The Farmville Herald

Senator Kennedy is in trouble
with his own church.
Two leading Roman Catholic periodicals
America and Commonweal have criticized his statement
that "for the officeholder nothing
takes precedence over his oath to
uphold the Constitution." America
says "no religious man, be he
Catholic, Protestant or Jew, holds
such an opinion. A man's conscience
has a bearing on his public as well
as his private life."
The officeholder can be relieved
of his oath, of course, by resigning.
It may be that the senator recon-
ciles his position with this in mind.
If he spelled it out, of course, it
wouldn't go so well. The possibility
that a President might have to re-
sign at some critical time because
of a conflict with his religion would
argue against that man as a candi-
date.
Many begin to feel that the
church and state issue has turned
Protestant. Few can picture Sena-
tor Kennedy as President ever
faced with so clear an issue be-
tween his office and his faith that
he would be duty-bound to renounce
one or the other. But many are be-
ing forced to believe that insistence
of the National Council of Churches
and many individual Protestant
men of God on a part in affairs of
state begins to challenge the struc-
ture of both church and state and
to violate the essence of the separa-
tion principle.
The basis is creeping socialism.
The creep that makes church
leaders believe any and all forms
of doing good are in their province.
The creep that makes do-gooders in
government believe all forms of good are the
state's province.
Church and state are thus being
integrated by social-mindedness.
The integration invades other
walks and ways of human service.
Labor leader like Walter Reuther
assume everything in sight. Some
of our Parent Teacher organiza-
tions undertake to hold the very
United Nations on their shoulders.
An element of the mental health
people would take on the race
question, internationalism, etc. K.
Kluxers are persuaded rock and roll
music must be one of their targets.
And so on until you are reminded
of Jonathan Swift's Lilliputian economy
in which everybody makes a living
taking in everybody's washing.
It is for the church's sake now
then in the first that for the state's
sake that we need them separated.
The same sort of the other's cry
might not just
be right.
A man is entitled to asylum in
his church, to be waited to the
skies there, to consult his immortal
soul there to worship and wander
there to love, there the love of
God and all but oil and grind a
heart. He is entitled to love there
to his brother and without eco-
nomic, political or biological in-
structions that soil the love with
control, cry that are without auth-
ity that divide him from God e
man alike that turn his preach-
ity a computer, or that bruise
politics. Worse than money-changers
in the Temple.
The pillars of the Temple are be-
ing pulled down by one a judicial
priest's
of the Republicans. The dissident
rebels may wind up supporting the
same presidential candidate end if
that is true, and that candidate i
not John on Meade Alcorn's pre-
diction made the week after he all
nounced he would re-enter might
come true.
Alcorn predicted the Democratic
Party would be so badly split by
1960 that the G.O.P., united would
have a great opportunity to extend
for another four years its tenure in
the executive branch.