A lay Catholic leader and expert on Constitutional law asserted here yesterday that Jews were in error in opposing Federal aid to religious education because such education was “the best guarantee” against religious and racial injustice.
William B. Ball, executive director of the Pennsylvania Catholic Welfare Committee and a constitutional lawyer, also urged Catholics to remember that Jews had a long memory of persecution and that Catholics should be informative, rather than argumentative, in pressing for public aid to parochial schools.
Speaking at a meeting of the Sodality Congress of the Lay Apostolate of the Roman Catholic Church, he added that Jews should remember “there has never been a history of anti-Semitism ” in the United States. He expressed the opinion that Jews oppose public aid to religious schools because they fear they would be left alone in weakened public schools abandoned by Protestants and Catholics for their own religious schools bolstered by such aid. He expressed skepticism about the possibility of wholesale transfers from public schools to such private schools.
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The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
