Presidents and Faith: John F. Kennedy
John F. Kennedy was the first (and so far the only) Catholic president. His religion became a major issue in the 1960 election, when some of his opponents tried to suggest that if he was elected, he would be beholden to the Pope, placing his religion ahead of his country.
Before 1960, only one Catholic had been the presidential nominee for one of the two major parties. That was Governor Alfred E. Smith of New York, who was the Democratic Candidate for president in 1928. Smith’s campaign opponents spread the rumor that he would have a pipeline from the White House to the Vatican and would amend the Constitution to make Catholicism the nation’s established religion. The strategy played into anti-Catholic prejudice in the previously solidly Democratic south and Smith was soundly walloped at the polls.
Kennedy's Catholicism wasn't a problem when it came to getting elected in Massachusetts where Irish Catholics were a prominent voting block. In 1947, when Kennedy was a representative from Massachusetts, Congress held a hearing on public funding for parochial schools. When a Freemason testified that Catholics owe their loyalties to their church, not their country, Kennedy became upset. He told the witness: “I am not a legal subject of the Pope. There is an old saying in Boston that we get our religion from Rome and our politics from home.”
Early on during Kennedy's 1960 campaign for his party's nomination, Kennedy's religion became an issue. Protestant leaders, including prominent pastors such as Billy Graham and Norman Vincent Peale, warned that the country would go to hell with a Catholic in the Oval Office. In the Minnesota primary, he defeated Senator Hubert Humphrey with 56% of the vote, but it didn't escape the notice of his strategists that he failed to win a majority of the Protestant vote—an ominous sign.
Kennedy decided to confront the issue head on by entering the West Virginia primary. West Virginia was a state where Catholics made up less than 4% of the electorate. When early polls in the state showed Kennedy trailing by 20 points, he decided to address the issue head on in a speech before the American Society of Newspaper Editors. In the speech he said:
"Are we going to admit to the world that a Jew can be elected Mayor of Dublin, a Protestant can be chosen Foreign Minister of France, a Moslem can be elected to the Israeli parliament, but a Catholic cannot be President of the United States? Are we going to admit to the world - worse still, are we going to admit to ourselves — that one-third of the American people is forever barred from the White House? I believe the American people are more concerned with a man's views and abilities than with the church to which he belongs. I believe the founding fathers meant it when they provided in Article VI of the Constitution that there should be no religious test for public office. And I believe that the American people mean to adhere to those principles today."
A vigorous campaign ensued in the primary. The Kennedy family invested a lot of money into the campaign and on the day of primary, Kennedy won by 93,000 to 61,000 for Humphrey. In his victory speech Kennedy said "I think we have buried the religion issue once and for all." But this was wishful thinking on his part.
In September, a group of 150 Protestant ministers met in Washington. They released a statement claiming that Kennedy could not remain independent of Church control unless he specifically repudiated its teachings. Kennedy received an invitation to address the Greater Houston Ministerial Association. Once more he confronted the issue head on. In a candid and eloquent address that drew praise from the press, Kennedy made it clear where his true allegiance was. He told the Association:
"I believe in an America where the separation of church and state is absolute; where no Catholic prelate would tell the President, should he be Catholic, how to act, and no Protestant minister would tell his parishioners for whom to vote; where no church or church school is granted any public funds or political preference; and where no man is denied public office merely because his religion differs from the President who might appoint him or the people who might elect him.
"I believe in an America that is officially neither Catholic, Protestant nor Jewish; where no public official either requests or accepts instructions on public policy from the Pope, the National Council of Churches or any other ecclesiastical source; where no religious body seeks to impose its will directly or indirectly upon the general populace or the public acts of its officials; and where religious liberty is so indivisible that an act against one church is treated as an act against all.
"For while this year it may be a Catholic against whom the finger of suspicion is pointed, in other years it has been, and may someday be again, a Jew or a Quaker or a Unitarian or a Baptist. It was Virginia's harassment of Baptist preachers, for example, that helped lead to Jefferson's statute of religious freedom. Today I may be the victim, but tomorrow it may be you, until the whole fabric of our harmonious society is ripped at a time of great national peril.
"Finally, I believe in an America where religious intolerance will someday end, where all men and all churches are treated as equal; where every man has the same right to attend or not attend the church of his choice; where there is no Catholic vote, no anti-Catholic vote, no bloc voting of any kind, and where Catholics, Protestants and Jews, at both the lay and pastoral level, will refrain from those attitudes of disdain and division which have so often marred their works in the past, and promote instead the American ideal of brotherhood.
