by Thomas Maier
Tensions in the Kennedy family also reflected another dramatic change in the realm of sex—the role of women. Despite the considerable reforms already afoot, from Vatican II to the rising tide of feminism, most American Catholic women were still relegated to secondary status and often treated as either mother-Madonna figures or as male playthings. Kennedy women were no exception. Camelot was a near-exclusive male domain. None of the president’s inner circle of advisers was female. In many respects, the all-male Irish Mafia of Kennedy’s White House reflected the old Irish Catholic delineation between the sexes in public settings. The church’s attempt to exert control over the lives and independence of Catholic women was particularly illustrated when Camelot’s widowed queen announced she wanted to remarry.
IN OCTOBER 1968, Jackie made her intentions known regarding Aristotle Onassis, the Greek shipping tycoon, an older, gnarly multimillionaire, two inches shorter than Jackie and nearly twice her age. For several months, she discreetly dated Onassis but deferred to Bobby Kennedy’s request that she not make any nuptial plans during the 1968 presidential campaign. He realized the impact this marriage would have on American public opinion and didn’t want it to hurt his chances. After Bobby’s assassination, Jackie determined that America, with its random violence that had shattered her life, was no place fit for her children (“If they’re killing Kennedys, my kids are number-one targets”) and announced her intent to marry Onassis and live in Greece. She seemed to be pulling the curtain down on the Camelot era, a myth she had created but no longer appeared willing to maintain. Summing up the view from the United States, the New York Times headlined: “The Reaction Here Is Anger, Shock and Dismay.” The news shook Rome as well. The Vatican’s press spokesman, Monsignor Fausto Vallainc, said the church had determined that Jackie “knowingly violated the laws of the church” with her marriage to Onassis and had thereby become ineligible to receive the sacraments, including Holy Communion. Rumors spread that Jackie now faced excommunication.
Appalled by the furor, Cardinal Cushing defended the former first lady as an act of conscience and out of loyalty to her dead husband. Before her wedding, Jackie sought Cushing’s advice in Boston. During a highly emotional two-hour session at the cardinal’s residence, he assured her that Caroline and John Jr. would remain Catholics and expressed confidence that some arrangement could be made for her to remarry. It sounded like something Joe Kennedy might say if he could. To comply with the church’s rules, Onassis, a non-Catholic, sought his own annulment from a previous marriage. He contacted the Vatican’s Sacred Rota, the church’s supreme board deciding on such marital matters, but to no avail. The Vatican was clearly displeased. Cushing, the most high-profile progressive within the American hierarchy, discounted Rome’s concerns. In a talk before his fellow Boston Catholics, the cardinal strongly supported Jackie’s decision to marry. “This idea of saying that she’s excommunicated, that she’s a public sinner—what a lot of rubbish,” he scoffed.“Only God knows who is a sinner and who is not. Why can’t she marry whomever she wants?”
But a few days later, a church spokesman in Rome insisted that Jackie remained “in an irregular position” with the church and, with a swipe at Cushing, replied that “the cardinal certainly must have advised her of this.” The Vatican City weekly, L’Osservatore della Domenica, again condemned her as a public sinner who had effectively walked away from the Catholic Church. Cushing was so embittered by the angry response against the former first lady—not only from the Vatican but in letters and remarks from many fellow Catholics—that he announced his resignation as Boston’s cardinal. “There are a lot of people who hate the Kennedys,” Cushing said. “They hated the grandfather, they hated the father, they hated the son, they hate the girls, and now they’re picking on me.” His resignation lasted for two weeks until he reconsidered.
THIS HIGH-PROFILE dispute illustrated the deeper divisions within the American church, particularly on matters relating to sex. The liberalism of Pope John XXIII was proving to be short-lived. The windows of change he once threw open were being closed again by the Curia and his more con servative successors in the papacy. Nowhere were these schisms more stark, more apparent than on the subject of birth control. For his part, Cushing indicated his willingness to help the church reconsider some of its teachings on this vexing issue, just as he’d done himself. During the 1940s, Cushing staunchly opposed the repeal of an 1879 Massachusetts law prohibiting birth control information. He railed against “birth controllers, abortioners and mercy killers.” But by the 1960s, various factors prompted Cushing to modify his position.
