by Thomas Maier
After years of courting Spellman in vain, Joe Kennedy suddenly found himself grateful to Cushing as his son’s only true friend in the church hierarchy, as a prelate who “gave me confidence that there was somebody left in high places in the Catholic Church who saw something in this battle that Jack is making.”A subtle change in their relationship occurred. Cushing had long been aware that Spellman didn’t like him and had for many years used his clout within the Vatican to block Cushing’s promotion to the rank of cardinal. Early letters between Cushing and the senior Kennedy contain a cautiousness that suggest the then-archbishop quite correctly assumed Joe Kennedy to be a Spellman confidant. Cushing preferred dealing with Jack rather than his father.
As the presidential election neared, however, the Kennedy patriarch couldn’t understand the silence of American church figures. The reasons were quite proper and deeply rooted. Often during the church’s history, priests and bishops were instructed by the Vatican to refrain from local politics and secular matters. In Ireland, some priests had inspired parishioners in their fight for independence and religious liberty; yet at other crucial times, the clergy were maddeningly passive and distant when the Irish seemed to need them most. Once again, the clergy had disappointed, or so believed Joe Kennedy. “Most of the hierarchy are so busy thinking they have a big struggle that they haven’t the time to take a big look at the position,” he complained.
Cushing couldn’t agree more. When Joe Kennedy asked why the U.S. bishops didn’t speak out, Cushing recalled that he explained their passivity didn’t mean they weren’t for Jack, “but I’m not sure Joe was convinced.” Increasingly, Joe Kennedy felt grateful for Cushing’s unabashed efforts.“We are again indebted to you for your enthusiastic support of Jack with their gentleman,” Joe wrote, referring to the Pennsylvania’s Governor Lawrence. “He is very, very important.” Consistently in public appearances, Cushing shored up Catholic support and made sure that his co-religionists didn’t abandon Kennedy over some intramural squabble. The cardinal’s “courageous, generous speech on Jack’s position” regarding church-state separation, wrote Joe Kennedy, saved his son from being picked apart by his own. “This letter really adds up to saying that if Jack stays in this fight, it will be you who has kept him in,” Joe told Cushing.“If he wins, it will be you who has made it possible.” Now by their desire to see Jack elected president, Cushing commiserated at times with Joe in his frustration. “It breaks my heart . . . to hear the defeatist attitude concerning the advisability of a Catholic becoming President,” Cushing responded.“Despite all this, I have never had any doubt with regard to the ultimate victory.”Arguably, the cardinal in Boston was Jack’s biggest booster outside his own family members, a devoted member of the team.“I am glad that all things look well for the senator,” the cardinal enthused to the candidate’s father. “I wish this Democratic National Convention was over. I dream about it. It is my opinion that if we can get by the Convention with a victory, we are ‘in.’”
THOUGH COVERT maneuvers were appreciated and private meetings welcomed, the Kennedys didn’t always take up Cardinal Cushing’s offers to help in public. During the fury over the Look article, some critics wondered aloud about Jack Kennedy’s fidelity to Catholicism. His confident statements about the powers of the Constitution and the secular state made him appear to be a nonbeliever. “Cushing tried to silence a whispering campaign among Catholics themselves that the candidate was not a practicing communicant,” recounted one of the cardinal’s biographers, John H. Cutler. These rumblings so upset Cushing that when a national magazine offered to let him set the record straight, he wrote an article titled “Should a Catholic Be President?” Proudly, he submitted it to Kennedy for his prepublication approval. Initially, Jack thought enough of the piece to send it out privately for comment. Some readers were friendly but others included “the most outspoken Protestant critics of Catholic doctrine in the country.” All who were consulted came to the same conclusion: Cushing’s article could only hurt Jack’s chances. They advised killing it immediately.
Kennedy telephoned the cardinal with the bad news. During the conversation, the senator praised the article as one of the best expositions about faith and governance that he had read so far. “But I don’t want to get you involved,” Jack said, putting it in personal terms, as one friend to another. “So forget the whole thing.”
When it came to religion,Kennedy knew he must be more precise with his language, far more than he had been with Look magazine. Increasingly, he relied on influential figures within the Catholic Church who shared a similar outlook to guide him through the linguistic and theological minefields. In this respect, his father’s connections again helped him. As early as 1958, Joe Kennedy consulted with his old friend, the Reverend John J. Cavanaugh, former president of Notre Dame, where Joe also served as a board trustee, “to see if he would prepare some answers to the Protestant interrogation” his son would face. One can imagine Joe Kennedy’s indignant face, strained and seething, as he dictated the word “interrogation.” Instead, Cavanaugh referred him to some of the best minds on the subject. “He suggests it would be a very good idea to get in touch with Reverend John Courtney Murray and Reverend Gustave Weigel at Woodstock,” his father relayed to Jack. “Father Cavanaugh considers these men the top in the United States for answering this type of interrogation.”
