by Thomas Maier
Chapter Eighteen
A Child of Fate
ROBERT KENNEDY’S WRITTEN confidential request to his father, dashed off in a kind of quick Kennedy shorthand, contained references understood only by each other. But in the deeply personal matters of marriage, sex and the church, he knew that if anyone could come up with a solution, it would surely be his father.
As Bobby explained, the wife of an old law school chum had asked how she might be granted an annulment from the Catholic Church. The exact circumstances surrounding the young woman’s troubled marriage—spelled out in the letter passed along to his father—are lost to history. But Bobby’s note in February 1958 indicated his own view. “The letter speaks for itself and I don’t know if anything can be done but it certainly appears the girl deserves a break on this one,” he concluded.“As a Papal Count married to a Countess, I am sure you will have the answer.”
Bobby’s closing line referred to the unique honor bestowed on his mother a few years earlier and, in a more subtle way, to his father’s own influence with the church. In late 1951, the Vatican recognized Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy as a papal countess for her “exemplary motherhood and charitable works.”A small article in the widely circulated Boston Post proclaimed that she was only the sixth woman chosen for such a distinction. In the New York Times, Spellman upped the ante with his claim that “only two other American women hold the title.” Money provided the entree for such an award, especially the $2.5 million grant from the Kennedy Foundation to open a home for troubled children in the Bronx. Spellman presided over the ceremony and gave Mrs. Kennedy a scroll conferring the “extraordinarily high” honor to her. Some church critics objected to Vatican decrees that turned a rich donor into a “countess” or bestowed other such honors, practices not unlike the old discredited process of selling indulgences. But for Rose, the lifelong bonds between church and family came to a magnificent culmination with this special recognition from Pope Pius XII—the same pontiff she had welcomed into her home two decades earlier on his trip to America. As much as any of her children, Bobby appreciated his mother’s fealty to the church, shared her inviolate loyalty to the idea of family and carried on many of the Catholic traditions in his own household. He was also aware of his father’s hand in such a unique selection by the Pope, of his close ties to powerful Vatican figures such as Count Galeazzi and his ability to make things happen behind the scenes. His father’s reply to the annulment request again reinforced this belief.
In a letter from Palm Beach, Joseph Kennedy assured his son that he’d help out, particularly when it reached the highest levels of the church.“To get an annulment, it takes time, even though the matter is as simple as this seems to be, since the one seeking the annulment has never been baptized,” his father replied. He said the woman should file the necessary annulment papers with her local bishop in Hartford where she lived, then send it on to the Archdiocese in New York and eventually it would reach Rome.“I think that we might be able to expedite it once it gets its way to New York,” Joe explained, without explicitly mentioning his long-time friendship with Cardinal Spellman. Bobby knew that “New York” was shorthand for the cardinal,much as Kathleen had delighted in referring to him as “Arch Spell” in her wartime letters. “I would think that if she had somebody get the Bishop of Hartford to hurry it along,” his father ended, “we will then do the best that we can thereafter.” His reply suggested this was not the first such favor requested of Joe Kennedy, nor surely would it be the last.
FOR THE ADULT KENNEDY CHILDREN, even for those who were married and parents of children of their own, the emotional and financial pull of their parents still dominated much of their lives in the 1950s. Indeed, for all their affluence and worldliness, the Kennedys at times resembled some Irish family in the bog, the adult children staying on the proverbial farm until well into adulthood. Perhaps most paradoxically, Jack, elected to the U.S. Senate at age thirty-six but still unattached, seemed caught in the orbit of his family, the gravity of its demands.
