appropriations to tax-supported free public schools, their teachers and other tax-supported free public school employees, by the use of the term "public schools," may I suggest that having consistently followed the policy of definitely restricting appropriations, this is no time to establish a new and dangerous precedent. I propose, therefore, the following amendments to be designated (f) under "Definitions," section 13, of the bill:

The term "public school" or "public education" shall mean "tax-supported free public school" and "tax-supported free public education."

I also propose that line 24 in (D) section 5, be amended to read "public control for tax supported free public schools."

For Congress to leave any uncertainty as to its purpose in this bill is quite likely to precipitate contention and wrangling from a religious angle, in many States. Moreover, the uncertainty is likely to lead to costly litigation initiated by those who would invoke the constitutional provisions of the States against aid to sectarian schools.

I close with the statement I have previously made before this committee and the House Committee on Education:

If the proposed appropriations are limited strictly to the tax-supported free public schools, it will encourage those devoted men and women who are giving so much of their time, labor, and sacrifice in the interest of the children who will control the future of this country. On the contrary, if Congress makes it possible for any part of these appropriations to be used by the States for purposes other than the tax-supported free public schools, it will contribute to the destruction of such schools and discourage those who are devoting their lives to them. If we would preserve our liberties under the first amendment as well as under the whole bill of rights, we must preserve the tax-supported free public schools system against all peril.

This concludes the statement of Colonel Cowles. Mine supplements his with certain detail upon the need for the Congress to be vigilant in the preservation of the bill of rights through the protection of the tax-supported free public schools against the efforts of certain sectarian schools to obtain support from the public treasuries.

STATEMENT OF ELMER E. ROGERS

If the committee questions any need for apprehension in the premises, other than the above reference to the findings of the Fordham University, I would respectfully refer it to just a few other authenticated and well-documented statements emanating from Roman Catholic sources, which are the principal seekers for public funds for their schools.

I shall quote from the famous encyclical of Pope Leo XIII, entitled "Human Genus," issued April 20, 1884; from the work of Msgr. John A. Ryan, D. D., and Morhouse F. X. Miller, S. J., entitled "The Church and the State," and from a former Roman Catholic bishop.

In criticizing our political institutions and the political thinking of such founders of them as Franklin, Jefferson, Adams, Madison, Richard Henry Lee, Patrick Henry, and others, who held that just governments derive from the consent of the governed, Pope Leo said, in part:

Naturalists teach that men have all the same rights, and are perfectly equal in condition; that every man is naturally independent; that no one has a right to command others; that it is tyranny to keep men subject to

any other authority than that which emanates from themselves. Hence, the people are sovereign; those who rule have no authority but by the commission and concession of the people; so that they can be deposed, willingly or unwillingly, according to the wishes of the people. The origin of all rights and civil duties is in the people or in the state, which is ruled according to the new principles of liberty. The state must be godless; no reason why one religion ought to be preferred to another; all to be held in the same esteem.

All these principles which are the basis of the bill of rights are opposed by the Roman Catholic Church and, by some Popes, anathematized.

I now quote comments on Pope Leo's criticism of our institutions from page 149 of the Converted Catholic Magazine for June 1944. This periodical is edited by former Roman Catholic priests, one of whom, Dr. L. E. Lehmann, was a bishop. Their offices are at 229 West Forty-eighth Street, New York 19, N. Y.

I now quote from former Bishop Lehmann:

In his encyclicals, particularly Humanum Genus, Leo XIII declared war on the basic principles of democracy. He condemned the doctrines that are the foundation of our American Government: Sovereignty of the people; the right to overthrow unworthy rulers; separation of church and state; confinement of the church to its spiritual functions; freedom of religion; freedom of speech and the press; right of the state to regulate marriage.

Continuing, the former bishop states:

The following quotation from Humanum Genus illustrates the way in which the sovereignty of the people is denied as well as their right to overthrow a tyrant or dictator:

"Whence it is understood that he who has power to rule, whoever he may be, is God's minister. * And it is absolutely false to say that the people have

the right to withdraw obedience whenever they see fit."

Continuing further the former bishop states:

In his encyclical Libertas Humana, Leo XIII declared:

"It is absolutely unlawful to demand, to defend, or to grant unconditional freedom of thought, of speech, of writing, of worship."

The former bishop concludes as follows:

In his encyclical Longinqua Oceani, Leo XIII decreed:

"It is necessary to destroy the error of those who might believe, perhaps, that the situation of the church in America is a desirable one, and also the error of those who might believe that in imitation of that sort of thing the separation of church and state is legal and even convenient."

