Protestants and Roman Catholics, who have been eyeing each other nervously for several months, have begun to see things under their respective beds. The Protestants’ bogey is a Catholic-controlled U.S.; the Catholics’ is the white hood of the Ku Klux Klan. Last week even the sensible Jesuit weekly America began to look over its shoulder. Said America:
“The Federal Council of Churches gave a green light to Ku Kluxism when it launched its current ‘Intensify Your Protestantism’ campaign at its Pittsburgh meeting in December. . . .* The leaders [thus] called upon all the ‘Heirs of the Reformation’ to quicken into new and vigorous life their historic opposition to the Catholic Church.
“The opening gun . . . was immediately followed by a barrage of hostile resolutions passed by . . . different sects, [then] by a series of eight articles in the Christian Century under the general title: ‘Can Catholicism Win America?’ [TIME, Jan. 22], These articles bristle with so many false and misleading assumptions and implications . . . that they are bound to prove highly inflammatory. Adding fuel to the flames, Dr. Roy Ewing Vale, Moderator of the Presbyterian Church, recently began . . . a . . . crusade [TIME, Jan 29]. The campaign is gathering momentum. If it continues to do so . . . it will not be long before the hooded figures and flaming crosses will again appear in our midst.”
* The “Pittsburgh meeting” was the Federal Council’s biennial meeting, where one speaker, Dr. Mark A. Dawber, executive secretary of the Home Missions Council, said: “The Roman Catholic Church is influencing public affairs and the community pattern in a much more vital and deliberate way than Protestantism, [ which ] is too divided to influence the . . . pattern on a national scale.”
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