Posted on 03/07/2012 6:49:19 AM PST by SeekAndFind
John F. Kennedy's famous Houston speech on church and state during the 1960 presidential campaign elicited Rick Santorum's after-the-fact disgust. Though Santorum misrepresents the speech in some ways--Kennedy didn't say anything about limiting religious institutions and leaders from speaking on public issues--he is right to find the speech theologically lame.
In trying to assure Protestant voters that they had nothing to fear in voting for a Catholic as president, JFK stressed that his religious views were "his own private affair." He laid out his vision of a chief executive whose public acts would not be "limited or conditioned by any religious oath, ritual or obligation."
Not limited or conditioned by any religious obligation? In essence, Kennedy was saying that his Catholic faith did not and would not shape anything he might do or think as president.
One imagines that JFK's parish priests and catechism teachers might have heard that claim with some dismay: You mean attending mass all these years hasn't meant anything? Nothing the church says can have any influence on you? JFK's extreme privatization of religion was noted at the time by some Catholic and Protestant observers (including the Century, whose Protestant editors were wrestling with their own deep reservations about electing a Catholic).
Nevertheless, JFK probably correctly assessed the political challenges that faced a Catholic running for president. In the words of historian Mark Massa, Kennedy "had to 'secularize' the American presidency in order to win it."
The religious outsider in this year's race, Mitt Romney, has drawn heavily on JFK's example, trying to keep his faith off limits and suggesting that it's un-American to even raise the issue. In his 2007 speech that tackled the issue head on, Romney replicated JFK's theme of privatization while still celebrating the public benefits of religion in general--something Kennedy didn't feel the need to dwell on.
Massa's account of JFK's Houston speech in a 1997 issue of the Journal of Church and State remains one of the best commentaries on that historical moment and a brilliant account of JFK's role in the privatization of religion.
Meat on Friday is a peripheral issue because it does not touch the issue of life and death.
In this sense, a Catholic President cannot “impose” (for want of a better word) such a rule on others.
Abortion on the other hand is different. It transcends religion and is a constitutional one. In this case, you HAVE TO IMPOSE some sort of morality on someone.
You HAVE TO follow some sort of morality whether it is informed by your religion or not.
If a Catholic President chooses not to use birth control because of the dictates of his religion - good for him. If a Catholic President feels it is his place to lecture us on the evils of contraception - nuts to him, most people don't want to hear it. If a Catholic President feels there is a compelling government interest in regulating or forbidding contraception because his religion teaches it is wrong - that is not consistent with conservatism and the idea of a government of limited and enumerated powers where the citizen is sovereign and we all have freedom of conscience.
It's an urban legend perpetrated by the ignorant that of the discipline abstaining from eating meat on Friday has been rescinded.
Can. 1251 Abstinence from meat, or from some other food as determined by the Episcopal Conference, is to be observed on all Fridays, unless a solemnity should fall on a Friday. Abstinence and fasting are to be observed on Ash Wednesday and Good Friday.
Kennedy’s religion was private affairs, not Catholicism.
Apparently this “ignorant” Archbishop spoke of “reintroducing” the practice - widely abandoned after a relaxing of the prohibition (outlining other methods of observance that could be performed) in 1984.
The term “Episcopal Conference” sailed over your head. I suggest you sit up higher in your chair so reality doesn’t fly so far over grape.
Besides which this is just a distraction from the topic.
A total ban on eating meat on Fridays was rescinded in 1984, in favor of a more ‘relaxed’ standard that other observances could be substituted.
That is the truth, sorry if it upsets you.
Protestants vote Republican they don’t care that their candidates are Catholics.
Catholics vote Democrat, and the Democrat party evidently fears Christianity.
Gingrich is being submitted to a “religious test” ?
I don’t think the JFK criticism will make much waves after one of his female interns published a “tell it all” book about their affair, including the fact he got her an abortion.
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