At Harvard Medical School, a Catholic physician named Dr. John Rock, a fertility and birth control expert, wrote an influential book on the newly developed birth control pill and the morality of using artificial contraception. Cushing cautioned that the book didn’t bear the church’s imprimatur, but it clearly affected his thinking. His friendship with the liberal-minded Kennedys, and the prevailing view of theologians advocating a separation of church and state, convinced him that preventing birth control in a pluralistic society was wrong, even if Catholics were against it. This time, Boston’s archdiocese didn’t stand in the way when Massachusetts repealed its law preventing birth control information. Cushing expressed confidence that scientists and doctors like Rock might find a way for Catholics to use a reliable method of birth control acceptable to the Vatican. “The church’s idea is that birth control through artificial means is contrary to nature . . . but I am convinced that through more and more research, especially along the lines of the rhythm theory, they will come up with a non-artificial way of controlling births,” he predicted.“My sympathy does go out to those people who are having problems with large families and who are worried sick about the church’s teaching.” In the mid-1960s, Cushing expressed hope that another session of Vatican II and a papal commission studying birth control would more accurately reflect the everyday sexual life of married Catholic couples, he said.
But Cushing remained in the minority, as the church conservatives asserted themselves. Pope Paul VI’s 1968 encyclical on birth control, Humanae Vitae, caused an uproar in the United States and left many faithful adherents embittered. After years of American wishful thinking that the hierarchy might change its position, Paul firmly rejected an advisory committee’s recommendation to loosen the constraints on artificial birth control. Only the natural, almost primitive rhythm method of birth control— what critics called “Vatican roulette”—would be tolerated by Rome. In the confessional, ascetic priests faced their own moral crises as they commiserated with married working-class Catholic couples who didn’t want to lose their eternal souls but cried out that they couldn’t afford any more children. The number of ordinations, which climbed after World War II, fell precipitously after this encyclical and has yet to recover.
After generations of faithful compliance to the church’s teaching, many Catholics found themselves directly at odds with the Pope on perhaps the most important decision of their lives—the creation of a family. Though not a central tenet of the faith, the church’s ban on artificial birth control underlined the Pope’s authority, establishing a certain cynicism within the flock. A Harris poll taken in 1967 showed that one in every three Catholics relied on birth control pills, condoms or other artificial devices. Rather than create honest dialogue, however, the Pope’s decree compounded the church’s sexual duplicity. The opposition thundered loudly in the United States. “The subsequent attack of over six-hundred American theologians on the papal position represented a coup de grace not only to the rationale for the ‘Church’s teaching’ on contraception but for the clarity of faith in infallibility,” observed sociologist William A. Osborne two years later in a book published by Notre Dame.
Regarding sexual concerns, the Kennedy brothers usually acted as social moderates, at least compared to their fellow Democrats. Before the 1960 presidential campaign, Jack Kennedy endured a gauntlet of questions about the birth control issue and whether h
e could live up to his responsibilities as president and a practicing Catholic. Columnist James Reston conducted a thorough vetting in print of the candidate on this issue. Kennedy’s early stance—against linking birth control programs to U.S. foreign aid—was dismissed by the New Republic and other critics as a sign of the church’s sway over his thinking. Well aware of the Catholic vote and its importance to his electoral success, Jack Kennedy remained careful not to offend the church’s hierarchy. As president, however, Kennedy “quietly but extensively” increased government support for birth control to other nations if they requested it, Sorensen later pointed out. A presidential commission on the status of women, initiated by Kennedy, eventually called in 1968 for repeal of restrictive abortion laws. Yet in his own lifetime, Jack didn’t face the far more divisive issue of abortion as his brothers would.
IN EARLY 1967, Robert Kennedy was evasive and noncommittal about whether to liberalize New York State’s abortion laws. Some liberal Catholic lay leaders pushed the junior senator to endorse the pending abortion bill in the state legislature, just as they had done successfully in overhauling the state’s divorce laws. But that year, Bobby struggled and dodged the moral questions surrounding abortion. In January, a Kennedy spokesman told the press that Bobby wanted to study the proposed abortion legislation and “that even then he might not make a public statement.” A month later, inside the gymnasium at Syosset High School in suburban Long Island, Kennedy blurted out his view in front of a group of inquiring students.
