by Thomas Maier
In an attempt to defeat Kennedy, religious opponents announced that the biggest distribution of anti-Catholic material would be aimed at the last ten days of the campaign, with sermons and rallies planned for Reformation Sunday, October 30, when Protestant sentiment would be at its height. The Justice Department disclosed a total of 144 producers of anti-Catholic “hate” literature sent through the mails.“I would oppose any Roman Catholic for President—the name doesn’t make a difference,” said Harvey H. Springer, the “cowboy evangelist” based in Colorado, remarkably unabashed in his venom.“Let the Romanists move out of America. . . . Did you see the coronation of Big John [Pope John XXIII]? Let’s hope we never see the coronation of Little John. How many Catholics came over on the Mayflower? Not one. . . . The Constitution is a Protestant Constitution.” Springer extended his warnings about Catholics to Jews and blacks as well. “I’m perfectly willing to admit I’m a bigot,” he boasted.
THE KENNEDYS met this sheer hate with a composed, often courageous stance.“I don’t believe we should have any candidate running, Catholic or Protestant, who doesn’t believe in separation,” insisted Robert Kennedy.“If we did, I would campaign against him.” But this message, honed in West Virginia,wouldn’t receive a full national airing until Jack Kennedy accepted the invitation in Houston.
Before the group of conservative Protestant ministers, Kennedy promised to remain always independent of church pressures.“No power or threat of punishment could cause me” to deviate from the national interest, Kennedy promised during the question period.“But if the time should ever come—I do not concede any conflict to be even remotely possible—when my office would require me to either violate my conscience or violate the national interest, then I would resign the office, and hope any conscientious public servant would do the same.” His aides worried about mentioning a possible resignation over conscience, but most of Kennedy’s brain trust felt it necessary to “unscramble” the public’s doubts, as Cogley put it.
Kennedy said his political affiliation should never be confused with his religious identity. “Contrary to common newspaper usage, I am not the Catholic candidate for President,” he said, with an undertone of annoyance. “I am the Democratic Party’s candidate for President who happens also to be a Catholic.” During another moment in his speech, Kennedy invoked the memory of his dead brother and expropriated some of the same phrases from the Peale group’s statement. “I believe in an America where religious intolerance will someday end,” Kennedy declared. “This is the kind of America I believe in, and this is the kind of America I fought for in the South Pacific, and the kind my brother died for in Europe. No one suggested that we might have a ‘divided loyalty,’ that we did ‘not believe in liberty’ or that we belonged to a disloyal group that threatened the ‘freedoms for which our forefathers died.’”
To many, the Massachusetts senator seemed like a modern-day Sir Thomas More, victimized by his religion but willing to stand up for principle in a composed and reasoned manner. Kennedy’s confrontation with the Houston clergymen convinced doubters that Kennedy had the stuff to be president. Even Kennedy himself conceded that the “controversy” nevertheless had given him unparalleled national attention as well as the admiration and sympathy of many voters.“The curious fact remains that Senator Kennedy has got so far as he has simply because he is a Catholic. It has been his special ‘gimmick,’” observed one London newspaper. “Kennedy’s skillful and aggressive answers satisfied many people or at least induced in them the sort of guilt that made it squalid to bring these questions up.”
KENNEDY’S TRIAL by fire in Texas resonated with the historic struggle of Catholics for acceptance in America. During one question, posed by a clergyman who identified himself as V. E. Howard, a minister of the Church of Christ in Houston,Kennedy was asked for his response to obscure quotations from the Catholic Encyclopedia, an article from the Vatican periodical L’Osservatore Romano and from papal statements about the church’s role in guiding its flock. Kennedy ducked most of the question by professing theological ignorance, yet reasserted his political autonomy from the church.
“Then you do not agree with the Pope on that statement?” Howard interjected.
Kennedy didn’t take the bait. “Gentlemen, now that’s why I wanted to be careful because that statement it seems to me is taken out of context,” the candidate said. “I could not tell you what the Pope meant unless I had the entire article.”
