Is there any such thing as freedom of worship in Titotalitarian Yugoslavia? Well, yes, said seven U.S. Protestant clergymen just returned from a Tito-financed junket (TIME, Aug. 25). By last week, the visiting ministers' cheery reports on Yugoslavia had won them some irate rebukes from both Protestants and Catholics.
Everybody's favorite target was Episcopal Traveler Guy Emery Shipler, editor of the U.S.'s oldest religious journal, The Churchman, which frequently has hard words for Roman Catholics and soft ones for friends of Russia. Full of news and views after his Yugoslav tour, which included a visit to the prison cell of Archbishop Aloysius Stepinac, Dr. Shipler stated flatly that he found no evidence of suppression of religious activity there.* Still, he "doubted very much" that Yugoslav clergymen could safely attack the Government from the pulpit.
Systematic & Sinister? That was too much for the Most Rev. Richard J. Cushing, Roman Catholic Archbishop of Boston. Said he: "I feel bound . . . publicly to denounce the systematic and sinister anti-Catholicism of organized groups like the committee of ministers which last week returned to this country from Yugoslavia. . . . The damage is being done by men who—may God forgive them—are introduced as 'Reverend.' . . . We live in evil times when things can happen like the sell-out to Tito of the eight Protestant clergymen who were hand-picked to defend Tito's war on religion. . . . It is a problem for our non-Catholic neighbors when seven of their clergymen can become conspirators in a Communist campaign without being repudiated by their fellow non-Catholic Christians."
That "handpicked" remark, retorted Dr. Shipler, was untrue. Furthermore, he found the Archbishop's whole statement "ill-tempered." Said Dr. Shipler: "If the Roman Catholic Church in America wishes to be free from criticism, let it become only a church and not a political state. . . . Increasing numbers are determined to fight the type of political clericalism which has been so disastrous to other countries. . . ."
Charge & Countercharge. Meanwhile Dr. Shipler was busy warding off other blows. Mrs. Natalie Wales Paine (the former Mrs. Wales Latham), socially prominent founder of wartime Bundles for Britain, resigned noisily from The Churchman Associates, a sponsoring group which appears on The Churchman's masthead but has no connection with editorial policy. Mrs. Paine accompanied her resignation with a blistering letter:
"In spite of the appalling facts . . . you and your colleagues undertook to whitewash Tito's regime of all charges of religious persecution. . . . I joined The Churchman Associates several years ago because of the magazine's reputation as an outstanding religious paper. I have been shocked to discover that The Churchman has used its position . . . to launch repeated attacks on the Roman Catholic Church."