a negative vote even in districts which were heavily Catholic, and while other factors undoubtedly contributed to the result, it is hard to escape the conclusion that the aid provision was the major one.
Conversely, Lutherans and Orthodox Jews generally favor aid to parochial schools. Nevertheless, it is fair to conclude that, on the whole, Catholics support aid to parochial schools and the opposition is to be found an alliance of Protestants, Jews, and secular humanists.
Just as a series of Supreme Court decisions has virtually established the law on religion in public education, so also has a series of more recent Supreme Court decisions established the law on aid to church-related educational institutions, at least for the present. Primarily because of its unwillingness to upset estabIished decisions, the Court will continue to allow public funds to be used to finance transportation to parochial schools and to provide their students with secular textbooks.
Beyond that the Court is not likely to go on the elementary and secondary school levels. At the college and university level, however, the Court will probably be considerably more tolerant and will allow governmental aid to church-related colleges other than theological seminaries and those which are deeply religious in purpose and operations.
Protestants, other than Lutherans, are most likely to be content with this compromise, but for opposite reasons neither the Catholics nor the Jews and secular humanists are. Both groups are unable to discern any valid ground for drawing a line between elementary and secondary schools on the one hand and colleges and universities on the other.
The Catholics especially feel that the line discriminates against them, for, unlike the Protestants whose major effort in education has been on the college level, to Catholics parochial elementary and secondary schools are of much greater importance.
Although, as noted, only the Orthodox Jews have changed their adherence to the normative Jewish position, practically all Jewish organizations have, if not wholly muted, certainly substantially lessened their degree of active participation in law suits and other public actions in opposition to aid to parochial schools. The major reason for this has been their concentration of effort, financial as well as political, in promoting and defending Zionism and the state of Israel. In addition, Jews are reluctant to weaken Catholic support for the security of Israel.
At the present, the primary issue that divides Catholics from non-Catholics is abortion, but, like contraception, it will probably not long continue to be a source of serious division among the religious groups. With the high cost of education at all levels, a situation not likely to be substantially ameliorated in the near future, it is a fair guess that governmental aid to education will remain the most significant factor in inter- religious relations.
Two brief postscripts, one relating to aid on the college and university level and the other to the elementary and secondary school level, are appropriate. In respect to the former, it is quite possible that the sectarian institutions, particularly the Catholic ones, have won the battle for survival on one front but have lost an equally of more critical battle on another. In order to qualify for governmental aid, the church-related institutions have found ir necessary to desectarianize themselves at least to some extent. But even if this were not so and governmentaI aid were available with no strings attached, the now rapid movement towards secularization is certain to continue.
In the field of law, for example, it is difficult to find any difference between nonsectarian Boston University Law School and Jesuit-operated Boston College Law School, of between Catholic Villanova Law School and nonsectarian Temple University Law School. The same development is occurring at the college level, and it is only a question of time, and a comparatively short time, before Notre Dame and Fordham will be like unto Yale and Columbia. The latter two institutions similarly started life as religious (Protestant) institutions but in time became nonsectarian, not because or at least not significantly because governmental funds would not otherwise be available to them, but simply because that is what the American college-age community wanted.
In this arena, it is not Protestantism, Catholicism, or Judaism which will emerge the victor, but secular humanism, a cultural force which in many respects is stronger in the United States than any of the major religious groups or any alliance among them.
The second postscript concerns the role of religious schools, Protestant in the south and Catholic and Jewish in the north, as havens for escape from racial integration in the public schools. This subject merits serious inquiry by social scientists, educators, and religious leaders. The writer can do no more than suggest it as relevant and important in any consideration of government aid to church-related elementary and secondary schools.
As Americans have inherited their arts and science from the Greeks through the Romans and the Renaissance, so they have inherited their religion and morality from the Hebrews through the Christians and the Reformation. The American moral code, at least up to the still live sexual revolution, can be traced to Deuteronomy through Paul and New England Calvinism, with, however, one major difference: the association of sin, original or otherwise, with normal sexual relations is completely alien to pre-Pauline Judaism. Adultery, incest, homosexuality, and transvestism were, of course, grave offenses, and, as the book of Samuel indicates, also the exposure of sexual organs was deemed a Canaanite abomination by the authentic Yahewists. But the frank discussion and description of sexual conduct found not only in the Hebrew Bible but also to a much greater extent in the Talmud has been frowned upon by Christians for many centuries and is only now becoming accepted as a result of an implicit alliance between secular humanism and women's revolutionary struggle for equality.
