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University Daily Kansan Tuesday. Nov. 8. 1960
A Catholic President?
The American presidency is a unique office. It has no counterpart anywhere in all the world. Created by a handful of framers who never dreamed of granting it the latitude it now possesses, the presidency has evolved into a supreme office and the private possession of the people.
The electorate have made the presidency the shining thing it is today. At their bidding, the president is now king, prime minister, diplomatic chief, military leader, administrator, and, lately, manager of prosperity and defender of the people.
His sphere of power is enormous. The evolution of the office along almost Darwinian lines has led to a focus of power in the executive branch, power that can be used instantly, as in breaking a strike and seizing a vital industry, or slowly and over a long period of time, as in the unremitting pressure the president can and does exert on a stubborn Congress to get legislation passed.
BUT DICTATORS HAVE these powers and more. The thing that makes the president unique is not the power he wields, but the restriction of that power within a broad area prescribed by the constitution and, more important, by the will of the people.
Clinton Rossiter, professor of government at Cornell whose definitions of the president's powers are used above, compares the president to a magnificent lion roaming free within the limits of a wide reservation—but forbidden to stray outside that reservation.
As an organ of the people, the presidency must be acutely sensitive to public opinion. If it is, a president may ride roughshod over a hostile Congress, armed with the weapon of public sentiment. If the president tries to fight against the current of public opinion, however, he usually loses. President Truman was even defeated by a private individual in 1952, when Clarence Randall, representing the steel industries seized by executive order, succeeded in ejecting the government from the mills seized.
The power of the people is the power of the president. Clothed in the authority granted by them, he is magnificent; without them, he does not exist.
WE GO TO THE POLLS today to choose a president. But this election is different; an issue
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has been injected into the campaign which has no place there. Unfortunately, many voters, perhaps enough to win the election, vote against a religious faith convinced in their hearts that the possession of that faith by a president of the United States will lead to dominance-or at best, excessive influence-by the Roman Catholic Church. These people fear the gradual melting together of church and state. They fear papal rule.
In picturing the president of the United States as a helpless tool of the papacy, or even as a militant worker for Catholic interests, these people sell themselves short. The power is theirs. If they grant it to the president, he is supreme. If they withhold it, or use it against him, he cannot hope to force upon them measures which are intolerable to them.
THERE IS NOTHING to be gained from a detailed examination of the policy of the Roman Catholic Church in its relationship with the states of the world. It is true that the Church has sometimes tried to infuse itself into the state and control it. It is true that some American clergy are supporting the fusion of church and state in some matters, or arguing the supremacy of the former in most matters. But a study of this kind can never come to an accurate conclusion because it has never been applied to the American presidency, that all-powerful and yet all-subservient power complex so completely dependent upon the will of the populace.
We can be assured, then, that no such program could be imposed on a nation which is only about one-quarter Catholic and which has always cherished separation of church and state. The people would forbid it, and that would be that. Furthermore, the Church in America realizes this and has no desire to foster this idea. The few in the Church who have spoken to the contrary cannot be considered true spokesmen of the Church in America.
We hope that the voters throughout the nation who go to the polls today will cast aside the odious religious issue and vote for the best man, secure in the knowledge that the American presidency is proof against abuse of the wishes of the people.
Bill Blundell
The Religious Issue
It is well to keep the discussion of the religious issue on a factual basis. This I am doing. In 1870, Pius IX declared the infallibility of the Pope when speaking ex cathedra on matters of faith and morals. Webster defines faith as that which is believed and morals as character, conduct, intentions, social relations, etc. It is evident that faith and morals covers the whole gamut of human activity and thought and thus the Popes' teachings which I mentioned before are applicable to all Catholics.
Kennedy stated in "Look" Mar. 3, 1959) that whatever a man's religion might be in private life, nothing takes precedence over his oath to uphold the Constitution. The outcry of the Catholic hierarchy was immediate. The Catholic weekly "America" stated, "Mr. Kennedy doesn't really believe that... A man's conscience has a bearing on his public as well as his private life." On the same day (Mar. 7, 1959) "Ave Maria" said: "Something does indeed take precedence over the obligation to uphold the Constitution-namely conscience. And this applies to whatever the religion of the officeholder. No man may rightfully act against his conscience, which is the moral obligation." The St. Louis "Revick" said that when Kennedy implied that his religion will not be permitted to interfere with his oath to the Constitution, "it is the Constitution that ought to be examined, not his religion." The Catholic "Commonweal" asserted that a Catholic president would have to acknowledge the teaching of the church as of prime importance. The Dec. 2, 1957 "New Republic" quotes Cardinal Gibbons as saying; "While you (Protestants) believe in private judgment, we (Catholics) believe in a religion of authority which our conscience tells us is our lawful guide and teacher in its own sphere." In a 1958 issue of the Catholic "Tidings" it is explained that there cannot be a conflict between the dictates of a Catholic's conscience and those of his church for the reason that his conscience is actually formed by the decrees of his church.
