The Church Said No

The Canadian Senate has no fewer than 20 vacancies for its lifetime, $10,000-a-year jobs. Prime Minister Louis St. Laurent was expected to appoint new Senators for the reopening of Parliament last month. But for a reason never made public, the vacant seats were not filled. Last week the secret leaked out: one of St. Laurent's proposed appointments was blocked by the Roman Catholic Church, and he postponed, at least temporarily, his plan for Senate reform.

Ten Non-Politicians. St. Laurent had intended to name Father Georges-Henri Levesque, 51, brilliant dean of the social-science faculty at Quebec's Laval University. Father Levesque was ready to accept the post, and his Dominican Order approved. But the priest's diocesan superior, Quebec Archbishop Maurice Roy, vetoed it. Ottawa Archbishop Marie-Joseph Lemieux and Paul-Emile Cardinal Leger of Montreal agreed with Archbishop Roy's stand that the unprecedented * appointment of a priest to a political post might eventually embarrass the church.

Besides Father Levesque, St. Laurent planned to give Senate seats to a Protestant churchman and to eight other non-political figures in public life. Dr. Wilder Penfield, Montreal's famed U.S.-born neurosurgeon, was another prospect.

Seven Tories. Historically, Senate appointments have been political plums, dealt out to the faithful by the party in power. When the government alternated with some frequency between Liberals and Tories, party strength in the Senate kept fairly well balanced. Today, however, after 19 years of uninterrupted Liberal control, the Tories' Senate strength has dwindled to seven seats; the Liberals hold 75. Liberal St. Laurent would scarcely appoint Tory politicians. But he hoped that his non-political appointments would correct some of the Senate's imbalance. Intimates reported that he was deeply disappointed at the church's veto.

The few Quebeckers who knew about it were also disappointed. Father Levesque, who has frequently clashed on social issues with Quebec's reactionary Premier Maurice Duplessis, is highly popular in the 1,000,000-member cooperative movement that he has helped to spread through Quebec parishes.

* A Presbyterian minister, James Moffatt Douglas, who was elected as an M.P. in 1896, was elevated to the Senate in 1906, the only clergyman ever to hold a Senatorship.

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