In the United States it was Protestantism which was the original defender of Calvinist Puritanism in the arena of sexual morality. Organizations such as the Society for the Suppression of Vice, the Society for the Reformation of Morals, and the American Tract Society were all Protestant-originated and Prot- estant-sponsored, and Anthony Comstock, the militant and effective anti-obscenity champion, represented Protestantism.
After World War I, Irish-oriented American Catholicism began taking over leadership in anti-obscenity militancy. Starting with the censorship of motion pictures and proceeding from there to campaigns against immorality and obscenity in books and magazines, Catholic organizations such as the National Office for Decent Literature and the National Legion of Decency, with foot soldiers supplied by the Knights of Columbus and sympathetic approval, if not activist participation, by Protestants became the nation's most militant and effective defender of morals and censorship.
American Jewry, on the other hand, mainly because of the tradition referred to above, but no doubt partly too because many Jews, far more proportionately than the other faiths, are commercially and professionally involved in the cinema and publishing, has been overwhelmingly antipathetic to the crusade for morality and censorship in the arts and literature.
Today all this seems as something in ancient history. For the present, at least, demands for active governmental involvement in the campaign against obscenity and indeed the campaign itself seem to have abated considerably and are no longer a significant factor in inter-religious relationships.
THE FAMILY AND THE CHILD
For many years Catholic opposition to civil divorce was a major adverse element in inter-religious relations. In New York, and perhaps to a lesser extent in some other states, Catholic
opposition to reform and liberalization of the laws so as to allow divorce for grounds other than adultery was quite effective in defeating efforts at change. This success was a serious factor in relations between Catholics on the one hand and Protestants, Jews, and secular humanists on the other. These groups could not accept what to them was the proposition that the religious doctrines of Catholics should be imposed by secular law even in part (since Catholic doctrine does not permit divorce even adultery) upon non-Catholics. Today, divorce is available in all the states on grounds which, de facto if not de jure, include mutual consent, and according to the U.S. Supreme Court it is available to persons who are too poor to pay the usual court fees to obtain it. Here, as in so many other instances, secular humanism has won out, and Catholics have accepted the outcome. Quite clearly, it is no longer an issue which significantly divides Catholics and non-Catholics.
The same diminution of inter-religious tension is manifest in respect to contraception.
Notwithstanding a papal decree reaffirming the traditional Catholic doctrine, American Catholics, supported by two decisions of the Supreme Court, probably practice contraception as freely as non-Catholics.
In any event, ir is sale to suggest that within the past twenty years contraceptive birth control has ceased to be an issue dividing Cathotics
from non-Catholics. Even this may be somewhat of an under- statement. Today, there seems to be no significant Catholic opposition to government's affirmatively promoting and financing contraception among the poor. In part, this change of position among Catholics, at least in respect to their own practice of contraception, reflects the influence of secular humanism. In part, in respect to governmental encouragement of and assistance in contraception among the poor, it reflects the concern which Catholics share with non-Catholics about the continually rising cost to taxpayers of maintaining the unwanted offspring of women on the welfare rolls.
Today, abortion has replaced divorce and contraception as the major cause of division between Catholics and non-Catholics in the arena of family and child. For the present, and probably only for the present, it has replaced aid to parochial schools as foremost among the issues that divide.
For some two centuries it has been Catholic doctrine that from the moment of conception an embryo is a human being and its
destruction constitutes murder. While accepting, if reluctantly, the secular lawfuness of abortion where the life of the mother cannot otherwise be preserved, Catholics find it difficult to accept the Supreme Court's determination that criminalizing of abortion is unconstitutional and are committed to the adoption of a constitutional amendment to overrule the Court's determination.
Their efforts have been partially successful, that is, to the extent of the enactment of two laws, one entitling hospitals and their staffs to refuse to participate in abortions in violation of their religious consciences and the other excluding abortion, except where necessary to preserve the woman's life, as a service which can be financed out of federal funds.
In respect to the latter point, many Catholics find it difficult to understand how they can be constitutionally compelled to pay taxes utilized in part to finance the murder of human beings.
Many non-Catholics, of course, deny that abortion is murder. They are, in addition, disturbed by a system of law under which abortion is available to upper- and middle-class women who can afford to pay for it but is denied to the poor who most need the service.
Catholics, of course, assert that they can hardly be held responsible for that situation. Finally, many non-Catholics are concerned that the strong Catholic intervention and the partial success which it has so far achieved may encourage further Catholic intervention in the political arena and bring back the days when the Roman Catholic Church was a powerful force in the American political system.