Many of the ministers, at least publicly, approved of Kennedy’s answers. In one sense, they felt they had won by securing an unequivocal promise from Kennedy of no interference from his church. If elected, Kennedy would become America’s “first anti-clerical President,” teased columnist Murray Kempton. But Kempton and other observers also detected that the tide was turning for Kennedy because he was now picking up the support of many Americans who felt “widespread disgust” for the sheer bigotry faced by the Democratic candidate. The Kennedy campaign recognized the dramatic success of the Houston speech and used snippets of it in campaign television commercials. Though he arrived nervous and slightly hoarse, Jack Kennedy had found his “voice” in Houston, with an authoritative, indeed presidential style, that would carry him for the rest of the campaign.
IN NEW YORK, the Catholic Church honors the memory of Al Smith each year with a gala dinner in his name at the Waldorf Astoria, an event held close enough to Election Day so that no mayor, governor or political aspirant would dare not to attend. But in 1960, Jack Kennedy didn’t want to go. He and his aides felt they had sewn up New York politically and didn’t need to remind the rest of the nation of the last fateful time a Catholic had tried to run for the White House. In a campaign where he promised a strict separation of church and state policy,Kennedy didn’t need to be seen at a church fundraiser in the company of Cardinal Spellman and photographed with a bevy of Catholic clergymen. Besides, the family was upset with Spellman for his perceived lack of loyalty. Joe Kennedy’s disappointment in Spellman was so deep that he now sounded like a lifelong anticleric. “As you know, I’ve never been anxious to have anything to do with priests, nuns or any of the hierarchy,” Joe insisted to Galeazzi in Rome, who clearly knew better.“This was driven into me by my father and mother, who always believed that the clergy had their place and the family had their own.” Initially, Galeazzi defended the cardinal, his closest ally in the American hierarchy, and insisted that Spellman’s fondness for the Kennedys hadn’t changed. “Jack is confronted with the tremendous responsibility of being a champion of a fight that goes beyond the borders of his own country,” responded the familiar voice from Rome. Galeazzi’s words, meant to soothe, only added to the sense of betrayal. Things had indeed changed, not only with a new Pope but among the Kennedys themselves.
Politically, Spellman proved an apostate. Though the cardinal had presided over the marriages of some of Kennedy’s siblings (Jack preferred Cushing), the New York potentate adopted a position in 1960 that he considered best for the church rather than for the interests of one family. Spellman believed Richard Nixon would be more flexible to the church’s needs than Jack Kennedy, who was now handcuffed by his own words on the separation of church and state. All the issues pressed by the Catholic hierarchy—funding for parochial schools, a U.S. ambassador at the Vatican, tough stands on communism and sexual morality—would be likely pushed by Nixon. Most American bishops were sympathetic to Kennedy. But as a Vatican official told the New York Times, the view from Rome was that “a Roman Catholic in the White House at this moment might do more harm than good to the Church.”
For Jack Kennedy, the lack of support from his own institutional church was “ironically, the cruelest blow” of the campaign, Sorensen recalled. The cardinal knew that if Kennedy was installed in the American presidency, he would no longer be the most powerful Catholic in the country. By the time of the Al Smith dinner, Spellman had tipped his hand, indicating his preference for Nixon. Jack’s invitation seemed almost perfunctory. “I was shocke
d by his [Spellman’s] attitude in the presidential campaign,” Joe Kennedy later seethed to Galeazzi. “I was shocked at the reception Jack got at the Al Smith dinner, and with many other incidents about which I have written you.” Of all the Kennedys, Jack probably had the least regard for Spellman. The cardinal’s duplicity was most transparent to him, even though Spellman appeared to behave like a loyal family friend when he wrote Kennedy a note during the Democratic Convention that summer:
Dear Jack,
Congratulations on your wonderful victory. I remained up until four fifteen this morning watching the proceedings and shall hear your acceptance speech tomorrow.
