242
Souter, J., dissenting
inadvertently (or intentionally) manifest sympathy with the sectarian aims to the point of using public funds for religious educational purposes, id., at 388; second, the government's provision of secular instruction in religious schools produced a symbolic union of church and state that tended to convey a message to students and to the public that the State supported religion, id., at 390-392; and, finally, the Shared Time program subsidized the religious functions of the religious schools by assuming responsibility for teaching secular subjects the schools would otherwise be required to provide, id., at 395-396. Our decision in Aguilar noted the similarity between the Title I and Shared Time programs, and held that the system New York City had adopted to monitor the religious content of Title I classes held in religious schools would necessarily result in excessive entanglement of church and state, and violate the Establishment Clause for that reason. See 473 U. S., at 412-414.
As I will indicate as I go along, I believe Aguilar was a correct and sensible decision, and my only reservation about its opinion is that the emphasis on the excessive entanglement produced by monitoring religious instructional content obscured those facts that independently called for the application of two central tenets of Establishment Clause jurisprudence. The State is forbidden to subsidize religion directly and is just as surely forbidden to act in any way that could reasonably be viewed as religious endorsement. See, e. g., Ball, 473 U. S., at 385 ("Although Establishment Clause jurisprudence is characterized by few absolutes, the Clause does absolutely prohibit government-financed or government-sponsored indoctrination into the beliefs of a particular religious faith"); id., at 389 ("Government promotes religion as effectively when it fosters a close identification of its powers and responsibilities with those of any— or all—religious denominations as when it attempts to inculcate specific religious doctrines") (citing Lynch v. Donnelly, 465 U. S. 668, 688 (1984) (O’Connor, J., concurring)).
Page: Index Previous 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 NextLast modified: October 4, 2007