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Genesis 21. Whatever their feelings, most of New Orleans' Catholics swal lowed the order in silence. Not so Una Gaillot. The wife of a factory clerk and the head of a small racist outfit called Save Our Nation, Inc., she has two sons attending a Catholic high school, and holds an unshakable conviction that racial integration is a sin against God. She helped set up the picket lines around Rummel's residence, issued a flurry of mimeographed essays arguing that segre gation is authorized in the Bible. One scriptural text she cited was Genesis 21, which describes how Sara asks Abraham to cast out from his house the Egyptian concubine Hagar, whose son "shall not be heir with my son Isaac." On the assumption that no Egyptian can be white. Mrs. Gaillot argues that this passage "surely must mean no playing together in school." Biblical scholars dismiss her interpretation of this and other texts as ridiculously narrow-minded.
Rummel sent letters warning some of his segregationist parishioners against fur ther protest ; last week, as the complaints and picketing continued, he recognized that his decision to desegregate, if it was to mean anything, required stern enforcement. Along with Mrs. Gaillot, he formally excommunicated Leander Perez, 70, political boss of nearby Plaquemines Parish, and Jackson Ricau, 44, executive director of South Louisiana's Citizens Council. Although hundreds of Roman Catholics are technically excommunicated each year for such sins as marrying before a non-Catholic minister or joining the Masons, the penalty is seldom imposed these days upon specific, publicly named individuals unless the offense is of the stature of heresy. Until they confess their error, the three may not participate in the sacraments or in public worship, although they may enter churches and share in private prayers.
The excommunicants professed to be shocked by the order. Politician Perez, who had earlier urged parishioners to pay back the archbishop by withholding dollars from Sunday collections, insisted that he was still a Catholic—"regardless of Communist infiltration and the influence of the National Conference of Christians and Jews upon our church leaders." Mrs. Gaillot insisted that she would take the matter to the Pope himself. But there was small chance of a hearing in Rome. Both the Vatican and the apostolic delegate in Washington said they would refer her complaints right back to New Orleans' spiritual leader; and L'Osservatore Romano, quite obviously reflecting the views of the Holy See, praised Rummel's actions as "admirable."