Rose’s incessant notes and reminders to her adult children about all sorts of personal matters—reinforced by the moral strictures instilled through the culture of the church—fashioned many of their own beliefs, like some religious superego looming over all they would do. Those acts that specifically defied or rejected her religious teachings, be they cardinal sins or merely carnal desires, seemed to take into account some omniscient Mother Church in their lives. If one parameter of the church was delineated by Rose’s high-minded spirituality, the other extreme—a more worldly, bricks-and-mortar morality—was exhibited by their father. Joe’s influence sprung from his bankroll, the scope of which few in America had ever witnessed, and the knowledge of an Irish cynic ever hopeful, ever optimistic for his children. He once called them “hostages to fortune,” but their fates seemed more directly tied to his own wishes. Rather than going their own way, the adult children of Rose and Joe Kennedy were increasingly viewed by the public—and just about everyone who knew them personally—as one entity, a sprawling familial force of raw ambition that sometimes showed its teeth. After the 1952 Senate campaign, the idea of the Kennedys as a “clan,” the word they themselves used, was sealed in the public imagination forever.
IN THIS ERA after World War II, the Catholic Church struggled to define itself. The old bigotry of nativism and anti-Catholicism still simmered, most typified by Paul Blanshard’s best-selling 1949 book (American Freedom and Catholic Power) warning about the evils of Catholic influence on American society. By today’s standards, Blanshard’s writings seem replete with cultural stereotypes and rank bigotry. Blanshard warned that Catholics could someday become the majority in the United States because they were “out-breeding the non-Catholic elements in our population.” In Blanshard’s diatribe, Boston was a hotbed of trouble. “Boston is aggressively Catholic largely because it is aggressively Irish, and it is aggressively Irish because its people have not quite overcome their sense of being strangers in a hostile land,” Blanshard wrote. Blanshard summarized his outlook in the Atlantic Monthly in his reply to a critic:“[He] does not try to deny that the Roman Catholic Church is a complete dictatorship in which American Catholic people have no participating control; nor does he specifically attempt to justify . . . the celibate rule on birth control, the theological coercion applied to Catholic parents to maintain a segregated Catholic school system, or the treatment of non-Catholics as second-class citizens in mixed marriage. . . . Liberal Catholics have almost no voice or forum within the Catholic system of power. . . .They cannot reach their fellow Catholics through any existing organs of the Church.”
NUMEROUS CATHOLIC theologians and partisans howled over Blanshard’s assessment, but several liberals applauded his treatise, including John Dewey, who praised its “exemplary scholarship, good judgement and tact.” When portions of Blanshard’s critique appeared in the Nation, Cardinal Spellman insisted bitterly that the New York City public schools remove the offending article from their libraries. Spellman’s crude attempt at censorship soon made the newspapers, and a committee of civil libertarians and liberals, including former first lady Eleanor Roosevelt, condemned the cardinal’s action. Their support confirmed for many Catholics that overt bigotry existed not only in reactionary quarters but also tacitly in the more educated, more refined sectors of America.
The Blanshard book and other writings about American Catholics in the mid-century caused some painful self-evaluation. To some observers, the insularity of the immigrant experience and the steadfastness to church traditions caused a parochialism that impeded progress by Catholics in America. Too often, they were viewed as mundane, unimaginative thinkers, too caught up in the mechanics of the catechism and ill-equipped for the diverse challenges of a pluralistic society. Though Catholics were among the most heterogeneous group in the nation, they remained dominated by a hierarchy almost exclusively Irish, male and decidedly conservative. Historians later commented about a kind of infantilism afflicting the church and it
s flock during the 1950s—a period still far emotionally and spiritually from the reforms of Vatican II.
These contradictions were reflected in the Kennedy family itself. For the Kennedys, the church could be a source of spiritual strength and moral courage, the impetus for some of their finest moments; but it also became an institution that curiously constricted the voice of its adult members, justified the second-class status of women and encouraged the hiding of intellect behind emotion. Similarly, the Kennedys’ idea of family also differed from that of the emerging American ideal. In a nation where mobility and independence was a birthright, the family reared by Joe and Rose Kennedy seemed to live by a creed fashioned by their father. Regardless of their popularity or wealth, the Kennedys—with their kindred, us-against-them perspective— remained unsure of anything but themselves. Although thoroughly modern American in public, Joe Kennedy still insisted on building up his family in the most familiar way, an approach undeniably Irish Catholic. As Jack’s best friend, Lem Billings, later explained:“Mr. Kennedy also built within the family a real loyalty to each other. . . . It’s very unusual the way the members of this family, all of them in their middle years, still have this very clan family feeling. . . .Mr. Kennedy always said that the family should stick together. He said the family would be happier as one unit than if they broke up into separate individual families.”