“Being a Catholic, what are your feelings on the current proposals to liberalize and update the abortion laws?” asked Martin Friedlander, a senior at Syosset High.
Kennedy appeared perplexed. “Being a Catholic?” he repeated.
“Well, being a Senator,” the student amended.
The question clearly hit a vulnerable spot.
“Being a Senator or being a Catholic?” Kennedy mused.
“Being a Senator—a Senator who is Catholic,” Friedlander replied persistently.
Playing to the crowd, Kennedy drew a laugh when he echoed aloud “a Senator who is Catholic,” as if he needed to mull it over. Then he repeated the same separation of church and state position articulated by his brother in 1960, adding that “I try to make my judgment in these matters not based upon religion but upon how I believe as a Senator.” Finally, after weeks of evasion, he decided the question was worthy of a response.
“I think there are obvious changes that have to be made,” Kennedy said, claiming he hadn’t yet studied the details of the state bill, which was outside his realm as a U.S. senator. “But I think changes could certainly be made.” He said nothing more on the subject. When another Syosset student tried again to raise the issue, he said he’d already given his answer.
ABORTION HAD BEEN a crime in New York since 1883, permitted only if necessary to save a pregnant woman’s life. The new bill proposed by state Assemblyman Al Blumenthal, a Kennedy supporter, extended the ability of a doctor to terminate a pregnancy when it posed a substantial risk to a woman’s physical or mental health or of the birth of a “defective” child. The new law also would allow any unwed girl under age fifteen to get an abortion as well as victims of rape or incest. The original version of this bill wound up sidetracked in committee, but another version of the legislation passed in 1970.Two years later, under pressure from the Catholic Church and other abortion opponents, the state legislature voted to repeal the abortion reform. It was kept in place with a veto from Governor Nelson Rockefeller, a liberal Republican. But abortion continued to loom as a political minefield for decades.
In 1967, Bobby Kennedy wasn’t alone in his chariness. Politicians who were Roman Catholics remained wary of taking the lead on an emotionally charged issue so clearly opposed by their church hierarchy. When the state legislature first considered it, a pastoral letter condemning the bill as “a new slaughter of the innocents” was read at Sunday Masses. A statewide group called the Right to Life committee, composed of many members recruited from Catholic churches and organizations, was formed to fight the bill. It became a precursor of the National Right to Life effort, which expanded greatly in coming years as the abortion debate spread across the nation.
For American Catholics, the abortion debate marked a political turning point. Cardinal Spellman’s era of dominating New York politics was nearing its end, and increasing numbers of college-educated Catholics were demanding changes in all walks of life, including human sexuality. At the same time, many culturally conservative Catholics felt uneasy about legislating away the consequences of sex. They genuinely believed abortion to be murder. As this debate intensified, new political alliances would be formed and the broad bloc of Catholic voters that Democrat Jack Kennedy enjoyed in his 1960 march toward the presidency would be slowly, inexorably pulled apart.
The moral uncertainty could be found in the public opinion surveys of that time. Often, the abortion debate illustrated the dichotomy, the sexual artifice inherent in Catholic life. Despite the church’s condemnation of abortions and their being largely illegal in the United States, medical experts estimated that about a million abortions were performed each year nationwide. Of the one hundred thousand in New York State,women were Catholic in equal proportion to other religious groups. Yet not all Catholic women, including those in the Kennedy family, were in favor of abortion reform. Early in the debate, Eunice Shriver expressed her concerns about the New York proposal. A long-time advocate for handicapped children, Eunice argued that legalizing abortion to prevent mental retardation would give medicine an unwarranted license to decide who should live or die in a “hard society.” In the tradition of many Catholic social institutions, she felt society would be better served by encouraging unwed mothers to deliver their babies and perhaps give them to adoptive parents. Privately, Ethel Kennedy shared similar qualms about abortion and later described herself as a “friend of the fetus.”
