Today, the prejudice against Catholics is limited to a fringe element of our population. However, before the presidential election of John Kennedy, most political pundits felt that only a Protestant could win our highest office. This remarkable increase in tolerance stems from several developments. First of all, Jack and Jackie Kennedy during his brief presidency truly enchanted the American public, displaying poise, elegance, and wit. Secondly, the message of the Second Vatican Council, initiated in 1962 by Pope John XXIII, invited a spirit of ecumenical tolerance toward people of all faiths, and brought reciprocal tolerance toward Roman Catholics.

 

This week we commemorate the fortieth anniversary of the assassination of John Kennedy. When I was in high school, John Kennedy delivered one of the greatest speeches in American history before the Greater Houston Ministerial Association. He effectively answered the concerns of a primarily fundamental protestant clergy regarding the role of the papacy. Mr. Kennedy chose Houston to make his address, because this city hosted the 1928 Democratic Convention that nominated Al Smith, “The Happy Warrior.” My parents told me about the all day and night vigils of fundamental Protestants, asking “God’s intervention to stop the nomination of Mr. Smith” that took place outside the Houston convention center

 

I thought it might be informative to take excerpts from Mr. Kennedy’s speech.

 

“While the so-called religious issue is necessarily and properly the chief topic here tonight, I want to emphasize from the outset that we have far more critical issues to face in the 1960 election: the spread of Communist influence, … the hungry children I saw in West Virginia, the old people who cannot pay their doctor bills…

 

Because I am a Catholic, and no Catholic has even been elected President, the real issues in this campaign have been obscured-perhaps deliberately, in some quarters less responsible than this. So it is apparently necessary for me to state once again-not what kind of church I believe in, for that should be important only to me-but what kind of America I believe in.

 

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…

 

I believe in an America that is officially neither Catholic, Protestant nor Jewish.

 

For while this year it may be a Catholic against whom the finger of suspicion is pointed, in other years has been, and may someday be a Jew-or a Quaker—or a Unitarian—or a Baptist. It was Virginia’s harassment of Baptist preachers, for example, that helped lead Jefferson’s statute of religious freedom.

 

This is the kind of America I believe in—and this is the kind I fought for in the South Pacific, and the kind of America my brother died for in Europe. No one suggested then that we might have a ‘divided loyalty.’

 

I am not the Catholic candidate for President, I am the Democratic Party’s candidate for President who happens also to be Catholic.”

 

In 1928, the nation was not ready to accept a Catholic president. Despite outstanding credentials, maybe being New York’s greatest governor, Al Smith, four times Governor of the State of New York, faced a vicious campaign of anti-Catholic innuendoes and slurs in the 1928 election. A widely distributed periodical called the Fellowship Forum declared, “The real issue in the campaign is Protestant Americanism versus Rum and Romanism.” Smith throughout his career demonstrated an ability work closely with progressives to pass reforms such as the eight-hour working day, low rent housing, decent working conditions, banning child labor and the minimum wage. He was scrupulously honest. Not a hint of scandal stained his long political career. Nevertheless, he could not overcome fundamental Protestant prejudice, and lost badly to Herbert Hoover not even carrying his home state of New York. In 1926, running for governor his victory was huge, comedian Will Rogers exclaimed, “ The man you ran against ain’t a candidate, he is a victim.”

 

From a newsboy and fishmonger to four times Governor of the Empire State and the candidacy of the Democratic Party, the rise of Alfred E. Smith had no exact parallel in American history. There have been may country boys who have become president, such as Lincoln, Garfield, Johnson, who rose to the heights, but no other city urchin, earning a precarious living in the streets, ever rose to such a distinguished public career.

 

In 1920, Mr. Smith was elected Governor. Mr. Smith championed many progressive causes such as woman suffrage, increased salaries for teachers, higher appropriations for caring for the insane and building more hospitals. He urged the extension of laws to protect women in industry and the passage of health-insurance legislation, including the provision for maternity insurance.

 

Mr. Smith soon became a national figure. At national conventions, the band played “The Sidewalks of New York,” the song always associated with Mr. Smith. In 1924 Franklin Roosevelt made a brilliant speech nominating Smith for President at the Convention. However, Mr. Smith and Mr. William McAdoo were deadlocked, preventing either from getting the nomination. There was a bitter fight at the convention over a proposed plank denouncing the Ku Klux Klan. The bitter fight over the plank renewed attention to the fact that Governor Smith was a Roman Catholic. The convention took 103 ballots to nominate John W. Davis. The junior senator from Alabama delivered a vicious speech on the floor of the Senate blamed Roman Catholics for the defeat of Mr. Davis because Catholics wanted the Democrats to denounce the Ku Klux Klan. “Gentlemen, that question (Ku Klux Klan) has got no business trying to get a National Democratic Convention to denounce it. It is a Protestant order and Protestants generally think that you want it denounced because you are Catholics.”…Catholics replied, “To hell with the party if it will not denounce the Klan. So I tell you Senators again that the Roman Catholic government above everything, above the Democratic Party, above their country. That is plain talk, but it is the plan truth… Here they tell you in their book that they (Roman Catholics) will force the propaganda of Protestants to cease, they will lay the heavy hand of a Catholic state upon you and crust the life out of Protestantism in America. 

 

In 1960 John Kennedy was able to engineer successfully a coalition to barely defeat his rival Richard Nixon. Mr. Kennedy received strong support from four pillars of the Democratic Party: (1) the Solid South (2) First and Second Generation Americans located in the Big Cities of the East Coast and Midwest (3) Labor Unions and (4) Liberals.