U. S. presidential
candidate John F. Kennedy's speech on September 12, 1960, to the
Greater Houston Ministerial Association on his Catholicism:
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, until it now festers 90 miles
off the coast of Florida — the humiliating treatment of our president
and vice president by those who no longer respect our power — the hungry
children I saw in West Virginia, the old people who cannot pay their
doctor bills, the families forced to give up their farms — an America
with too many slums, with too few schools, and too late to the moon and
outer space.
These are the real issues which should
decide this campaign. And they are not religious issues — for war and
hunger and ignorance and despair know no religious barriers.
But because I am a Catholic, and no
Catholic has ever 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 — where
no church or church school is granted any public funds or political
preference — and where no man is denied public office merely because his
religion differs from the president who might appoint him or the people
who might elect him.
I believe in an America that is
officially neither Catholic, Protestant nor Jewish — where no public
official either requests or accepts instructions on public policy from the
Pope, the National Council of Churches or any other ecclesiastical source
— where no religious body seeks to impose its will directly or
indirectly upon the general populace or the public acts of its officials
— and where religious liberty is so indivisible that an act against one
church is treated as an act against all.
For while this year it may be a Catholic
against whom the finger of suspicion is pointed, in other years it has
been, and may someday be again, a Jew — or a Quaker — or a Unitarian
— or a Baptist. t was Virginia's harassment of Baptist preachers,
for example, that helped lead to Jefferson's statute of religious freedom.
Today I may be the victim — but tomorrow it may be you — until the
whole fabric of our harmonious society is ripped at a time of great
national peril.
Finally, I believe in an America where
religious intolerance will someday end — where all men and all churches
are treated as equal — where every man has the same right to attend or
not attend the church of his choice — where there is no Catholic vote,
no anti-Catholic vote, no bloc voting of any kind — and where Catholics,
Protestants and Jews, at both the lay and pastoral level, will refrain
from those attitudes of disdain and division which have so often marred
their works in the past, and promote instead the American ideal of
brotherhood.
That is the kind of America in which I
believe. And it represents the kind of presidency in which I believe — a
great office that must neither be humbled by making it the instrument of
any one religious group nor tarnished by arbitrarily withholding its
occupancy from the members of any one religious group. I believe in a
president whose religious views are his own private affair, neither
imposed by him upon the nation or imposed by the nation upon him as a
condition to holding that office.
I would not look with favor upon a
president working to subvert the First Amendment's guarantees of religious
liberty. Nor would our system of checks and balances permit him to do so
— and neither do I look with favor upon those who would work to subvert
Article VI of the Constitution by requiring a religious test — even by
indirection — for it. If they disagree with that safeguard they should
be out openly working to repeal it.
I want a chief executive whose public
acts are responsible to all groups and obligated to none — who can
attend any ceremony, service or dinner his office may appropriately
require of him — and whose fulfillment of his presidential oath is not
limited or conditioned by any religious oath, ritual or obligation.
This is the kind of America I believe in
— and this is the kind I fought for in the South Pacific, and the kind
my brother died for in Europe. No one suggested then that we may 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."
And in fact this is the kind of America
for which our forefathers died — when they fled here to escape religious
test oaths that denied office to members of less favored churches — when
they fought for the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, and the Virginia
Statute of Religious Freedom — and when they fought at the shrine I
visited today, the Alamo. For side by side with Bowie and Crockett died
McCafferty and Bailey and Carey — but no one knows whether they were
Catholic or not. For there was no religious test at the Alamo.
I ask you tonight to follow in that
tradition — to judge me on the basis of my record of 14 years in
Congress — on my declared stands against an ambassador to the Vatican,
against unconstitutional aid to parochial schools, and against any boycott
of the public schools (which I have attended myself) — instead of
judging me on the basis of these pamphlets and publications we all have
seen that carefully select quotations out of context from the statements
of Catholic Church leaders, usually in other countries, frequently in
other centuries, and always omitting, of course, the statement of the
American bishops in 1948 which strongly endorsed church-state separation,
and which more nearly reflects the views of almost every American
Catholic.
I do not consider these other quotations
binding upon my public acts — why should you? But let me say, with
respect to other countries, that I am wholly opposed to the state being
used by any religious group, Catholic or Protestant, to compel, prohibit,
or persecute the free exercise of any other religion. And I hope that you
and I condemn with equal fervor those nations which deny their presidency
to Protestants and those which deny it to Catholics. And rather than cite
the misdeeds of those who differ, I would cite the record of the Catholic
Church in such nations as Ireland and France — and the independence of
such statesmen as Adenauer and de Gaulle.
But let me stress again that these are
my views — for contrary to common newspaper usage, I am not the Catholic
candidate for president. I am the Democratic Party's candidate for
president who happens also to be a Catholic. I do not speak for my church
on public matters — and the church does not speak for me.
Whatever issue may come before me as
president — on birth control, divorce, censorship, gambling or any other
subject — I will make my decision in accordance with these views, in
accordance with what my conscience tells me to be the national interest,
and without regard to outside religious pressures or dictates. And no
power or threat of punishment could cause me to decide otherwise.
But if the time should ever come — and
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 I hope any
conscientious public servant would do the same.
But I do not intend to apologize for
these views to my critics of either Catholic or Protestant faith — nor
do I intend to disavow either my views or my church in order to win this
election.
If I should lose on the real issues, I
shall return to my seat in the Senate, satisfied that I had tried my best
and was fairly judged. But if this election is decided on the basis that
40 million Americans lost their chance of being president on the day they
were baptized, then it is the whole nation that will be the loser, in the
eyes of Catholics and non-Catholics around the world, in the eyes of
history, and in the eyes of our own people.
But if, on the other hand, I should win
the election, then I shall devote every effort of mind and spirit to
fulfilling the oath of the presidency — practically identical, I might
add, to the oath I have taken for 14 years in the Congress. For without
reservation, I can 'solemnly swear that I will faithfully execute the
office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my
ability preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution . . . so help me
God.'
Source: John F. Kennedy
Presidential Library and Museum
John F. Kennedy Library and Museum
John Kennedy, Bobby Kennedy, Ted Kennedy
