[John F.]Kennedy earned the acceptance of the American political establishment not by celebrating his faith and proudly wearing it in his role as the country’s first Catholic president, but by shedding it and promising all who would listen that neither the faith nor its bishops would have any bearing on his presidency.
In his 1960 speech, Kennedy dreamed of an America “where there is no Catholic vote,” and with the help of the bishops he helped achieve this. Thereafter there would be no sizeable Catholic vote. It splintered after the public endorsement of his secularism by most of the bishops.
“A little more than 60 years later, a second Catholic president sits in the White House,” Tumulty wrote in the Post, “and the church’s American bishops appear to have forgotten what it took for one of their own to get there.”
Or maybe they didn’t forget what it took to get there. And maybe as they consider the long-declining influence of God and morality in American public life, and the rising anti-Catholicism that has come with it, they’ll discard the secular myth of Kennedy’s speech and instead address their predecessors’ terrible mistake head on. Fortunately, they appear poised to do just that.
It wouldn’t be the first time. The church has been grievously wounded from both inside the church and from without it over and again in history, but by God’s grace, “the gates of Hell will not overpower it.”
The Great Lie About John F. Kennedy, The Bishops, And The American Catholic Church
Put not your faith in princes