Stephen M. Klugewicz offers a gentle correction to Rick Santorum’s objection to John F. Kennedy’s vision of church-state relations.
Santorum did not have to mischaracterize Kennedy’s words, for there is much to criticize in them as written. In the Houston speech, Kennedy did say that he believed “in an America where the separation of church and state is absolute.” What Kennedy meant by that is not entirely clear, though he went on to explain that his vision meant an America in which “no Catholic prelate would tell the president (should he be Catholic) how to act, and no Protestant minister would tell his parishioners for whom to vote.”
If Kennedy came close here to denying that his faith would have any influence on his decisions as president, he was, for better or worse, following in an American Catholic tradition when trying to reassure the Protestant majority of Catholics’ reliability as good citizens of the republic. The Houston speech needs to be seen in this light.
Fair enough, as are Klugewicz’s comments about the historical support Catholics have offered separationism as an antidote to the informal Protestant establishment of the 19th century. But he overlooks another 19th century Catholic response, which amounts to asking for an accommodation of religion. There may be reasons to reject public support of all eligible institutions that serve both religious and secular ends, but there are also reasons to support such a program, many of which are offered in this book, which I’m reviewing for another journal.
Yes, Catholics might profit from separationism, but they’d arguably also profit from a regime that embraced and supported religious pluralism.
March 2nd, 2012 | 12:03 pm
The First Amendment does not exist in a vacuum; importantly, it co-exists with the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.
The effects of the latter have more bite when our society becomes more broadly pluralistic AND more huge (so that there are a lot more of everything now), and that is where the real conflicts are, not with separation. You want school-organized prayer in public schools? Then be prepared to embrace non-discrimination: that means not just generic deistic prayers but polytheistic, pagan and even occult prayers (because, there are kids raised all those belief systems)….. As a Catholic parent, I’d much prefer the school simply to avoid this morass. So there are strong prudential reasons to embrace a fairly strong “separation” in many arenas.
And the Founders were not static on this issue: as they grew older, some folks like John Adams migrated to strongly embrace the Jeffersonian perspective, for example.
March 3rd, 2012 | 4:43 am
In the field of education, France, deeply committed to the principle of laïcité has arrived at a rather elegant solution, striking a balance between the principle that the education of their children is the right and responsibility of parents and the state’s duty to provide public instruction.
Religious instruction in the public schools is forbidden, but the schools close for a half-day each week (usually Thursday afternoons) to allow those parents who wish to do so to arrange for the religious instruction of their children.
In the case of independent schools (faith-based or not) providing they prepare their pupils for the national tests – which almost all of them do – the state pays the salaries of the teachers and librarians (but not the principal or other staff) About 20% of pupils attend independent schools.
Both these arrangements are deemed compatible with the principle that the state “does not recognize, salary or subsidise any religion.” (Law of 9 December 1905)
Links
Blogs
Find Us
Contact