THE PUBLIC MIND: READER ADDS TO CHURCH-STATE DISCUSSION

To the Editor:

Monsignor Joseph Gosche made some interesting and debatable points in his recent baccalaureate address, as reported as excer~pt~ in the June 1 issue of the Southeast Missourian. However, the monsignor errs when he described the decision handed down by the U.S. Supreme Court in the 1947 case o~f Everson v. Board of Education. The court did not decide that the use of tax funds to support Catholic education violated the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment.

This case had its origin in a New Jersey statute that authorized boards of education to reimburse parents, including those whose children went to parochial schools, for the cost of bus transportation to and from school. One Arch Everson of Ewin~ Township, N.J., challen~ged this statute in a civil court with a suit that maintained the statute violated the Establishment Clause. Everson lost his case and appealed it to the U.S. Supreme Court.

Hugo Black wrote the decision, with four other justices concurring. Black began by discussing the attitude held by many Americans in the colonial period that individual religious freedom could best be achieved by a government that was stripped of all power to tax, to support or otherwise assist any or all religions. Black also cited the efforts of Jefferson and Madison in 1785-1786 to defeat a bill introd~uced into the sta~te legislature of Virginia~~ that would provide annual financial stipends to Virginia's established church, The Church of England (Anglican). The tax measure was rejected. This was two years ~before the U.S. Constitution was written and six years before the Constitution with its Bill of Rights was ratified by the states.

In the last section of the decision, however, Black wrote that the First Amend~ment requires the state to be neutral in its relation with groups of religious and non-believers, it does not require the state t~o be their~ adversary. Black furthermore wrote that state power is no more to be used to handicap than to favor reli~gions. The decision concluded by saying that the N~.J. statute was not a support o~f parochial schools. Instead, it amounted simpl~y to a means of providing parents a way to get their children safely and expeditiously to and from accredited schools and that therefore the statute was constitutional.

~Robert L. Smith

~Cape ~Girardeau