Getting the government to fund religious education is one of the primary goals of those hoping to eliminate the separation of church and state. There seems to be the hope that, if religion is funded by the government, then both will be improved. There are people who fight this, however, and in New Jersey an effort to fund a private Catholic academy has been thwarted.
The Philadelphia Inquirer reports on a $250,000 grant to Seton Hall Preparatory School in West Orange that was withdrawn after the ACLU and the AJC complained:
"It was a quarter-million-dollar payment we had hoped to use for the restoration of the cafeteria and three classrooms," said the Rev. Michael Kelly, the school's headmaster. "It was really going to help us. Now it's a challenge for us to go out and raise more money."
"Providing financial support to a private religious school through taxpayers' funds is not only unconstitutional but, with so many of our public schools in desperate conditions, is wholly unjustifiable," said Deborah Jacobs, the ACLU's New Jersey executive director. "We are pleased that the state has agreed not to release the funds and can now put that money to a more appropriate use."
Had this been part of a block of grants being made to any and all schools, religious and secular, then it probably would have been able to survive a legal challenge. Giving funds to a specific religious school but no other schools at all, however, is not something that has been found constitutional - it is practically the definition of state-endorsement of a particular religion.
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