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1 WACO The minister who quoted from the bizarre, discredited Knights of Columbus “oath” from his pulpit last July has purged it from the sermon text and wishes reporters would not “allude” to the fact that he used it. But he does not concede that the oath is bogus. Some “men in the city” he will not name have paid for more than 10,000 copies of his anti-Kennedy, anti-Catholic sermon and mailed it all over the country, Rev. Harold Lindsey, pastor of the First Baptist Church of Waco, acknowledges. The quotes from the oath are not included. Rev. Blake Smith, pastor, University Baptist Church in Austin, said in a sermon Sept. 11 that some “apostles of discord” in the Baptist ministry were “speaking untruth.” He quoted from the July 27 sermon, “The Issue Before Us,” by Lindsey, but did not identify Lindsey by name. Lindsey had said that if Kennedy is elected and the U.S. becomes 51% Catholic, “we can expect the Knights of Columbus to carry out the obligation they swear to . . .” He then quoted the “oath” allegedly pledging K.C.’s to hang, burn, boil, flog, rip up wombs, poison, strangle, shoot, and otherwise inconvenience heretics and Protestants. The Knights have offered a huge reward to anyone proving the oath bona fide, and the Baptist Standard has attacked it and warned against its use. George Nokes, former state senator, now a Waco attorney, challenged Lindsey about the matter. Lindsey made a statement to his congregation. He said to a reporter he has “no desire to be put in a category with people who would desire to stir up bitterness and hatred. I’d just rather not be associated with that. “I see nothing in the oath that is contrary to the history, doctrines, and action of the church in many countries where the church is dominant,” he said. “But as an American citizen I don’t think we’ll be helping anything by passing that thing around. “I checked and checked and checked. I don’t believe it can be said that it is authoritative, and I don’t believe it can be said that it is spurious.” He spoke of “internal evidence” about its validity. ‘Men in the City’ What had he told his congregation? “I don’t apologize or retract,” he replied. “I simply tried to clarifyit was difficult for anyone to say categorically whether it was authoritative or not.’ The oath part cut out, “we’ve printed 10,000 .copies and sent them all over the country by request.” The sermon is now in its third or fourth printing. “Some men, in the city did it themselves,” he said. “I had nothing to do with it. They asked me if they could do it.” Who were they? He would not say. Were they more interested in the religious issue or Mr. Nixon’s cause? “Well, I couldn’t say,” Lindsey replied. “I think the religious issue is a legitimate issue, and I think they think so, too.” Lindsey was critical of “biased newspapers who are rabidly proKennedy or pro-anybody who’s a Democrat” which have “screamed bigot or biased. They’ve tried to obscure the issue by attacking the individual.” Lindsey has read Kennedy’s statement of “absolute” belief in separation of church and state and his independence of his church in public affairs. It does not alter Lindsey’s thinking. “The tradition and the purpose of the Roman Church has not changed through centuries,” he said. “It’s a bit difficult in light of that for me to put as much credence in what a man says as I would like tonot that I doubt the man’s integrity,” Lindsey said. “Kennedy has every right without a religious test to be a candidate and to be elected president, but . . . the Catholic Church . . . is a political institution, and therein the religion of the candidate becomes a relevant factor. Kennedy is not the issue . . . He simply becomes the platform on which this thing is played.” Lindsey said 98% of his congregation supports him, and only one or two members of his 3,400person church are known to have been unhappy. “I think the vast majority of ’em will not vote for Mr. Kennedy,” he said. “I don’t think that’s the only reason they won’t vote for him.” Asks Kennedy ‘Defeat’ Asked his own politics, he said, “I grew up in South Carolina which says a lot.” He would “like to be thought of as a Jeffersonian Democrat, but not a left-wing liberal. I’m not the kind of Democrat that Kennedy is, ‘apart from his religion.” He did not vote for Eisenhower, but in retrospect, “I appreciate him more, ‘and I certainly respect Mr. Nixon’s viewpoint much “I’m not ; a left-wing liberal, I just can’t believe that,” Lindsey said. AUSTIN A two-week schedule of Observer support meetings began Thursday night of this week in Houston and will close in Austin the night before the Arkansas-Texas game with an Observer meeting and beer bust. The Observer editor is talking at each of the meetings on problems and policies of the statewide liberal newspaper. The Observer’s drive for new subscriptions and advertising ends Nov. 15, at which time a decision will be reached about the paper’s future. All friends of the Observer are invited to come. Those present are being asked to form local committees for the business support of the newspaper. The Austin meeting will be a close-out of the local area meetings. All who will help the paper are invited to come. The Observer meeting starts at 8 p.m. and the party for those who want to stay as soon as the meeting is over. The schedule of the meetings: Houston Thursday, Sept. 29, 7:45 p.m., Lanier Junior High School. Themes from Lindsey’s sermon now being mailed out: “Kennedy is a Roman Catholic and his election would be a tremendous step forward for Catholic clericalism. . . . The danger is that eventually and sooner than we realizewe will be subject to the power of Rome. . . . Tax funds for the support of Catholic schools, grants for Catholic hospitals, orphanages . . . will become the order of the day. There will be complete domination of united funds and community chest projects. It is conceivable that there will be direct stipends to Catholic priests. Press and speech will be censored by the church.” Catholicisin has “a timetable” for “taking the U.S. for Catholicism” and is 75 years ahead of the schedule. “We must deter clericalism through the defeat of Mr. Kennedy in November.” In history, Catholicism has pressured public men. Both communism and Catholicism are totalitarian. The Catholic Church is “a foreign power” and a dictatorship. “To put it bluntly, Catholics are not free citizens. . . . The can and cannot read, say or print . . Mr. Kennedy is a devout Catholic a subject of Rome.” Abuses by Catholic , states