| Description |
With the coming of the New Frontier administration in 1961, an issue which has lain in the background since the beginning of American constitutional history has been brought sharply to the foreground - that of public financial aid to religious education. Under the Kennedy administration, it has been raised as one factor in a general proposal for federal aid to education, of which the religious school issue became one of the most controversial parts. The issue is a relatively new one, having been discussed in only one Supreme Court case prior to 1947. Behind this "new" controversy, however, lie a few phrases in the national Constitution; a deeply-rooted philosophy of separation of church and state; some legislation in the field of education, both public and private; and a body of constitutional, moral and practical arguments which the recent controversy has brought more sharply into focus than ever before. It should be pointed out that the schools with which most recent discussion over public aid to religious education has been concerned are the parochial schools of the Catholic Church. This is the case because American Catholicism supports a larger number of such schools and has a larger percentage of its children enrolled in them than any other denomination. The adjectives "parochial," "sectarian," "church," "religious," and "private," then, will be used interchangeably, and may be assumed to refer to church-supported schools in general and Catholic parochial schools in particular, unless otherwise stated. |
