Protest

At Christmastime 1939, President Franklin D. Roosevelt wrote to Pius XII: ". . . It would give me great satisfaction to send to you my personal representative in order that our parallel endeavors for peace and the alleviation of suffering may be assisted." The representative turned out to be 72-year-old ex-steel tycoon Myron Charles Taylor.

The President also wrote to Dr. George A. Buttrick of the Federal Council of Churches and Rabbi Cyrus Adler of the Jewish Theological Seminary: ". . . It would give me great satisfaction if you would, from time to time, come to Washington to discuss the problems which all of us have on our minds." Nevertheless, many non-Catholics bridled at the new relation between the U.S. Government and the Church of Rome which looked to them like a breach of the traditional American separation between church and state.* Throughout the war, while Episcopalian Taylor carried on his Vatican activities with as little publicity as possible, Protestant bodies intermittently protested the presidential appointment.

High Hopes. Last month Harry Truman officially continued Personal Representative Taylor's mission. Seven major denominations in annual conventions or assemblies promptly put themselves on record for Taylor's recall. Finally, last week, Methodist Bishop G. Bromley Oxnam, president of the Federal Council of Churches, led a ten-man interdenominational delegation to the White House and presented the President with a document embodying the resolutions, as well as 30-odd more from other conferences and denominational groups.

As to their reception Bishop Oxnam was silent last week, said he would first report to the Federal Council's executive committee. But indications were that the Protestant churchmen had come away with high hopes. Said Presbyterian Delegate Dr. John A. Maclean: "We were assured that Mr. Taylor's service as ambassador to the Pope might terminate at an early date, but would certainly terminate with the signing of the peace treaties." To newsmen asking for "confirmation or denial," the White House gave a circumspect "no comment.''

*From 1848 to 1867 the U.S. maintained a complete legation at the Vatican, discontinued it at the approaching collapse of the temporal power (which was restored by the Lateran treaty of 1929). France, which also separates church & state, and England, with a Protestant state church, both maintain diplomatic relations with the Pontiff.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.