The No Funding Principle -Reply

[Marc Stern]

I did not argue that there were bad relations between Catholics and
Protestants and that both sides were to blame.I meant to argue thta during the
19th century,there were argumnets of substance between Catholics and
Protestants about teh proper ordering of church state relations,and that
Protestants were reacting in seeeking the Blaine Amendment to  a serious set
of ideas.they believed threatened American liberty.It will not do to dismiss
the fight as a European one only,as if pious Catholic founding faTHERS would
not have written a different constitution or that the
American Catholic hierarchy would not and did not have interpreted the
constitution differently.John Courtney Murray in this century after all was
silenced by his church,and (as Judge Noonan tells the story),not without the
help of American Catholics.)Of course,there was also inexcusable Anti-catholic
bigotry,and of course,notions of separation-understood to include a no-aid
principle--had substatial Protestant theological roots.But thta is only to
underscore that more than bigotry or dislike was at stake.
Marc Stern