I hope you will arrange your speaking program so as to be with us at the Al Smith dinner at the Waldorf the evening of October 19. Vice President Nixon will also speak. I know how happy are your mother and father and brothers and sisters.
Devotedly and prayerfully,
The cardinal’s ruse, the friendly affectations while acting busily behind the scenes to undermine his candidacy, appalled Jack Kennedy. “He never liked Cardinal Spellman,” Bobby later recalled.“All of the conversations that we got back from Spellman were strongly against my brother, and the person who was strongly against Spellman, of course, was Cushing, who was far more liberal.”
After considerable internal debate, however, Kennedy decided to attend the Al Smith dinner, even though he would be surrounded by the cardinal’s courtesans and partisans. He was slated as the last speaker, but threw out half his speech because he was not scheduled to speak until after 11:00 P.M. He was determined not to let his emotions show; his only armament of the evening was his sense of humor, arguably his best weapon.
“Now that Cardinal Spellman has demonstrated the proper spirit, I assume that shortly I will be invited to a Quaker dinner honoring Herbert Hoover,” he began, drawing a titter from the crowd. With a wry smile, Kennedy gazed upon the assembled politicians, including the governor of New York, Nelson Rockefeller. “Cardinal Spellman is the only man so widely respected in American politics that he could bring together amicably, at the same banquet table, for the first time in this campaign, two political leaders who are increasingly apprehensive about the November election—who have eyed each other suspiciously and who have disagreed so strongly, both publicly and privately—Vice President Nixon and Governor Rockefeller,” he quipped, which brought about a healthy round of laughter. To this crowd of twenty-five hundred people, it seemed that Kennedy surely wouldn’t make this jest unless he was in the cardinal’s good graces.
With the same light touch, Kennedy poked fun at Nixon, at the various charges leveled during the campaign and even at himself. When confronted with the inanity and hypocrisies of political life, Jack Kennedy could signal to the crowd, without condescension or undue cynicism, that he was in on the joke.“On this matter of experience,” he added, referring to a Republican criticism of himself, “I had announced earlier this year that if successful I would not consider campaign contributions as a substitute for experience in appointing ambassadors. Ever since I made that statement, I have not received one single cent from my father.”
Looming over the whole evening was the religious issue—the great unknown wild card of the 1960 campaign—which he handled gracefully, ever aware of the historical ironies in appearing at this dinner. During his speech, Kennedy spoke somberly of a presidential candidate who suffered a humiliating defeat, carried only a few states and lost even his own.
“You all know his name and his religion,” Kennedy said, pausing properly for effect, “Alfred M. Landon, Protestant. ”
The crowd erupted in laughter. For his closer, Kennedy made a gentle reference to the attacks on President Truman, who, in salty language, had condemned Republicans by saying they should go to hell for stirring up emotions over religion. Then Jack looked down at a slip of paper, a note that he told the crowd he had sent to Truman. “Dear Mr. President,” he read, “I have noted with interest your suggestion as to where those who vote for my opponent should go. While I understand and sympathize with your deep motivation, I think it is important that our side try to refrain from raising the religious issue.”
Kennedy sat down at the dais to laughter and applause. The night crackled with energy and tension. Even though the religious issue could explode in front of him, Kennedy employed his wit and a cool, breezy delivery that allowed him to emerge a winner that night. When he left the building, he still marveled at Spellman’s duplicity. “It undoubtedly goes to show that, when the chips are down, money counts more than religion,” he later commented to Arthur Schlesinger. Publicly, Kennedy didn’t appear to let crude snubs and subtle insults about his religion bother him. Each question had to be carefully considered, each answer weighed and either replied to with precision or defused with a humorous comment. In Los Angeles, when a reporter slipped and asked whether a Protestant could be elected president, Jack jumped like a big cat with his punch line. “If this Protestant candidate is willing to submit to questions on his views concerning the separation of church and state, I don’t see why we should discriminate against him,” Kennedy replied.