... Letters ...
IN AN OFFICIAL statement on November 1948, the Catholic Bishops of the U.S.A. denounced the Supreme Court's interpretation of the religion clause of the last Amendment and urged that the Constitution actually permits the distribution of public money for the support of sectarian schools. Hays, Kansas has two Catholic public schools. On the records, the two schools are called Jefferson East and Jefferson West, but on the front of Jefferson West are carved in stone the words "St Joseph's School" and the words "Immaculate Heart of Mary School" are erected on Jefferson East school. Father E. J. Flusche, superintendent of Catholic schools in Oklahoma, told a recent gathering of women from the Oklahoma City-Tulsa diocese that Catholics "must demand what is rightfully ours — tax relief." The priest declared that the interpretation of the Constitution must be changed to permit Catholic schools to draw on tax funds.
The Catholic Bishops of the U.S.A. declared in 1948 that "separation of Church and State has become the shibboleth of dectrinaire secularism." In Rome's eyes the Church is more noble than the State and therefore the State is bound to further the ends
of the Church and to refrain from interfering with the Church's authority. According to her concepts, she has the absolute right, independently of the State, to those material and temporal things which are necessary to her spiritual ends. In the case of any conflicts over those rights, the Church must prevail. The Pope's sovereignty far outreaches that of any temporal ruler. His is a non-territorial sovereignty which holds sway over Roman Catholics in every country in which they live. In a State where the majority of the people are Catholic, the Church asks that error shall not be accorded a legal existence, and that if religious minorities exist, they shall have a de facto existence only, not the opportunity of spreading their beliefs."
MORE THAN 40 Protestant Churches were closed by the Colombian government in 1956 in addition to the 49 churches which were destroyed in the period 1948-1956. During this period some 89 church leaders and laymen were murdered. In at least one case our ambassador to Colombia was an eyewitness to an attack. The Colombian government based its action in closing churches on a 1953 agreement with the Vatican which gave the Catholic Church exclusive religious and educational rights in approximately three-fourths of the country. This agreement has been given precedence over a long-standing treaty between Colombia and th U.S., which has been in force since 1846 with regard to their citizens and their right to live, move, and practice their religion anywhere in either country.
John W. Wyman, Graduate Student
LITTLE MAN ON CAMPUS
THE GUIDANCE OFFICE ---HIS CLASSMATES---HIS MAJOR PROF.
From the Magazine Rack
Conservatives Adrift
"The nation's conservatives—said to number more than 25 million voters—are in a sad dilemma. Many of them had pinned their hopes on wresting a presidential nomination from the Republican convention for their candidate Barry Goldwater. The convention did have a strong conservative contingency. At one time conservative sentiment soared high among the delegates. Had conservative leaders forced a roll-call vote on the controversial Rockefeller-Nixon platform, Goldwater might have had a chance of nomination.
"When Senator Goldwater refused to accept nomination the whole conservative bubble collapsed. Now the dazed Conservatives are wondering what to do. With no party and no candidate they are in the same predicament they have been in during the past two presidential elections. It seems likely they will remain in that same predicament until they break away from the Republican party and organize a party of their own.
"Many Conservatives want now to organize an independent Conservative party and prepare for 1964. Others want to continue trying to capture the Republican party. The policies and platforms of the two presidential candidates are not acceptable to most Conservatives.
"Some Conservatives will follow Senator Barry Goldwater and support Richard Nixon. These Conservatives have become habituated to voting for the lesser of evils. But many Conservatives cannot reconcile their consciences to accepting the Republican program. They object particularly to Nixon's one-world socialist internationalism. Nixon would repeal the Connally reservation and commit the United States to a world court appointed by the U.N. Nixon's liberalism alarms some Conservatives. Also he wants to continue foreign aid. He is a strong champion of Civil Rights, restricting the constitutional rights of States.
"Conservatives are adrift politically. Many of them will not vote. Most will work hard to elect Conservative candidates to the House and Senate."
(Excerpted from "Better America," of September 1960, a publication edited by H. W. Reed.)
Daily Hansan
University of Kansas student newspaper
University of Kansas student newspaper
Founded 1889, became biweekly 1904, triweekly 1908, daily Jan. 16, 1912.
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Member Inland Daily Press Association. Associated Collegiate Press. Represented by National Advertising Service, 18 East 50 St., New York 22, N.Y. News service: United Press International. Mail subscription rates: $3 a semester or $5 a year. Published in Lawrence, Kan., every afternoon during the University year except Saturdays and Sundays, University holidays and examination periods. Entered as second-class matter Sept. 17, 1910, at Lawrence, Kan., post office under act of March 3, 1879.
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