Kathy Lopez over at the National Catholic Register notes the controversy swirling over Sarah Palin’s critique of Kennedy’s stance on faith and politics:
One of the more unhinged criticisms of Sarah Palin flirts with accusing her of anti-Catholicism. “Is Sarah Palin anti-Catholic after attacks on JFK, Nancy Pelosi’s religious beliefs?” a writer for the Irish Voice asked by way of critiquing Palin’s new book, America by Heart: Reflections on Family, Faith, and Flag.
Instead of grief, the former vice-presidential nominee and governor of Alaska deserves some credit for legitimately taking on a sacred cow of American civil religious history: John F. Kennedy speaking to the Greater Houston Ministerial Association on Sept. 12, 1960.
“In the best American tradition, he nobly defended religious tolerance and condemned official governmental preference of any faith over any other,” Palin writes. “But his language was more defensive than is portrayed today, in tone and content. Instead of telling the country how his faith has enriched him, he dismissed it as a private matter meaningful only to him.” She adds, “Rather than spelling out how faith groups had provided life-changing services and education to millions of Americans, he repeatedly objected to any government assistance to religious schools.”…
As Lopez notes, Kennedy was under great pressure – as the first Catholic with a credible chance to become President, Kennedy had to address the lingering anti-Catholic sentiment in the American electorate (as an aside, that sentiment has shifted away from its old, Protestant roots and become almost entirely a secularist, leftist thing). But the manner in which Kennedy did it was to essentially hold that his Catholicism would play no role in his policies. This is the sort of thing to please a liberal – as well as an excellent dodge for a someone who wants Catholic votes but doesn’t want to live his life as a Catholic. In other words, it was in its effect cowardly and calculated. Palin is correct in her criticism – in the end, Kennedy did a disservice both to State and religion.
Checking our beliefs at the door is a negation of the American ideal. We are to bring what we are to the public square and debate it with our fellow Americans of all different views and then, God willing, we’ll enact some sort of compromise which will do the best it can to reconcile the opposing view points. We can’t have in this system, if it is to work, people who will say one thing and then do another – this is called, in more blunt times, dishonesty. If I say I’m Catholic then you should have a reasonable expectation that at voting time I’m going to adhere to Catholicism – this may, at election time, make you more likely to support me or to oppose me, depending on your views of the worth of Catholic teaching…but regardless of what side you are on, you have every right to expect that I will be honest and true with you.
Flipping around between sides or ditching core beliefs in the name of political expediency – that is what plagues America. Even you liberals out there have felt it – and who among us would seriously argue that we want our leaders to just do whatever it takes to get re-elected? No, we want them to tell us what they believe and then go on and do what they said they would. We’d rather have someone who is honest and against us than a cretin who will cringe before us in an attempt to bamboozle us in to forgetting all the betrayals and please re-elect him.
There is no “wall of separation”. In fact, there can’t be. For America to function, all views must be present – and our leaders, as far as possible, must be honest. No more hiding the truth; no more saying one thing and doing another; no more of Kennedy’s cowardly dodge, as it were. It is high time this was called out and Palin has done a great service to our nation by doing it.
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