Kennedy knew that one more slip might mean a significant loss of support for his candidacy. He and his staff followed Joe’s advice and put together a theological brain trust that included the well-respected Commonweal editor, John Cogley. Officially, the campaign called it their “Community Relations” branch which, as Cogley recalled,“was a euphemistic way of saying ‘the religious issue.’” Cogley represented the quintessential Commonweal Catholic, a brand of liberal American Catholicism that flowered in the darkness of the McCarthy era. He had dabbled in politics—running unsuccessfully for Congress on Long Island in the 1950s—but his thoughtful magazine writ ing garnered the most attention. His critique of Kennedy’s Look magazine comments prompted a friendly response from the senator himself. Soon Cogley became convinced that Kennedy was the Catholic best suited to challenge the old prejudices.“I had had some experience with the suspicion of Catholicism which was around at the time, so I wasn’t exactly optimistic,” he remembered. “But I felt that his particular style and his particular background made him a kind of ideal first candidate.” Kennedy knew that one more slip might mean a significant loss of support for his candidacy.“It is hard for a Harvard man to answer questions in theology,” he whined to Cogley in a self-deprecating way. “I imagine my answers will cause heartburn at Fordham and B.C. [Boston College].” More than anyone, John Courtney Murray—a Jesuit scholar who studied the clash between the American and Roman Catholic traditions—seemed to have trained his whole lifetime for this moment. Since the 1940s, Murray had argued the American experience showed that the marriage of Catholicism with democracy required a separation of church and state—a view that at first got him censured by his Jesuit superiors. In his voluminous writings, Murray suggested the church became mired in affairs of state as a historical accident, made necessary in the Middle Ages because of the vacuum created by the Roman Empire’s collapse. Today’s church, he said, now needed to make the transition from the medieval to the modern. Murray pointed out that Catholics in the United States lived as a minority group and that such a separation had allowed the church to flourish in America.
Aware of the immigrant culture of their church, Cogley, Murray and fellow Jesuit Weigel were committed to seeing Catholics finally take a full part in American society. They not only admired Kennedy personally but shared a collective hope that his election to the presidency might forever shatter a significant cultural barrier. Initially, Joe Kennedy had suggested that his son consult with these religious experts informally. But as the campaign developed, their help and guidance was needed constantly and proved of crucial assistance to Kennedy in the days to come.
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bsp; Chapter Twenty- Four
West Virginia
ON JANUARY 2, 1960, the entire extended family filled the U.S. Senate Caucus Room for John Fitzgerald Kennedy’s announcement. Brothers, sisters, parents and other relatives mixed in among some three hundred friends, supporters and journalists. Jackie Kennedy, appearing radiant, stood beside her husband as he outlined his vision for the presidency.
In his speech, Kennedy, only forty-two years old, spoke of his military experience, his fourteen years in Congress and of the “real issues” facing the American electorate. End the arms race with the Soviets. Rebuild American science and education. Prevent the collapse of the farm economy and the decay of cities. Expand the economy for all Americans. All these issues, as Kennedy recited them with his staccato speaking style, generated strong applause from the friendly crowd. It had the air of a political rally, just as designed. Afterward, Kennedy agreed to answer reporters’ questions. He was asked about the campaign’s biggest issue—religion—which his speech hadn’t addressed at all.
“I would think that there is really only one issue involved in the whole question of a candidate’s religion—that is, does a candidate believe in the Constitution, does he believe in the First Amendment, does he believe in the separation of church and state?” Kennedy said, pausing for the crowd’s enthusiastic response. When the applause died down, Kennedy added another hopeful note: “When the candidate gives his views on that question— and I think that I have given my views fully—I think the subject is exhausted.”
Despite his wishful thinking, the religious issue was far from exhausted. No one understood this better than the Kennedys themselves. In their private plans, Kennedy’s camp acted strategically to maximize the benefits of being the first Catholic in a generation to run for the presidency and to minimize its obvious liabilities. From their polling research, Kennedy’s advisers knew that a Catholic on the national ticket would be a magnet for votes in several key industrial states in the Northeast and the Midwest. A certain level of public anti-Catholic prejudice rallied Catholics to their cause and made Kennedy a sympathetic figure among Protestants who might have otherwise rejected him. Yet, this course was treacherous. If religion became too dominant in the presidential debate, Kennedy would surely lose. In May 1959, Time magazine published a public opinion poll that found evidence of a more tolerant America; voters were generally more moderate about religion, certainly compared to the anti-Catholic sentiments of 1940. However, the poll still underlined the difficulty JFK faced since one of every four respondents wouldn’t vote for a presidential candidate who was Catholic. Even more disquieting, half of those polled by Time didn’t even know that Kennedy was a Catholic. As the 1960 campaign began to heat up—and Kennedy’s religion was repeatedly discussed by the press—the public became more aware of his heritage. Some politicians predicted that polls showing tolerance for Kennedy’s religion might be misleading. Virginia’s junior senator,A.Willis Robertson (whose son, Pat, later built his own evangelical empire on television and ran for president himself), said that some falsely gave the impression of “no prejudice in the South against a Catholic for the presidency,” but he conceded this goodwill might fade away “in the secrecy of the ballot box.”
