Public Money for Sectarian Schools

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Jul 31, 1913

Public Money for Sectarian Schools

In the State of Massachusetts more than sixty-nine per cent of the professed Christians are Roman Catholics. This fact has occasioned much concern of late, particularly in view of the question which the Massachusetts Legislature recently put to the supreme court of that commonwealth, asking if constitutional prohibitions are strong enough to prevent the use of public money for sectarian schools. It is stated by the Examiner of July 10 that the supreme court justices “are evenly divided on the question of the power of the legislature to make appropriations in aid of a church or religious society. Three of them say that no such appropriation can constitutionally be made, and three say that it is not

forbidden.” Says the Examiner further:—

The doubt is natural in view of the absence of any explicit directions on the subject in a constitution which, until it was amended in 1833, authorized the legislature to empower the cities and towns to “make suitable provision, at their own expense, for the institution of the public worship of God, and for the support and maintenance of public Protestant teachers of piety, religion, and morality, in all cases where such provision is not made voluntarily.” Under this section in the bill of rights the Congregational pastors in Massachusetts were long paid by a town tax. When this article was amended the provision for support of religious teachers by tax was omitted, but nothing was inserted forbidding the legislature to appropriate State money for sectarian purposes.

The supreme court justices have told the legislature that it must decide for itself whether the constitutional provisions are adequate for the protection of public funds from sectarian uses.