The work of Dr. Ryan, one of the so-called great Roman Catholic liberals, is a textbook in Roman Catholic universities but was reedited for the department of social action of the National Catholic Welfare Conference. It bears the imprimatur of the late Cardinal Hayes and his board of censors. The following paragraph which I quote offers much hope to "the faithful" who may have less regard for the Bill of Rights than for opinions of their churchman:

But constitutions can be changed, and non-Catholic sects may decline to such a point that political proscription of them may become feasible and expedient. What protection would they then have against a Catholic state? The latter could logically tolerate only such religious activities as were confined to the members of the dissenting group. It could not permit them to carry on general propaganda nor accord their organization certain privileges that had formerly been extended to all religious corporations.

Let me add that this is the status that obtains in Spain and in all Roman Catholic countries.

Gentlemen of the committee, there certainly should be nothing ambiguous in Federal legislation which makes outright gifts of millions upon millions of dollars annually to the States for any purpose, much less education, which, strange as it may seem, is daily becoming a highly controversial subject in this country.

Failure to define precisely and definitely the terms "public schools" and "public education" may be used as an argument in many States to obtain support for sectarian or privately supported schools from funds derived from Federal taxation. Such support would be a violation of the principles of separation of church and state, for the State or Federal Government cannot support sectarian schools without aiding the church of the particular sectarian school.

Support of private or sectarian schools from public funds would also retard the growth and strength of our system of tax-supported free public schools, which, to repeat, is the foundation of our democracy.

Fortunately, there are a number of United States Supreme Court decisions which lend hope to the citizens who opposed the support of sectarian schools from Federal funds, should it be necessary to test the constitutionality of gifts from such funds to sectarian schools. I shall cite for the record a few of the decisions presenting also observations of the justices who delivered the opinions of the Court: In the case of Davis v. Beason (133 U. S. 33, 1889) the United States Supreme Court held:

The first amendment to the Constitution was intended to allow everyone under the jurisdiction of the United States to entertain such notions respecting his relations to his Maker and the duties they impose as may be approved by his judgment and conscience, and to exhibit his sentiments in such form of worship as he may think proper, not injurious to the equal rights of others, and to prohibit legislation for the support of any religious tenets or the modes of worship of any sect.

In delivering the opinion of the Court, Mr. Justice Field reminded the parties to the suit as to the causes which led to the first amendment. He said, in part:

The oppressive measures adopted and the cruelties and punishments inflicted by the governments of Europe for many ages to compel parties to conform in their religious beliefs and modes of worship to the views of the most numerous sect, and the folly of attemp ing in that way to control the mental operation of persons, and enforce an outward conformity to a prescribed standard, led to the adoption of the amendment in question.

The United States S. preme Court, in Watson v. Jones (13 Wall. 679. 1871), said:

In this country the full and free right to entertain any religious belief, to practice any religious principle, and to teach any religious doctrine which does not infringe personal rights is conceded to all. The law knows no heresy, and is committed to the support of no dogma, the establishment of no sect.

In delivering the opinion of the Court, Mr. Justice Miller continued, in part:

One of the most careful and well-considered judgments on the subject is that of the Court of Appeals of South Carolina, delievered by Chancelor Johnson in the case of Harmon v. Dreher.

Chancelor Johnson said: "The structure of our Government has, for the preservation of civil liberty, rescued the temporal institutions from religious interference. On the other hand, it has rescued religious liberty from the invasion of civil authority."

In Reynolds v. United States (98 U. S. 145, 1879), the first amendment was pleaded. Mr. Chief Justice Waite, in delivering the opinion of the Court, discussed the history of that amendment. He said, in part:

The word "religion" is not defined in the Constitution. We must go elsewhere, therefore, to ascertain its meaning and nowhere more appropriately, we think, than to the history of the times in the midst of which the provision was adopted. The precise point of the inquiry is, "What is religious freedom which has been guaranteed?"

Before the adoption of the Constitution attempts were made in some of the Colonies and States to legislate, not only in respect to the establishment of religion, but in respect to its doctrines and precepts as well. The people were taxed against their will for the support of religion, and sometimes for the support of particular sects to whose tenets they could not and did not subscribe. Punishments were prescribed for a failure to attend upon public worship and sometimes for entertaining heretical opinion. The controversy upon this general subject was animated in many of the States, but seemed at least to culminate in Virginia. In 1784, the house of delegates of that State, having under consideration a bill establishing provision for teachers of the Christian religion, postponed it until the next session, and directed that the bill should be published and distributed, and that the people be requested to signify their opinion respecting the adoption of such a bill at the next session of the assembly.

