ND's Review of Politics publishes forgotten text
Special to The Observer
A recently discovered and previously unpublished text by the American Catholic theologian Rev. John Courtney Murray appears in the Fall 1999 "Millennial Issue" of Notre Dame's Review of Politics.
The text, entitled "The Crisis in Church-State Relationships in the USA" is a 1950 memorandum written by Father Murray to Msgr. Giovanni Battista Montini, a staff member of the Vatican's Secretariat of State who became Pope paul VI.
Rev. Joseph Komonchak, professor of religious studies at the Catholic University of America and author of the Review article which introduces the new text, believes that the memorandum provides "the clearest brief statement" of Father Murray's views on church-state relations and that its controversial reception by ecclesial officials both in Rome and the United States helps measure the profundity of doctrinal change brought about by the Second Vatican Council.
Father Murray's views on church-state relations were declared "erroneous" in 1954 by the Vatican's Holy Office (now called the Congregation for the Doctrine of faith) and in 1955 his Jesuit superiors forbade him to publish articles on the subject. despite these strictures, he eventually became the principal architect of the Second Vatican Council's Declaration on Religious Freedom, which substantially incorporated assertions that earlier had been unacceptable.
Father Murray, who died in 1967, wrote prolifically on a wide variety of issues including not only church-state relations, but also funding for private schools, the Cold War and the problem of conscientious objection. he argued that the constitutionally enshrined notion of the separation of church and state was not incompatible with Catholic social teaching.On Dec. 12, 1960, he was featured on the cover of Time Magazine after his book "We Hold These Truths: Catholic Reflections on the American Proposition" greatly influenced public attitudes during John F. Kennedy's presidential campaign. Murray was appointed a theological advisor to the Vatican Council in 1963 by Francis Cardinal Spellman of New York.
The Review of Politics was founded by Waldemar Gurian, the German philosopher who, forced to flee from Hitler's Germany in 1937, found a home at Notre Dame, where he died in 1954. From its first issue in 1939, the Review has emphasized a philosophical and historical approach to politics. Among its contributors have been Hannah Arendt and John Kenneth Galbraith.
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