"That is the kind of America in which I believe. And it represents the kind of Presidency in which I believe: a great office that must neither be humbled by making it the instrument of any one religious group nor tarnished by arbitrarily withholding its occupancy from the members of any one religious group. I believe in a President whose religious views are his own private affair, neither imposed by him upon the nation or imposed by the nation upon him as a condition to holding that office.
"I would not look with favor upon a President working to subvert the first amendment's guarantees of religious liberty. Nor would our system of checks and balances permit him to do so, and neither do I look with favor upon those who would work to subvert Article VI of the Constitution by requiring a religious test, even by indirection for it. If they disagree with that safeguard they should be out openly working to repeal it." "
More than 500,000 copies of his remarks were distributed to clergy, especially Protestant clergy, around the nation. This address seemed to clear up the religious issue, at least up to the time that Kennedy captured his party's nomination.
Vice President Richard Nixon was the Republican nominee, and he accused the Kennedy campaign of using the Houston film in predominantly Catholic urban areas in order to stimulate voter turnout. Late in October, three American-born bishops in Puerto Rico issued a statement forbidding Catholics from voting for candidates who disagreed with the Church on abortion and birth control. Kennedy considered responding to their edict, but he concluded that it was unwise to return focus to the issue of his religion. Some historians have suggested that this controversy, coming at the worst possible time, was a factor in halting momentum for Kennedy's campaign.
Kennedy won the presidency in one of the closest elections in American history up to that time. His margin of victory in the popular vote was 118,000 votes out of 69 million. Polling data suggests that religion helped Kennedy in several urban and industrial states, but contributed to his losses in Ohio, Kentucky, Florida, and Tennessee.
In his inaugural address, Kennedy avoided religious themes, but ended with a call for God's blessing. He said:
"With a good conscience our only sure reward, with history the final judge of our deeds, let us go forth to lead the land we love, asking His blessing and His help, but knowing that here on earth God's work must truly be our own."
Debate continues over just how devoted Kennedy was to his religious beliefs. He was famously unfaithful to his wife, and one of his biographers has suggested that his public displays of piety were solely for political purposes.
John F. Kennedy was assassinated on November 22, 1963 at 1:00 p.m., CST. Before he was pronounced dead, Father Oscar Huber had administered the last rites. Father Huber told The New York Times that the President was already dead by the time he arrived at the hospital, and he had to draw back a sheet covering the President's face to administer the sacrament of Extreme Unction.
Before 1960, only one Catholic had been the presidential nominee for one of the two major parties. That was Governor Alfred E. Smith of New York, who was the Democratic Candidate for president in 1928. Smith’s campaign opponents spread the rumor that he would have a pipeline from the White House to the Vatican and would amend the Constitution to make Catholicism the nation’s established religion. The strategy played into anti-Catholic prejudice in the previously solidly Democratic south and Smith was soundly walloped at the polls.
Kennedy's Catholicism wasn't a problem when it came to getting elected in Massachusetts where Irish Catholics were a prominent voting block. In 1947, when Kennedy was a representative from Massachusetts, Congress held a hearing on public funding for parochial schools. When a Freemason testified that Catholics owe their loyalties to their church, not their country, Kennedy became upset. He told the witness: “I am not a legal subject of the Pope. There is an old saying in Boston that we get our religion from Rome and our politics from home.”
Early on during Kennedy's 1960 campaign for his party's nomination, Kennedy's religion became an issue. Protestant leaders, including prominent pastors such as Billy Graham and Norman Vincent Peale, warned that the country would go to hell with a Catholic in the Oval Office. In the Minnesota primary, he defeated Senator Hubert Humphrey with 56% of the vote, but it didn't escape the notice of his strategists that he failed to win a majority of the Protestant vote—an ominous sign.
Kennedy decided to confront the issue head on by entering the West Virginia primary. West Virginia was a state where Catholics made up less than 4% of the electorate. When early polls in the state showed Kennedy trailing by 20 points, he decided to address the issue head on in a speech before the American Society of Newspaper Editors. In the speech he said:
"Are we going to admit to the world that a Jew can be elected Mayor of Dublin, a Protestant can be chosen Foreign Minister of France, a Moslem can be elected to the Israeli parliament, but a Catholic cannot be President of the United States? Are we going to admit to the world - worse still, are we going to admit to ourselves — that one-third of the American people is forever barred from the White House? I believe the American people are more concerned with a man's views and abilities than with the church to which he belongs. I believe the founding fathers meant it when they provided in Article VI of the Constitution that there should be no religious test for public office. And I believe that the American people mean to adhere to those principles today."