While being driven through Manhattan, Kennedy was chatting with Time reporter Hugh Sidey when their limousine passed St. Patrick’s Cathedral. As Sidey recalled decades later,Kennedy was “suddenly seized by the inner imp,” and, grinning widely, saluted the massive gothic spires of the Catholic church. Then with mock horror, realizing how he’d just confirmed the nightmares of so many, he yelled at the reporter:“That’s off the record!” And one Sunday morning, at a parish in Anchorage, Alaska, aide Dave Powers reminded the candidate of the old Irish tradition that three wishes are granted to those who visit a church for the first time.
“New York, Pennsylvania and Texas,” Kennedy whispered.
FOR ALL HIS HUMOR and charm, Jack Kennedy could be quite threatening to much of America. His candidacy marked a dividing line between where the country had been and where it was headed. On television during the campaign, Kennedy made a conscientious effort to be as comforting and commonsensical as possible. Yet there was no denying his separate status in the eyes of Protestant America. Kennedy represented change—a switch in stewardship from those whose forebears founded the republic and into the hands of those immigrants who arrived generations later to take advantage of the liberties and opportunities of America. The nation would no longer be just theirs if he won. Some Protestant churches, notably the Presbyterian Church, took no official position in the election, as did so many Lutheran and Methodist congregations. But the Southern Baptist Convention, the nation’s second largest Protestant denomination, declared that “when a public official is inescapably bound by the dogma and the demands of his church, he cannot consistently separate himself from these.” Kennedy’s challenge to this land of old-time religion was more than a test of whether he could keep the pontiff at bay. His candidacy suggested a decline in the WASP hegemony, a loss of grip in their society. As Arthur Moore, an editor of a Methodist monthly, observed: “Southern Baptists feel beleaguered— integration, mechanization, urbanization are destroying the world they knew and, since it was an intensely Protestant world, it is quite easy to tie anti-Catholicism in with their bewilderment and fear.” Moore noted that far more alarm bells and apocalyptic warnings were issued by the evangelical side of American Protestantism than from its more historic “mainstream” churches.
Kennedy’s run for the presidency revived anti-Catholicism in the United States to an extent that many found startling and profoundly disturbing. “Anti-Catholicism, whether of ‘the educated’ or without the B.A., receives its major thrust today because it answers an acute need in American Protestantism,” wrote Franklin H. Littell of the Chicago Theological Seminary during the campaign.“And many otherwise decent and genuinely good men—pastors, college presidents, superintendents and bishops, men among whom an anti-Semite is virtually unknown—will unabashedly lend their names to anti-Catholic programs of the most vicious and depraved sort.” Kennedy’s
challenge also forced many fair-minded Protestants to recognize that their dominance over America’s culture—what some sociologists called the civil religion or the national faith—would be no longer exclusive or absolute. Spiritual themes and conventions evoked by the Founding Fathers in creating the political institutions of the country were unmistakably Protestant. After decades of immigration, however, the country was far more diverse. Kennedy’s money, education and aspiration for power underlined how much things had changed for mainstream Protestants. In a sense, the Irish Catholic from Boston represented every minority group in the country looking for a share in the American pantheon of fame and legitimacy.
AS ELECTION DAY NEARED, some Catholics still resented Kennedy’s effort to explain himself and his religion. The Jesuit magazine, America, said it was humiliating to watch Kennedy “appease” anti-Catholic bigots. After spending late summer in the South of France, Joe Kennedy couldn’t believe how much the religion issue still held center stage. “I came home to find the campaign not between a Democrat and a Republican but between a Catholic and a Protestant,” he wrote to his friend, Lord Max Beaverbrook, the British press baron.“We can lick it now. But with the Baptist ministers working in every pulpit every Sunday, it is going to be tough.”