What was going on when I was born?

Pope John Paul II issued a strong call today for public financing of religious schools, arguing that ''we cannot leave God at the schoolhouse door.'' The Pope also issued a stinging criticism of economic systems that respond ''only to the forces of the marketplace'' and are governed ''by the profit motive of the few rather than the needs of the many.'' The Pope made his call for state assistance to religious schools this evening in an address to Catholic educators. His remarks, at a ceremony at the Basilica of St. John the Baptist here, comes when relations between governments and church schools are a central political issue not only in the United States, but also in France, Malta and elsewhere.

In the antiseptic ''clean rooms'' of semiconductor manufacturers, the pressure on employees to work quickly is palpable. With demand booming, an extra step or delay in the enormously complex process of fabricating microchips can cost the company hundreds of thousands of dollars in profits. This week, the perils of success were brought home to the industry. On Monday, Texas Instruments Inc. acknowledged that some chips leaving its Midland, Tex., plant might not have been tested in accordance with the rigid specifications of some of the Defense Department's leading contractors. While no equipment failures have yet been traced to the chips, the parts are now embedded in some of the nation's most sophisticated weaponry. It was the second case of its kind this year; in March, the National Semiconductor Corporation pleaded guilty to a similar charge.

ARA Services Inc., the world's largest food service company, announced yesterday that an investor group headed by senior management had offered to acquire it. The offer is for $62 a share, or $858 million in cash, plus $8.50 in principal amount of subordinated debentures for each outstanding share of the company's common. There are 12.4 million shares outstanding.

After five hard years of beauty pageants, Mary-Ann Farrell almost threw in her sash last year. The pageant grind had taken its toll. She was hospitalized with nervous-stomach problems three weeks before the 1983 Miss Florida pageant. Contest week, her energy was low. She finished way down, a drop from her fifth-place finish in the 1982 contest. ''I was thinking of giving it all up,'' she said.

The last time the United Automobile Workers shut down the General Motors Corporation, the 67-day strike dealt the economy a body blow. That strike, in 1970, led by the union's newly elected president, Leonard Woodcock, pushed the nation's already feeble economic growth into a decline of 3.3 percent in the fourth quarter. If the world's largest auto maker is struck again when the current labor contract expires at midnight Friday, the nation's economy is unlikely to be hit as hard. But at the same time, some of the groups most directly affected by the strike - the workers and the suppliers - may feel the impact more keenly.

A senior Soviet diplomat has told United States officials that Marshal Nikolai V. Ogarkov was dismissed as chief of the General Staff because he was showing ''unpartylike tendencies,'' Administration officials said today. They said the comment was made Friday, when the Soviet press agency Tass said that Marshal Ogarkov had been replaced by his deputy, Marshal Sergei F. Akhromeyev. The officials said similar remarks had been heard earlier from other Soviet diplomats about Marshal Ogarkov. The officials said they did not know whether the comment on Friday was made on instructions from Moscow or on the diplomat's own speculation.

THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 13, 1984 International Nikolai V. Ogarkov was demoted as chief of the Soviet General Staff because he was showing ''unpartylike tendencies,'' according to a senior Soviet diplomat. Reagan Administration officials said the diplomat had made the statement to United States officials. They said that Marshal Ogarkov might have been dismissed because of possible disagreements with other policy-makers over military priorities. (Page A1, Column 1.) Public financing of religious schools was strongly urged by Pope John Paul II in an address in St. John's, Newfoundland. Earlier, the Pope assailed economic systems that respond ''only to the forces of the marketplace'' and are governed ''by the profit motive of the few rather than the needs of the many.'' (A1:4-5.)

The best efforts of a dozen nations have failed to reduce opium-poppy production in Thailand. And the failure clearly demonstrates the weaknesses of a key strategy behind narcotics-control programs used around the world. The strategy is called crop substitution, and the theory behind it is that farmers who make their livings growing marijuana or coca or opium poppies can be weaned from those crops and persuaded to grow legal crops instead. That is the theory, but the fact is that crop substitution by itself usually does not work, drug-enforcement officials now agree. There is no better illustration than Thailand, where the United States, other countries and the United Nations have spent millions of dollars in the last few years setting up pilot crop-substitution programs that show peasants how to grow coffee, kidney beans and Idaho potatoes.

The American Psychiatric Association said today that the practice of discharging mentally ill patients from state hospitals into ill-prepared local communities had been a failure and ''a major societal tragedy.'' In its first comprehensive report on the homeless mentally ill, the association said the concept of shifting the chronic mentally ill from large institutions to community treatment facilities was ''basically a good one'' but that its ''implementation was flawed.'' The association, the nation's chief professional organization for psychiatrists, said a ''disastrous'' failure to provide adequate mental health care in the community, or even such basic needs as shelter and food, had left tens of thousands, perhaps even a million or more, of the mentally ill ''cast adrift under conditions that most persons think can no longer exist in this country.'' Problem in New York The association blamed virtually everyone involved in the care and treatment of the mentally ill or the homeless for some the problems.

''Hardly a section of the country, urban or rural, has escaped the ubiquitous presence of ragged, ill and hallucinating human beings, wandering through our city streets, huddled in alleyways, or sleeping over vents.

Airline industry representatives reached tentative agreement today on a broad package of schedule changes intended to reduce delays at six major airports, and the Federal Aviation Administration accepted the plans. The final hurdle was a plan for Newark International Airport, debated for eight days of often heated bargaining between Government officials and negotiators from 100 domestic and foreign airlines. The plan would increase the number of flights to and from the airport in most of the peak hours. More Than U.S. First Asked The tentative Newark agreement is part of a plan to ease congestion and delays at the three big airports in New York and airports in Chicago, Atlanta and Denver. Earlier agreements for New York's two other major airports, La Guardia and Kennedy, would space flights at peak hours more evenly but would not reduce or increase them.

A news analysis dispatch from Washington on Tuesday about Walter F. Mondale's budget proposals misstated the sponsorship of an August poll on attitudes toward income taxes. It was conducted by The New York Times and CBS News.