There sat Frank Palatucci in his office at Highland Regional High School in Runnemede, N.J., the new principal, having a baptism of fire. It was graduation day 1992, and what was he thinking about?
School prayer and the Supreme Court, as he remembers the day. A group of seniors wanted a simple prayer at graduation and noted that a federal judge in Texas had said that was OK. But a classmate and the American Civil Liberties Union took Highland to court.
Palatucci’s experience is important to remember as the nation heads into a new political era in which the conservative Republicans who will run the House and Senate come January want to amend the Constitution to allow prayer in public schools.
Like all suits that end up in the Supreme Court, the Highland Regional High School case had bounced from here to there, with one level of federal judge saying “Go ahead and pray,” and an appeals court in Philadelphia saying: “Don’t pray, but we can’t deal with the issue now, so just don’t pray.”
The Supreme Court sided with the appeals court.
“Basically, the issue is state-related endorsement or propagation of religion, you want to stay away from that as much as you can,” Palatucci said. But his thoughts on the matter didn’t stop there:
“The flip side of the argument is that the 1st Amendment says you can’t inhibit it either. This was really an issue of free speech and freedom of expression, whether they were kids or anybody who wanted to express their views.”
Palatucci said he thought a lot about that.
“I was being cautious not to offend what had been laid out in terms of the law, but at some point, I said, `This is nonsense. Why can’t I express my feeling? What is wrong with that?’ “
He read a copy of the Declaration of Independence and then decided what he wanted to do. When his graduation ceremony remarks were over, he added something like this to the end of his address: “In keeping with your sentiments, let me just tell you my thoughts . . .
“God bless you and God bless my country.”
He waited for the challenge. He waited for the lawsuits. He waited for the attack. None of that happened. Even when the media went to the ACLU, apparently hoping to stir up some trouble, the ACLU said, basically, no problem.
Now Palatucci repeats “God bless you and God bless my country” at every graduation ceremony while his school district presses ahead with a legal battle on the question of whether seniors can decide on their own to pray at graduation.
It all still makes him angry.
“My point is that I find it offensive that either myself or anyone else has to be so cautious about what we say if it is unpopular or incorrect,” the principal said. “I feel compelled not to
Charles M. Madigan is a Tribune senior writer.
express myself freely. That is a very dangerous road to go down.”
As it stands now, of course, anybody anywhere can pray to any diety (or not pray) whenever and wherever they want as long as it’s silent, doesn’t involve any attempt to get government into the prayer business and doesn’t disturb anyone nearby.
Because God knows all things, volume is probably not important.
But that is not good enough for advocates of school prayer, a diverse group that runs from those who would draft the prayers and require stern compliance through those who suggest only a few seconds of quiet time to ponder something out there beyond television and self.
It is difficult to summarize what they believe in a few sentences, but it isn’t unfair to say what they want is some context that will allow religious expression in public schools.
This and the strong reactions of opponents at the other extreme causes big problems for the Frank Palatuccis in public education. He doesn’t believe there should be formal praying in school, but he also knows students are not well educated unless they understand school is a place where everything can and must be discussed, including God or the lack of God.
And if a group of seniors decides prayer would help them make their way into the larger world, who is to say they shouldn’t pray publicly before they shuffle out into it?
There are several factors at the heart of the school prayer movement.
One is lingering anger at the 1962 Supreme Court ruling that banned prayer in public school as a violation of the 1st Amendment’s establishment clause (a rallying cry for conservative Christians for more than three decades now). The second is the assumption that prayer is a powerful weapon in the war on social decline, which conservative Christians believe is apparent and everywhere.
Civil rights groups have been most aggressive in pursuing this issue. A look at the record reveals endless rounds of battles over creches on public grounds, attempts to hold prayer meetings, proposed prayers at graduation and similar litigations that have left a sour taste among the believers.
Sometimes it seems that any little crack in the facade of church-state separation stimulates loud, cranky and irrational responses from civil libertarians just itching to stress their godlessness.
Unfortunately, it is not that simple. The issue is not godlessness, as critics of litigators in church-state matters allege. It is establishment, a point on which the founding fathers were very clear.