Spain, Colombia, Franceare recited. “Could any man be expected to do even his duty if the hierarchy . . . threatened his ‘very If Kennedy denies “any of these facts, all of which ‘can be documented,” \(a statement which first appeared in the sermon that inmediocre Catholic, a liar, or a deceiver.” He is, says Lindsey, “a devout Catholic.” Secondly, he is obviously not a liar in his own right, for too much is at stake for him to have to live with his lie:” Rut deceit “is ‘another matter, for no Catholic is held responsible for his own actions when they represent the bidding of the church.” Huntsville Sunday, Oct. 2, 7 p.m., social center building, Sam Houston State Teachers’ College. National Conference Quotes Washington AUSTIN The Austin chapter of the Na tional Conference of Christians and Jews has adopted a resolution quoting from George Washington’s statement to the members of the First Baptist Church in Baltimore: “We have abundant reason to rejoice, that in this land, the light of truth and reason has triumphed over the power of bigotry and superstition, and that every person here may worship God according to the dictates of his own heart. In this enlightened age, and in this land of equal liberty, it Is our boast, that a an’s religious tenets will not forfeit the protection of the laws, nor deprive him of the right .of attaining and ‘holding the highest offices that are known in the United States.” Says Blake Smith .. . teenage children. I have always taught them to have deep respect for all religions. However, the very ministers I have taught them to respect are saying they are not quite American as to loyalty. In others words, the children are asking why they are considered ‘different’ by other Christian ministers. We Catholics are experiencing in the last few weeks what the Negro and the Jew experiences 365 days a year. I certainly understand, for the first time, how the Protestant in Spain must feel and the Catholic in Scandinavia. We must try to eliminate this type of thing, regardless of country and especially in America, if God is to continue to bless our land. “You see,” Smith went on, “we can’t hurt little children. Just because a kid is from a Catholic family do we say, ‘I close the door to him’? “When the Church of the Living God makes life difficult for little children, we are parting from the ways of Jesus Christ. And if somebody doesn’t do battle for these little fellows, where are we? “We’re coming to something of an Armageddon. I don’t know what. I think somehow the chips are down.” ‘Battle with Demons’ Smith’s church is a venerable traditional structure across the street from the University of Texas. The front of a chapel annex nearby is decorated with a modern mural; the office annex is modern, too. Smith’s study there is lined its length to the ceiling on one side with books; another side is covered by a map of the world. On a desk behind him as he talks are a statue of St. Francis of Assisi the Catholic saint, a wooden cross given him by a Protestant chaplain several months before he was killed in Korea, and one of those elongated wood carvings from Mexico. \(“They called him ‘The Scholar,’ but I think of him as a monk,” Smith said. .Smith was born in Arkansas and started college there. He did his divinity studies at Yale, Co Bryan Monday, Oct. 3, 12 noon, banquet room, Triangle Restaurant, 3606 So. College \(dutch Fort Worth-Dallas area meeting Tuesday, Oct. 4. Commerce Wednesday, Oct. 5, evening; persons interested in attending may contact James Byrd. Wichita Falls Thursday, Oct. 6, 12 noon; dutch lunch; persons interested in attending may call Mr. or Mrs. Harry Joiner \(32-2Lubbock-Amarillo Friday, Oct. 7, no formal meeting. El Paso Friday, Oct. 7, cornmissioners’ courtroom in the new city-county building, 7 p.m. \(changed from the 8 p.m. hour McAllen Sunday, Oct. 9, 5 p.m., private dining room of the Casa dePalmas Hotel. Kingsville Monday, Oct. 10, 12 noon for lunch, Round Table Inn, 1418 South 14th St. Corpus Christi Monday, Oct. 10, 8 p.m., Y.M.C.A. Austin Friday, Oct. 14, 8 p.m., at the home of Mr. and Mrs. Ronnie Dugger, 1017 West 31st St. lumbia, and Chicago universities and Harvard Divinity School. He was president of a Baptist college in Missouri two years, a Baptist ‘pastor there seven, had a church in Fayetteville, Ark., four years, and Conway, Ark., three, and has been at University Baptist in Austin since 1943. He had been president of the Austin Council of Churches and the Austin Ministers’ Assn. A formal refutation of his position on Catholicism endorsed by most of the Baptist ministers in a Travis County meeting took him by surprise, but he believed their statement was not bitter and was clear and . honest. He says he received “overwhelming support” from his own congregation of 1,600 members. Does he feel he is outnumbered on the issue in his denomination? “My general feeling is that I was expressing the convictions of a very large number of Southern Baptists who are not vocal,” he said. Smith believed Senator John Kennedy showed “great restraint” before the Houston ministers. “I was impressed with his sincerity,” he added. He is afraid that latent hates now restrained by conscience will be given religious sanction and venture forth as holy crusades. Evil never reaches its apex, he says, until it receives religious approval. In his sermon Sept. 11, he had spoken of “dark, demonic passions, which lie dormant in every society” and said “it is frightening to contemplate how diabolical these passions can became once they are given religious sanction. “Deep down in all of us, there are inner conflicts we find it difficult to live with,” he said. “Potentially the average person is a civil war. Now one way of escaping from this is to channel this conflict upon a group or an individual. There is some relief if I can feel the inner tension and identify it with something outside.” Ordinarily there is the “control of conscience,” but when the conflict “receives religious sanction, then we are no longer the children of darkness doing battle within, and we then become the children of light doing battle with demons.” Says Churches Hurt “From every direction,” Smith said, “my suspicions about this hatred are being confirmed.” The letter from the Catholic father “moves me very deeply.” A few high school students “are being cut out” because they are Cath olics, but how far this is going, Smith does not know. “I have had a good number of letters, he said, “from people saying this threatens an internal contention within their families. “The tragedy for the churches,