This oneness among the Kennedys, the idea of family, emanated from their religion and cultural heritage, as their own words in public and private show. Journalists and historians would note this dynamic in their profiles—“ The Remarkable Kennedys!” declared Look magazine—as if the family were some oddity bucking the national trend. The American public seized upon this clannishness of the Kennedys as something terribly unique. With their numbers big enough for a scorecard, the Kennedys presented a different ideal beyond the sanitized two-parent, two-child (preferably a boy and girl) WASPish family prototype found on television or in women’s magazines in the postwar era. The Kennedys, often photographed by wide-angle lenses overflowing off the page, reflected the accomplished immigrant family in American culture, defining itself on its own terms and redefining society in the process. Those of immigrant heritages—whether from Italian, German, Hispanic, Jewish, African or a myriad of other minority groups in America—could find a little piece of themselves in the upwardly aspiring Kennedys. As Irish Catholics, this high-profile family signified the subtle but dramatic revolution taking place in the American church, particularly the struggle to maintain faith and traditions in a meaningful, up-to-date way. If the church of their parents was focused on parochial concerns, the Catholicism of this new generation of Kennedys gradually became more outward-looking. The words of St. Luke were transformed into their own social compact. Each Kennedy found his and her own way of doing what was expected, including the future president of the United States.
EUNICE KENNEDY’S work reflected the progressive spirit of a Dorothy Day in the Catholic Church. Eunice was a highly energetic and intelligent woman with a twig-like figure and prominent cheekbones of a Katharine Hepburn. After college, she moved to Washington and, with her father’s help, landed an important job in the federal Justice Department’s program for fighting juvenile delinquency. Her older sister Rosemary’s mental retardation and devastating lobotomy inspired Eunice to devote herself to that cause as well. She visited Rosemary, institutionalized in Wisconsin, as often as possible and sometimes shared vacations with her. Eunice would not forget her. Jack’s congressional aide, Billy Sutton, recalled how Eunice would invite troubled girls, teenagers from her government program, to her home for dinner. She did the same with mentally impaired youngsters. Since her days in the convent schools, Eunice had tackled each new assignment with vocation-like tenacity. And yet, like most women of her era, she had been taught to defer to male authority. Despite her obvious abilities, Eunice was never groomed for the top-tier jobs her father sought so desperately for his sons.“If that girl had been born with balls, she would have been a hell of a politician,” her father boasted, with barely a trace of the fundamental inequality inherent in his statement. With laser-like intensity, Eunice contributed tremendously to her brother’s 1952 Senate campaign. Her effort ranked second only to Bobby’s. “Eunice is a lot like me,” observed her brother Jack, who shared a Georgetown apartment with her during the late 1940s.“She’s just as competitive as the boys.”
Eunice adored her father, though she remained very much her mother’s daughter. She embraced her family’s religious beliefs wholeheartedly and, before transferring to Stanford, she practiced her acts of faith at Man-hattanville College, the women’s college operated by the Society of the Sacred Heart nuns. The brand of Catholicism at this school was not cloistered or hermetic but aggressively social-minded. One day a week, the students at this plush school journeyed downtown to work with children at the Barat Settlement in the Bowery and at a Casita Maria in East Harlem, a shelter for Puerto Rican youngsters founded by two Manhattanville students. Intermittently, students were sent to Dorothy Day’s Catholic Worker in Manhattan and other urban ministries serving the poor and needy. At Manhattanville, Jean became fast friends with the fun-loving Ethel Skakel and introduced her to Bobby. In the years to come, the Kennedy women carried on the lessons learned at Manhattanville.