This brought out a determined opposition. Amongst others, Mr. Madison prepared a memorial and remonstrance, which was widely circulated and signed, in which he demonstrated that "religion, or duty we owe the Creator, was not within the cognizance of civil government" (Semple's Virginia Baptist appendix). At the next session of the assembly the proposed bill was not only defeated, but another "for establishing freedom" drafted by Mr. Jefferson, was passed. (1 Jefferson's Works, 95, 2 Howison 1 History of Virginia, 298.) In the preamble of the act (12 Henning's Statutes 89) religious freedom is defined.

In little more than a year after the passage of the statute the convention met which prepared the Constitution of the United States. Of the convention Mr. Jefferson was not a member, he being then absent as Minister to France. As soon as he saw the draft of the Constitution proposed for adoption, he in a letter to a friend expressed his disappointment at the absence of an expressed declaration insuring the freedom of religion (2, Jefferson's Works, 355) but was willing to accept it as it was, trusting that the good sense and honest intentions of the people would bring about the necessary alterations (Jefferson's Works, 79). Five of the States, while adopting the Constitution, proposed amendments. Three New Hampshire, New York, and Virginia-included in one form or another a declaration of religious freedom in the changes they desired to have made, as did also North Carolina, where at first the convention declined to ratify the Constitution until the proposed amendments were acted upon. Accordingly, at the first session of the First Congress the amendments now under consideration were proposed with others by Mr. Madison. It met the views of the advocates of religious freedom and was adopted. Mr. Jefferson afterward, in reply to an address to him by a committee of the Danbury Baptist Association (u. i. d. 113) took occasion to say:

"Believing with you that religion is a matter which is solely between man and his God, that he owes account to none other for his faith or his worship, that the legislative powers of the Government reach acts only and not opinion, I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act upon the whole American people which declared that their legislature should 'make no law respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof' thus building a wall of separation between church and state. Adhering to this expression of the supreme will of the Nation in behalf of the rights of conscience, I shall see with sincere satisfaction the progress of those sentiments which tend to restore man to all his natural rights, convinced he has no natural rights in opposition to his social duties."

Here is a citation, gentlemen, directly in point. I think you will be especially interested in, as I am sure you were in all the others, for that

matter.

In the administration of Indian schools the question of Federal appropriation for sectarian education of the Indians came before the

United States Supreme Court in the case of Reuben Quick Bear v. Leupp, Commissioner of Indian Affairs (210 U. S. 50, 1908). Although the action was brought by Reuben Quick Bear and other Sioux Indians of the Rosebud Agency, South Dakota, the indirect plaintiff was the Indian Rights Association, which brought the action against Leupp, Commissioner of Indian Affairs, and other Government officers. However, the real defendant, it may be pointed out, was the Bureau of Catholic Indian Missions, of Washington, D. C., which demonstrates the interest that the Roman Catholic Church has in aid from the Public Treasury.

Briefly, the background of the case is as follows: A number of years after the education of Indians was undertaken by the Federal Government, certain church denominations which had been invited to establish church schools among the Indians began to request the Government to assist in financing their schools. The result was that by 1896, the money paid out by the Federal Government for the support of sectarian Indian education had reached a total of more than onehalf of a million dollars annually in addition to an appropriation of a million dollars annually by Congres by 1885. When these facts became generaly known, a determined sentiment arose against Congress making grants for sectarian education. Congress took steps to discontinue such appropriations, declaring it

to be the settled policy of the Government to hereafter make no appropriations whatever for education in any sectarian school (act June 7, 1897, 30 Stat. L. 97). Two classes of Federal appropriations for the education of the Indian were considered by the Court in the above-entitled cause. One related to a certain treaty and trust funds under it which belonged to the Indians and which were administered for them by the Government. The other was gratuitous appropriations of public moneys not belonging to the Indians themselves, but which were also administered for them by the Government. Both funds went to sectarian schools for the education of the Indians.

In the first-named class of Federal appropriations, the Court ruled that

the treaty or trust moneys are the only moneys that the Indians can lay claim to as a matter of right

adding that—

it was inconceivable that Congress should have intended to prohibit them from receiving religious education at their own cost, if they desired it.

In the second class here named, it upheld that part of the acts of Congress which forbid the payment of contracts for the sectarian education of Indians out of public money raised by general taxation from persons of all creeds and faiths, or of no faiths.

In tracing the course of the various decisions, it may be fairly deduced that religious doctrines have no status in either our State or Federal jurisprudence. And the support of sectarian schools in part or as a whole from funds derived from taxation is, so far as the taxpayer is concerned, an enforced support of religion.

Mr. Chairman, the struggle to attain religious liberty and its natural corollaries, political liberty, free speech, and a free press, was long and bloody.

73384-45-pt. 1- -18