In the hardball tactics of a presidential campaign, Kennedy also used the “religious issue” as leverage. His announcement made clear his refusal to take second place on a national ticket “under any condition” if he failed to win the presidential nomination. This bold move carried an implied threat. As columnist James Reston wrote, Kennedy’s ultimatum was regarded by many political leaders “as something far more ominous: as a warning to the Democratic leaders not to think they can reject his bid for the Presidency on religious grounds and still retain the backing of his supporters by giving him the Vice-Presidential nomination.” In Reston’s analysis, JFK’s frontrunner status had spawned two movements in the Democratic Party. “One is to block the New Englander lest the anti-Catholic vote hurt the Democratic chances of victory,” he wrote, “and the other is to keep the votes of his supporters by giving him the Vice-Presidential nomination.” Kennedy’s all-or-nothing gambit upped the ante “obliquely and skillfully,” Reston noted. The Democrats risked the defection of a large bloc of Catholic voters if Kennedy was denied the nomination simply because of his religion. In this sense, Kennedy’s flat-out rejection of the vice presidency was not the move of a traditional frontrunner jockeying about within mainstream politics, but rather of a politician from a politically disenfranchised minority group who recognized the often hidden obstacles before him and was attempting a bold stratagem to the top. “Nobody is going to hand me the nomination,” he insisted before the campaign began. “If I were governor of a large state, Protestant and fifty-five, I could sit back and let it come to me.”
Some liberal Democrats also objected to Kennedy’s candidacy, often for reasons that smacked of religious bias. Some issues were quite legitimately in the public realm, including Kennedy’s views on birth control, the appointment of an ambassador to the Vatican and the use of public funds for parochial schools. But most doubts seemed based on fear and stereotypes of the nation’s then 36 million Catholics—what Time magazine wondered aloud about a looming “Catholic America”—and whether Kennedy could resist pressure from the church’s hierarchy. New York’s Liberal Party was so worried that they assigned Protestant theologian Reinhold Niebuhr to question Senator Kennedy “in depth.” Niebuhr reported back that Kennedy’s answers were sufficient to quell fears, at least about this Catholic. “Much of it was open, some of it intelligent, but the bulk of it and the worst of it was an unreasoning, unanswerable bigotry just below the surface,” campaign strategist Ted Sorensen observed. “His religion had played at least a subconscious role in the initial opposition to his candidacy from many liberals and intellectuals.” A classic example of this subtle bigotry appeared in Life magazine under the byline of Archibald MacLeish, one of the nation’s best-known writers. He suggested that Irish Catholics (“who are among the most persistent and politically powerful advocates of increasing censorship in the U.S. and who are brought up to submit to clerical authority in matters which the American tradition reserves to the individual conscience”) didn’t properly understand such American notions as liberty and freedom. He also implied that Catholic schools perpetuated a “historical ignorance and moral obtuseness” that kept students from sharing in the American dream. Such poisonous stylings from a self-professed progressive intellectual left open the door for more crude expressions of the same idea.
On a personal level, Jack Kennedy was stunned to find that such rank prejudice still existed. As Sorensen wrote, Kennedy was “at first startled to learn that many well-meaning, unbigoted Protestants and Jews genuinely feared that his church might tell him how to act on matters of state and might excommunicate him if he refused.”These views were not just shared by over-the-top bigots but by articulate and thoughtful people, those who might otherwise vote for him without reservation. For Kennedy, the continual focus on his religion was often exasperating. Long afterward, Gore Vidal recalled standing beside the senator at a 1959 party when a beautiful young woman began an idle chat with the candidate:
“You’re in politics, aren’t you?”
“Uh . . . well, yes, I am. I’m . . . uh, running for president.”
“That’s so fascinating!” gushed the young woman.“Will you win?”
“Well, it won’t be so easy.”
“Why not?”
“Well, you see, I’m Catholic . . .” Kennedy began.
“But what’s that got to do with anything?”
The candidate turned to Vidal and said,“Oh, Gore, you tell her.”
During the first several weeks of the 1960 presidential campaign, Kennedy’s problem with the “religious issue” only became more difficult. The subtle, whispered comments of the past were now becoming public utterances made from the pulpit and carried in the next day’s newspaper headlines. Kennedy realized he could
no longer just dispel the fears with broad assurances, but that he had to confront the issue head-on. And nowhere was this uneasiness about his Catholicism more apparent than in West Virginia.
WHEN JACK KENNEDY arrived in Cabin Creek in late April 1960, he hopped off his chartered bus and was mobbed immediately by hundreds of school students, many of them bobby-soxers who squealed with delight. Kennedy appeared touched by the youngsters’ warmth in this small coal-mining town in West Virginia. During this campaign swing, Kennedy was genuinely distressed by the misery he witnessed in the nation’s poorest state. In various speeches, he vowed to do something to improve their lives if elected president. Yet a single question continued to nag at Kennedy—his religion. At one stop,Kennedy acknowledged with an ambivalent smile that his Catholicism was becoming “very well known—fortunately or unfortu nately.” On this issue, the disparity between young and old in West Virginia was striking. “The anti-Catholicism that is prevalent among adults in this area had obviously not rubbed off on their children,” the New York Times observed.“They applauded Senator Kennedy’s every reference to his membership in the Roman Catholic Church as no inhibition on his ability to serve as President.”