Father Halton: The Stormy Petrel

The Princeton campus has been the scene over the last year and a half of a rancorous religious dispute that would have been more plausible in Wurtenberg than in Princeton. The conflict featured an urbane Catholic priest pitted against the University's Department of Religion.

The stormy petrel on the Princeton campus is Father Hugh Halton, a Dominican priest with a long chain of academic degrees and a penchant for being a "born controversialist." As chaplain to the Catholic students at the University and head of the campus Aquinas Foundation, he is the religious spokesman of a sizeable minority at the University.

The dispute began in May, 1955, when Halton delivered four sermons attacking Walter T. Stace, professor of Philosophy, for "professional incompetence." Labeling Stace's Metaphysics "a metaphysical mambo," Halton later charged the professor with "poisoning the minds of students with incompetence for 38 years." He contended that Stace had made 22 errors of fact in his treatment of St. Thomas Aquinas, which, he said, implied that Stace had not read the Summa Theologica.

Halton then, through additional statements, letters, sermons, and paid full-page advertisements in the Daily Princetonian, widened his attack to include the entire Department of Religion, claiming that it was incompetent to teach the tenets of Roman Catholicism.

"There is not now on the Princeton University faculty a single professionally competent, formally trained philosopher or theologian in the Catholic tradition," Halton said in one of his paid advertisements. "As a result, Catholicism is pretty much what anyone wants to say it is, and there is no way of resolving the confusion."

If the criticisms of Stace had brought a lively response, the indictment of the Religion Department unleashed a debate which has held the attention of the Princeton campus for a good deal of the time since. Halton maintained that the eight graders at the St. Paul's Parochial School had more formal training in Catholic doctrine than the professors in Princeton's Department of Religion. He suggested that the University either hire an "authoritative spokesman" for Catholicism or not discuss that religion at all.

In an editorial entitled "Father Halton's Legitimate Complaint," the Princetonian, in less vehement terms, agreed with Halton that "the religion department is, in fact, made up of men committed to a definitely non-Catholic position, men, who, because of their very strong commitments of faith, would be bound to be lax in presenting a fair view of the Roman Catholic standpoint."

E. Harris Harberson, professor of History, answered the editorial by asserting that "our Department of Religion has an enviable reputation for fairness and objectivity in its teaching, particularly of Catholicism."

Last December, however, a more violent rebuttal of Halton was attempted by Professor Emeritus George W. Elderkin. In the first of two privately printed booklets, entitled "The Roman Catholic Controversy on the Campus of Princeton University," Elderkin accused Halton and Dean of the Graduate School Hugh S. Taylor of collaborating in a "Catholic program to undermine the fundamental principles on which Princeton University is founded."

Professing to see a Catholic conspiracy to dominate the educational system by converting the six leading universities in this country to Catholicism, Elderkin claimed the attacks on Stace and the Religion Department were logical parts of the strategy. "Halton's ulterior motive is quite obvious," Elderkin said. "He wants to get a foot in the door to the Department of Religion and ultimately kick out all the Protestants behind it. The one and sufficient answer is that Catholicism does not tolerate Protestantism and would destroy it if possible."

Elderkin's attacks did not receive an overly enthusiastic response either, however. John D. Davies, editor of the Princeton Alumni Weekly, wrote the following in a public letter to him: "The University is in no danger from Father Halton, and the Alumni Weekly does not propose to give you the publicity you seek in your curious crusade against the Catholic Church under the guise of 'protecting' us against Father Halton. As you know, your activities are just about as embarrassing to Princeton as his are."

The current attitude at Princeton after all the extremists have made their views well known, is one of boredom and fatigue. As one observer put it, "The horse is tired, and everyone else is too."