The Constitution sets strong barriers against anything that even hints at establishment of religion because of the era in which it was written, when the young nation was filling up with people fleeing all kinds of religious repressions in their homelands.
In the 1962 decision that started this messy and seemingly unresolvable battle, the problem was that the New York State Board of Regents decided it had the one prayer everyone needed: “Almighty God, we acknowledge our dependence on Thee, and we beg Thy blessing upon us, our parents, our teachers and our country.”
Justice Hugo Black wrote the decision for the majority: “By using its public school system to encourage recitation of the regents’ prayer, the State of New York has adopted a practice wholly inconsistent . . .” with the 1st Amendment’s prohibition against establishment of religion.
It was the opening shot.
At the time, one Southern congressman noted that the federal government had put Negroes in the public schools and now it was forcing God out. This theme was repeated many times, along with general calls for school prayer.
There were references to the fact that Congress has plugged God into many important national symbols, including money, adopted “In God We Trust” as a national slogan, and opened its own sessions with prayers, as did the Supreme Court. There were various attempts to amend the Constitution and order prayer by legislation. They all failed.
But the issue never went away. Ronald Reagan used it for cheers and votes, as did George Bush.
Now with the resurgence of the Republicans, the calls are echoing again for a constitutional amendment.
Or are they?
Likely Speaker-to-be Newt Gingrich says he has a time-certain schedule for the amendment, with an up-or-down vote by July 4. It must clear the Congress by a two-thirds vote and be approved by three-quarters of the states.
But that’s just Newt talking.
Republican Rep. Henry Hyde of Illinois, who will head the House Judiciary Committee in January, says there is no school prayer constitutional amendment on his agenda at this point, although he does believe prayer in school via “a moment of silence” probably would help matters a lot.
School prayer, he notes, was not one of the items in the Republican “Contract with America” signed on the steps of the Capitol before the election. Hence, it might be important to Gingrich, Hyde says, but Gingrich doesn’t run the whole show, particularly the whole Republican show.
There are others who warn it might be foolish for Gingrich to step into the speaker’s job only to take on a symbolic issue that carries every bit as much potential for embarrassment as President Clinton’s “gays in the military” struggle, a policy disaster from its inception that irreparably damaged Clinton’s presidency.
Then there are those who see the issue as more complex than the cliches attached to it.
One organization that is concerned about the speed with which the conservatives are pushing school prayer is the Christian Legal Society of Annandale, Va., which has helped organizations deal with public policy prayer issues for the last 19 years.
Steve McFarland, one of the society’s key advisers, says, “We approach the issue of a constitutional amendment with fear and trembling. Generally, we are very hesitant to amend the Constitution in general or touch on 1st Amendment issues in particular.”
But something has to happen, he said, because of the lopsided weight opponents of school prayer have in the courts. A constitutional amendment might just be in order, he said, but it will lead to a divisive and bloody battle and it will not be a simple amendment to draft.
For McFarland, the question goes beyond whether students can pray in school. In a way, he is in the Palatucci camp on the 1st Amendment’s protections of speech.
“Unfortunately, some of those who are pushing this amendment didn’t bother to ask those in the trenches what are the biggest issues,” McFarland said.
“We are talking about religious opinions by students in classroom and homework assignments . . . You have a lot of teachers who shut Johnny down if the most influential person in his life turns out to be Jesus instead of grandad or some Native American, or if their art has a religious theme, or if a selection at a winter school concert has a religious subject matter. There is a knee-jerk reaction to muzzle that kind of expression.”
Any constitutional amendment “must be broad enough to set to rest, lay to rest, the volatile contexts that are being litigated and continue to be litigated nationwide.”
What has happened, he said, is that some school administrators find the easiest route to take on religious issues is just to ban any kind of expression and point the finger at the Supreme Court if anyone complains. That way, Christmas and All Saints Day and Easter aren’t a problem.
But that kind of attitude is what leads to Frank Palatucci’s strange discomfort as he writes the graduation address, the sense that in a nation that calls itself the most free in the world, you still have to watch what you say, you still have to wonder if you are going to be sued for saying, “God bless you … “
