The Making of a Catholic President: Kennedy vs. Nixon 1960
By Shaun A. Casey. Oxford University Press (New York, 2009). 261 pp., $27.95.

The United States broke ground in 2008 as Barack Obama was elected the first African-American president, with race being virtually a nonexistent issue after his nomination by the Democrats.

Almost 50 years earlier, though, prejudice was a major issue when another breakthrough was logged: the 1960 election of Democrat John Fitzgerald Kennedy as the first Catholic president. Kennedy's Catholicism became an issue that punctuated the campaign with highly pejorative exclamation points.

A well-organized and well-financed campaign by some Protestant groups acrimoniously questioned whether his very religion disqualified him from high office. In rhetoric often crossing the line into religious bigotry, they said that the Catholic Church wanted to erase the separation of church and state and that Kennedy would be obliged to follow the orders of the pope and the U.S. hierarchy once elected.

How Kennedy fought this and eked out a narrow victory over the Republican nominee, Vice President Richard M. Nixon, is the focus of "The Making of a Catholic President" by Shaun A. Casey, an Obama campaign religious affairs adviser and associate professor of Christian ethics at Wesley Theological Seminary in Washington.

The book also is a timely reminder that, even in a country where religious freedom is a constitutional right and no religious test for office exists, religion can be manipulated for political purposes. It gives historical perspective on the use of religion and moral codes as a political weapon, especially to people trying to understand the rise of the religious right in the United States.

Today, the religious right cuts across denominational lines, united by an ideology joining broad swatches of evangelical Christians and conservative Catholics. In 1960, the dividing line was strictly denominational.

Casey, with meticulous detail, chronicles the public debate over Catholicism and the behind-the-scenes jockeying by Kennedy and Nixon. Nixon did not publicly raise Kennedy's Catholicism but privately funded Protestant groups airing the view that Kennedy's Catholicism disqualified him from the presidency.

Kennedy knew of Nixon's behind-the-scenes support but said nothing publicly, fearing it would be counterproductive and only magnify the religion issue.

Kennedy tried a variety of parries. At first, he did not raise the issue, discussing it publicly only if asked. He emphasized his public record of 14 years in Congress as a representative and senator, saying this showed he had not bowed to the Catholic hierarchy and noting that his oaths of office to Congress were similar to the one he would take as president to defend the Constitution. Finally, Kennedy did some hair-splitting, saying that as a Catholic he was subject to the hierarchy on issues of faith and morals, but not on public policy. He even said he would resign the presidency if his official actions would come into conflict with his conscience.

The 1960 controversy seems almost silly today when Catholic bishops can't even get many Catholic politicians to follow church teachings on policy issues, especially on legalized abortion. This young century has even seen some bishops vow to deny Communion to Catholic politicians favoring legalized abortion.

In comparison, the specific policy issues drawing 1960 Protestant ire included fear that Kennedy would establish diplomatic relations with the Vatican, support federal funding of Catholic schools and oppose artificial-birth-control information in U.S. foreign aid programs.

They seem rather insipid when compared to today's incendiary moral-political issues of abortion, embryonic stem-cell research and same-sex marriage.

Anti-Kennedy forces also raised the issue of "mental reservation," a Catholic teaching that says a person can morally lie if it serves a greater good such as to save lives. They said that by using "mental reservation" Kennedy could oppose a pro-Catholic agenda as a candidate but do the opposite once in office.

One wonders if with this argument anti-Catholic bigotry did not cross the line into self-parody. By 1960 there was already a long history of politicians, regardless of their religion, saying one thing to get elected and then doing another to stay in office. Catholic politicians, at least, had a name for this.

---CNS

August Bono, a retired Catholic News Service staff writer and a former Rome bureau chief, was a freshman at Marquette University in Milwaukee during the 1960 presidential campaign.