A vigorous campaign ensued in the primary. The Kennedy family invested a lot of money into the campaign and on the day of primary, Kennedy won by 93,000 to 61,000 for Humphrey. In his victory speech Kennedy said "I think we have buried the religion issue once and for all." But this was wishful thinking on his part.
In September, a group of 150 Protestant ministers met in Washington. They released a statement claiming that Kennedy could not remain independent of Church control unless he specifically repudiated its teachings. Kennedy received an invitation to address the Greater Houston Ministerial Association. Once more he confronted the issue head on. In a candid and eloquent address that drew praise from the press, Kennedy made it clear where his true allegiance was. He told the Association:
"I believe in an America where the separation of church and state is absolute; where no Catholic prelate would tell the President, should he be Catholic, how to act, and no Protestant minister would tell his parishioners for whom to vote; where no church or church school is granted any public funds or political preference; and where no man is denied public office merely because his religion differs from the President who might appoint him or the people who might elect him.
"I believe in an America that is officially neither Catholic, Protestant nor Jewish; where no public official either requests or accepts instructions on public policy from the Pope, the National Council of Churches or any other ecclesiastical source; where no religious body seeks to impose its will directly or indirectly upon the general populace or the public acts of its officials; and where religious liberty is so indivisible that an act against one church is treated as an act against all.
"For while this year it may be a Catholic against whom the finger of suspicion is pointed, in other years it has been, and may someday be again, a Jew or a Quaker or a Unitarian or a Baptist. It was Virginia's harassment of Baptist preachers, for example, that helped lead to Jefferson's statute of religious freedom. Today I may be the victim, but tomorrow it may be you, until the whole fabric of our harmonious society is ripped at a time of great national peril.
"Finally, I believe in an America where religious intolerance will someday end, where all men and all churches are treated as equal; where every man has the same right to attend or not attend the church of his choice; where there is no Catholic vote, no anti-Catholic vote, no bloc voting of any kind, and where Catholics, Protestants and Jews, at both the lay and pastoral level, will refrain from those attitudes of disdain and division which have so often marred their works in the past, and promote instead the American ideal of brotherhood.
"That is the kind of America in which I believe. And it represents the kind of Presidency in which I believe: a great office that must neither be humbled by making it the instrument of any one religious group nor tarnished by arbitrarily withholding its occupancy from the members of any one religious group. I believe in a President whose religious views are his own private affair, neither imposed by him upon the nation or imposed by the nation upon him as a condition to holding that office.
"I would not look with favor upon a President working to subvert the first amendment's guarantees of religious liberty. Nor would our system of checks and balances permit him to do so, and neither do I look with favor upon those who would work to subvert Article VI of the Constitution by requiring a religious test, even by indirection for it. If they disagree with that safeguard they should be out openly working to repeal it." "
More than 500,000 copies of his remarks were distributed to clergy, especially Protestant clergy, around the nation. This address seemed to clear up the religious issue, at least up to the time that Kennedy captured his party's nomination.
Vice President Richard Nixon was the Republican nominee, and he accused the Kennedy campaign of using the Houston film in predominantly Catholic urban areas in order to stimulate voter turnout. Late in October, three American-born bishops in Puerto Rico issued a statement forbidding Catholics from voting for candidates who disagreed with the Church on abortion and birth control. Kennedy considered responding to their edict, but he concluded that it was unwise to return focus to the issue of his religion. Some historians have suggested that this controversy, coming at the worst possible time, was a factor in halting momentum for Kennedy's campaign.
Kennedy won the presidency in one of the closest elections in American history up to that time. His margin of victory in the popular vote was 118,000 votes out of 69 million. Polling data suggests that religion helped Kennedy in several urban and industrial states, but contributed to his losses in Ohio, Kentucky, Florida, and Tennessee.
In his inaugural address, Kennedy avoided religious themes, but ended with a call for God's blessing. He said:
"With a good conscience our only sure reward, with history the final judge of our deeds, let us go forth to lead the land we love, asking His blessing and His help, but knowing that here on earth God's work must truly be our own."
Debate continues over just how devoted Kennedy was to his religious beliefs. He was famously unfaithful to his wife, and one of his biographers has suggested that his public displays of piety were solely for political purposes.
John F. Kennedy was assassinated on November 22, 1963 at 1:00 p.m., CST. Before he was pronounced dead, Father Oscar Huber had administered the last rites. Father Huber told The New York Times that the President was already dead by the time he arrived at the hospital, and he had to draw back a sheet covering the President's face to administer the sacrament of Extreme Unction.