Protesting Protestants

A thousand, banner-waving church members gathered in Washington last week to put heat to the controversy about whether the U.S. should send an ambassador to the Vatican. They were on a "pilgrimage" sponsored by the American Council of Christian Churches,* a clamorous, fundamentalist organization representing 15 denominations, mostly independent churches which have broken with other Protestant groups.

When the council's president, the Rev. W. W. Breckbill, pastor of the Evangelical Methodist Church in Altoona, Pa., asked for an appointment with the President, he was turned down. The White House reply: Truman has made up his mind on the Vatican issue, and the council had better go on over to Congress. Taking the cue, the pilgrims held a mass meeting in the lobby of the Washington Hotel and prayed for the success of their mission. Then, wearing large green lapel discs proclaiming "Keep church and state separate," they marched on Capitol Hill. Texas' Senator Tom Connally, chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee and a foe of diplomatic relations with the Vatican, greeted them. The pilgrims handed him petitions with 50,000 signatures supporting their protest.

That night, the pilgrims paraded to Constitution Hall for a rally. Anti-Catholic literature was passed out. The Rev. Carl Mclntire, a deposed minister of the Presbyterian Church in the U.S.A., now pastor of his own "Bible Presbyterian Church" of Collingswood, N.J., said: "Communism is an enemy; we are all against it. But we have another enemy too, older, shrewder. It is Roman Catholicism and its bid for world power. In the U.S., it is Spellmanism."

Baptist Truman, unimpressed by the petitions, bristled angrily at a reporter who asked if he intended to send a personal representative to the Vatican. He will not name a personal representative, snapped Truman, but will again propose an official ambassador, and the Senate will have to shoulder its responsibility.

It seemed clear that the Senate would not confirm an ambassador to the Vatican this year. Less clear was Truman's motive in persisting with what seemed to be a hopeless and politically unprofitable fight.

*Not to be confused with the much larger National Council of the Churches of Christ in the U.S.A., which also opposes an ambassador to the Vatican.

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