Although the foundation named for her fallen brother was used by others to drum up political support, Eunice never lost sight of its mission among the truly needy. She gave an impassioned sermon at the South Side Catholic Women’s Club about the effectiveness of the homes for the mentally retarded opened by the Kennedy Foundation in Illinois, New York City,Wisconsin and Massachusetts, and the Kennedy Memorial Hospital in Brighton, facilities that treated and researched illnesses afflicting children. Eunice placed her family’s charity firmly in the context of the church’s good works. She relied on religious imagery and allusions her brothers would likely shy away from in private, and certainly be disinclined to use publicly. “Jesus set up an entirely new standard,” Eunice insisted. “His famous words are: ‘For as much as ye have done to the least of these, you have done it unto Me.’ As a result, with us, the test of a community’s worth is not how well the most privileged people make out—but, rather, what provision is made for the least, for those who are ‘exceptional’ in their need for our kindness.” Her speech bore an uncanny resemblance in cadence and idealistic substance to the speeches that would make her older brother famous. Those who witnessed Eunice’s endless devotion and effort to these causes never questioned her sincerity.
Though she had the heart of an ascetic, Eunice appreciated the church’s rituals and sense of theater. When she married R. Sargent Shriver in 1953— the official Kennedy press release called the nuptials “one of the most important and colorful weddings ever held in America”—Cardinal Spellman presided at St. Patrick’s Cathedral, along with three bishops, four monsignors, nine priests and an apostolic blessing sent by Pope Pius XII. Shriver shared many of the traits of his bride’s parents: the ambition and gregariousness of her father, and the cultural interests and sense of faith of her mother. To her wedding guests, Eunice declared: “I found a man who is as much like my father as possible.” Shriver came from an old and distinguished Catholic family in Maryland. After graduating from Yale, he was introduced to the Kennedys and began working in Joe Kennedy’s business empire. Shriver was soon dispatched to Chicago to oversee the Kennedy-owned Merchandise Mart and was immediately established as an important economic and political figure in the Windy City.
Both Eunice and her husband were profoundly thankful to Joe Kennedy. “Jack is right,” Eunice wrote to her father.“We may all get our ‘drive’ from our mother but from whom better could we receive the gift of generosity than you, Love and hugs, Eunie.” Sarge Shriver, a polished, articulate man, seemed almost prostrate in his solicitousness to his father-in-law. “Actual politicians are now asking me to run (senators, previous candidates) & the business community seems favorably disposed,” Shriver
wrote to Joe Kennedy in a long letter on Merchandise Mart stationary.“Even if nothing comes of the talk, it indicates at least for my personal satisfaction that all your confidence in me, the effort and the support you have given me, have not been misplaced. This means much to one who is indebted to you for so much.”Though Joe Kennedy was undoubtedly supportive of his daughter’s new husband, it is unlikely the family patriarch ever encouraged Shriver to pursue a political career. In fact, part of Shriver’s role in Illinois was to act as a political scout for Jack’s eventual run for national political office, not to create a staging area for a candidate who was only an in-law.
Stephen Smith, a Georgetown graduate from a wealthy Irish Catholic family in upstate New York, adopted a similar role in the Kennedy family a few years later. He married Jean, the youngest of Joe Kennedy’s daughters, in a wedding also presided over by Cardinal Spellman. Soon, Smith became a trusted political aide and eventually a campaign manager for his brothers-in- law’s election campaigns. Before marriage, Jean worked for no pay with Father James Keller, the Maryknoll priest who started the Christopher movement of Catholic public service. Keller’s newspaper column and The Christopher Hour television show made him one of the most famous church figures in America. Though she had heard Father Keller speak when she attended the Noroton convent school, Jean decided to volunteer her hard work while chatting with the priest at the wedding of her brother Jack. Father Keller had created the Christophers as a bulwark against corruption and communism “by urging Christians to enter professions where Communists most often operate—in the fields of government, education, labor relations, literature and entertainment.” In 1956, John F. Kennedy won a Christopher Award for using “his God-given talent in a positive way” with his book, Profiles in Courage. By joining Father Keller’s cause, Jean lived out the religious faith espoused by her mother and underwritten by her father with money donated from the family’s foundation. “The idea of doing something for other people came from my parents,” Jean explained to author Laurence Leamer. “They both believed very strongly that those to whom much is given have responsibility. They both felt that we had a real responsibility for some kind of public service.”