Athiest, Priest, Two Lawyers Clash Federal Aid to Church Activities

Madalyn Murray, succesful litigant in the 1963 Supreme Court case outlawing school prayer, last night debated her opposition to state aid for religious institutions with a priest and two law professors.

Murray, who is currently singlehandedly staging a lawsuit against "the Roman Catholic Church, the Episcopate Jews, and the City of Baltimore," maintained at a Law School Forum that tax exemptions for religious property holdings are unconstitutional.

"I'm an out-and-out atheist, not an agnostic, humanist, or anything else," Mrs. Murray said, "But no one will deny that those who are exempted from paying taxes on church-held properties are causing my taxes to rise. Such tax exemptions constitute direct state aid to and are a violation of the first ammendment."

Mrs. Murray estimated that the Church owns up to $80 billion in the taxable property, including schools, newspapers, race-tracks, and the land under Yankee Stadium.

This month the Baltimore Court of Appeals ruled unanimously against Mrs. Murray because, she quoted, "the church was doing so much for the general welfare, that on this basis alone it should be exempt from taxation."

Mrs. Murray was opposed in her views on the complete separation of Church and State by Robert Braucher, professor of Law; Henry B. Monaghan, associate professor of Law at B.U.; and the Reverend Robert Howes of the Catholic University of Washington, D.C. Howes approved the recent Baltimore decision, but criticized the Supreme Court's school prayer decision.