I wonder what Pope Benedict XVI would have thought of John F Kennedy, the first Catholic president of the United States. Kennedy was a proud defender of the West against Soviet communism, while the new pope has equated the godless materialism of western freedom with Nazi and communist dictatorship. Kennedy’s domestic politics, moreover, were based on a simple, remarkable assertion: “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 … I believe in an America that is officially neither...