The writer would venture to predict that it is only a matter of time before the same factors which impelled Catholic acquiescence to, if not affirmative acceptance of, legal divorce and governmentally financed and encouraged contraceptive birth control will lead to the same denouement in the area of abortion.
Many members of Congress who voted for the ban on the use of federal tax-raised funds to finance abortions for the poor did so, it seems, in the expectation that the statute would be held unconstitutional by the Supreme Court.
Brief mention should also be made of another issue affecting the family and the child which in the past seriously divided the religious groups and to some extent still does. At least in principle, the doctrines of both Catholics and Orthodox Jews declare that a child is born into the religion of its mother, and therefore Catholics and Orthodox Jews have vigorously opposed adoption by a non-Catholic or a non-Jewish couple, respectively, of a child born, often illegitimately, to a Catholic or Jewish mother.
A number of states have specific statutory prohibitions against inter-religious adoptions, although they usually have an escape clause permitting it when necessary for the welfare of the child. Protestants, non-Orthodox Jews, and secular humanists generally accept this as a reasonable compromise and agree that, all other things being equal, it is permissible for the law to prefer religious identity. What they do object to is application of the law in such a way as to prefer institutional custody which conforms with religious identity to parental adoption across religious lines.
FOREIGN AFFAIRS
One of the issues in foreign affairs which twenty years ago was still a significant factor in inter-religious relations was the propriety and advisability of diplomatic relations between the United States and the Vatican. This, along with the question of aid to parochial schools which became prominent by reason of the Supreme Court's 1947 decision allowing state financing of paro- chial bus transportation, sparked the organization of Protestants and Other Americans United for Separation of Church and State, now Americans United for Separation of Church and State.
While the question did not excite Jewish and secular humanist forces to the same extent as it did Protestants, here too the usual alliance in opposition to the Catholic position manifested itself. Today, the issue, if not dead, is dormant, and there appears to be no evidence that it is likely to be revived within the near future.
While not a major factor in inter-religious relationships in 1956, Zionism and the American relationship to the state of Israel were issues that then did divide Jews and non-Jews.
Although American Jews were not as completely united on these questions as they were to become after the outbreak of the Arab-Israel War in 1967 and its resumption in 1973, it could hardly be doubted that the overwhelming majority of American Jews favored unqualified American support of Israel.
The Catholic Church, on the whole, was neutral except in one respect, the internationalization of Jerusalem, which it strongly favored on the ground that it was a city holy not only to Jews but equally to Christians and Muslims.
American Protestantism could not be said to be unified on the question, but it is a fair assumption that, while on American Protestantism could not be said to be unified on the question, but it is a fair assumption that, while on the whole Protestant spokesmen were sympathetic to Israel and to its claimed right of survival as a nation, they were no less concerned about the rights of the displaced Arabs and specifically their right to return to their original homeland if they wished to do so. Today these questions seem to be dormant, although not necessarily dead, and American commitment to the survival of the state of Israel, although not by use of American troops, is accepted by Catholics and Protestants as a legitimate aspect of U.S. foreign policy.
Twenty years ago the response to communism both abroad and at home was ah issue which seriously divided the religious groups, even ir not quite as seriously as during the preceding decade. Foreign communism was not then a major factor in affecting inter-religious relationships. The Korean War was over, and the Vietnam War, or at least American involvement in it, had not yet begun. The appropriate response to domestic communism, however, was still a live issue. The competing concerns were the threat of communist acquisition of political power within the United States, on the one hand, and the commitment to the civil liberties of all Americans, even those whose objectives in politics and religion one strongly opposes, on the other. It is a fair generalization to suggest that in this area too the division was between Catholics on the one side and the loose alliance of Protestants, Jews, and secular humanists on the other. Today, the response to the threat of domestic communism, real or imagined, is no longer an issue which seriously divides the religious groups in the United States.
Nothing testifies to the changes in inter-religious relationships within the context of this essay as clearly as the recent Catholic "Call to Action" Conference held in Detroit. While none of its resolutions is binding upon the National Conference of Catholic Bishops and certainly not upon the Vatican, alI of the delegates were selected or at least approved by bishops, and nearly one hundred bishops, fully one-third of the American hierarchy, were themselves present and participating. Twenty years ago it was hardly likely that such a conference would be sanctioned by the hierarchy and almost inconceivable that, if held, it would over- whelminigly call for such changes as the acceptance of divorce and the ordination of women.
Here, as in Protestantism and Judaism, American secular humanism is manifesting its potency in altering long-held doctrine and practice and narrowing the differences that divide Protestants, Catholics, and Jews