For Bobby, the need to articulate a public position on abortion became unavoidable. After his brief comments on Long Island, he expounded on his views at Skidmore College in Sarasota Springs, only to be confronted by a priest. In answering a female student’s question,Kennedy said he wanted to see the current statute changed. “For example, if a lady is attacked and doesn’t want to have a child, she should not have to have a child,” he said.
Father Joseph F. DiMaggio had brought along sixty students from his moral ethics class at nearby St. Peter’s Academy. Standing on the side of the college auditorium, he listened intently and then raised his hand to challenge the senator.
“To me, it seems you believe in some kind of doctrine wherein the end justifies the means,” decried DiMaggio. “Wouldn’t we lose respect for human life?”
Kennedy wouldn’t have it.“If the question is—‘Does the end justify the means?’—the answer is no,” he insisted.
An uneasy ripple moved across the crowd of more than eight hundred, with sighs of exasperation and discontent directed toward the priest. Yet he persisted in making his point.
“True, we have sympathy for the woman attacked,” the priest said, “but isn’t there some question whether human life might be involved and whether the ends justifies the means?”
There was no point pursuing things further. “I think I answered your question, Father,”Kennedy replied, politely and without contempt.“I don’t think there is anything to be gained by continuing this discussion.”
Outside the auditorium, DiMaggio said he liked Kennedy personally but, like many Catholics, didn’t agree with his stand on abortion.“To favor abortion means you are willing to kill life,” DiMaggio said. “It’s definitely not the teaching of the church.”
IN THE FAIRY-TALE world of Camelot politics—not even in the “psycho-biographies” of his detractors—Jack Kennedy rarely appeared to worry about the truth or consequences of sex. The Roman Catholic Church was often an unabashed, albeit unofficial, ally for his ambitions and a compliant keeper of his secrets. To many established Cath
olics, Camelot was encased in fond memories, part of the climb out of the old ethnic neighborhoods of the past.“It may be hard to remember the impetus that Kennedy gave to a sense of Catholic ‘arrival’ in America,” observed theologian Richard John Neuhaus after so many of JFK’s transgressions were exposed.“Despite subsequent revelations about his private life (news photographers at the time, for example, agreed not to publish pictures of him smoking cigarettes), the Kennedy myth remains the forceful statement of Catholics having made it in America.”
But by the 1970s, the Roman Catholic hierarchy was no longer enamoured with the Kennedy family or its politics. Many practicing Catholics felt increasingly alienated by the Kennedys, and they, too, seemed disillusioned by the rightward drift of their onetime followers. The Camelot myth remained strong in the minds of Americans, but it became a strangely secular one, no longer endorsed by churchmen such as Cushing but propagated by the media. For Jack’s survivors, particularly his youngest brother, American society’s obsessions with sex cast Camelot in an uncomfortable light, and gradually changed its meaning. Camelot came to signify the glories of a lost era, the blinding light of celebrity and having sex with other celebrities or sycophants. Rather than a high-minded call to public service, as Jacqueline Kennedy said she had intended, Camelot became a parable about excess and its consequences.
Slowly, Camelot transformed into a morality tale about cruel fate, repeated over and over, for a family affixed with a supposed curse. Untimely death and tragedy, rather than inappropriate sex, became the media’s driving narrative, its new focus of attention. Even though their religion rejected such notions, “the Kennedy curse” became a popular refrain—a theme mentioned so often that even some family members seemed to believe it. In early family histories, the deaths of Joseph Kennedy Jr. and Kathleen Kennedy were usually described as unfortunate accidents, caused by war or weather; the assassinations of Jack and Bobby as the deeds of madmen rather than the vengeful acts of God. Yet the sense of a tragic fate brewing, the looming presence of a Kennedy curse, could be found as early as 1964, when a plane carrying Ted crashed, leaving him severely injured and killing others, including the aircraft’s pilot.“I guess the only reason we’ve survived is that there are more of us than there is trouble,” Bobby remarked. Rather than being the luckiest family in Boston, they seemed like the most unfortunate, as if they were being punished for something. After too many funerals, Cardinal Cushing admitted “the Kennedy family has had more tragic deaths and more family troubles than any family of my acquaintance.”