Archbishop Paul J. Hallinan asked for “unquestioned accents of his faith” when any churchman speaks to the community or for it.

In a baccalaureate address to high school students of Mecklenburg County in Charlotte N.C., May 28, the archbishop discussed the issue of public prayer in a pluralistic society.

“Pluralism, the American way of life, can go several ways,” the archbishop said. “It can issue in a bland, inoffensive, uncommitted no-religion. Or it can raise a healthy climate where each man speaks his own faith undiluted, and this can easily include the Moslem, Buddhist and those who profess others ways to God.”

Citing the debate between Rabbi Israel Gerber of Temple Beth El in Charlotte and the editors of “Christian Century”, the archbishop noted: “As a Catholic citizen, I am (at least in the South) a member of the minority, just as the rabbi is. I can therefore sympathize with the rabbi because usually the context of public prayer has had along standing Protestant content.

However, the archbishop believes that “prayer has its roots in the conscience, not of adult or child by forcing them into a “majority religion’ format of worship. Nor will we find an adequate solution in a prayer of the lowest common denominator.”

“We do not want the unity of church and state,” the archbishop said. “We do not need to violate the conscience in the consensus.’ He said, “I want to hear a rabbi talk like a Jew, a minister like a Protestant, a Catholic or Orthodox priest like a Catholic. Clergymen of other forms should speak in accord with their principles.”

Communities will draw upon the spiritual values and God awareness that have built the conscience of the nation, when “in charity and courtesy, we can agree to let each churchman pray and speak and act in his own religious idiom”, the archbishop said.

He told the students he is sure the graduates are as concerned with the religiously pluralistic society just as they are concerned with the problems of poverty, automation and war. “More than earlier generations like our own, today’s graduates have already begun to probe these issues,’ he said.