Edge of the Wedge?

Editor Charles Clayton Morrison of the Christian Century believes that the surest way to keep Protestants constantly alert is to set off periodic charges of dynamite under them. His blasts frequently have the desired effect.

Sniffing through the U.S. Supreme Court's recent decision that public funds may be used to pay children's bus fares to & from parochial schools (TIME, Feb. 24), Dr. Morrison found what looked like highly charged ammunition. In this week's Century, he let it explode:

"The Supreme Court decision . . . should open the eyes of all American-minded citizens, and especially Protestant citizens, to the strategy of the Roman Catholic Church in its determination to secure a privileged position in the common life of this country. . . . The Roman Church wants the state to provide for the complete support of its parochial schools with money derived from taxes levied on all citizens. . .

"The Protestant churches have themselves to blame. . . . Few Protestant ministers have brought this issue to their people. . . . They felt that it was such 'a little thing' to get excited about--first free textbooks, then free bus transportation, for parochial schools at public expense. They were blind to the strategy of the Roman Church in using these apparently insignificant matters as the thin edge of the wedge which would ultimately crack open the Constitution. . . .

"If Protestantism passively tolerates any compromise of the principle of the quality of all religious faiths before the American state, it seals its own destiny. It dooms itself to become, in the end, a minority sect existing on the margins of American life. . . ."

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