Tip:
Highlight text to annotate it
X
[ MUSIC ]
JFK: I am not the Catholic Candidate for President. I am the Democratic Party's candidate for
President who happens also to be a Catholic.
MICHAEL A. COHEN: When John F Kennedy ran for president in 1960, one of the big issues
affecting his candidacy was the fact that he was a Roman Catholic.
JEFF SHESOL: It's easy to forget from our vantage point today just how much anti-Catholic
prejudice there was in this country. So Kennedy really had an uphill battle in convincing
some Americans that he was as fully an American as they were.
JFK: Because I am a Catholic, and no Catholic had ever been elected President. It is apparently
necessary for me to state once again not what kind of church I believe in - but that should
be important only to me - but what kind of America I believe in.
ADAM FRANKEL: Something that jumps out to me about this speech is how different it is
from today, where you had somebody championing the separation of Church and State.
JFK: Whatever issue may come before me as President, if I should be elected. I will
make my decision in accordance with what my conscience tells me to be the national interest.
And without regard to outside religious pressures or dictates.
MICHAEL: Today politicians talk all the time about their religion and how their religious
views shape their world view. Kennedy's argument is that they have no role whatsoever.
[ MUSIC ]
ADAM: JFK used a device called a reversible raincoat. He's not here to talk about what
kind of church he believes in, he's here to talk about what kind of America he believes
in. So flipping a sentence like that.
JFK: I do not speak for my church on public matters. And the church does not speak for
me. I believe in an America where the separation of Church and State is absolute.
ADAM: There's a whole rift about I believe in this kind of America, I believe in that
kind of America. That allows him to make his case in a positive way without seeming like
he's on the defensive.
JFK: I believe in an America that is officially neither Catholic, Protestant, nor Jewish and
where no man is denied public office merely because his religion differs from the President
who might appoint him or the people who might elect him.
[ MUSIC ]
JEFF : One of the things that he does very effectively in this speech is to really connect
himself to the American experience.
JFK: This is the kind of America that I fought for in the South Pacific and the kind my brother
died for in Europe. No one suggested then that we might have a divided loyalty. That
we did not believe in liberty. Or that we belonged to a disloyal group that threatened,
I quote "the freedoms for which our forefathers died." And in fact this is the kind of America
for which our forefathers did die.
JEFF: Kennedy is very determined in this speech to let his audience know that this is not
just about him this and it's not just about American Catholics. This is an issue that
goes to America's deepest ideals.
JFK: For while this year it may be a Catholic against whom the finger of suspicion is pointed,
in other years it has been and may someday be again, a Jew - or a Quaker or a Unitarian
or a Baptist.
ADAM: There's no doubt that that line, to many people in this country also spoke to
the Civil Rights challenges that the country was going to at that same time. And was part
of a broader debate about tolerance in America. So the kind of things he was saying then made
him a real leader.
JFK: But if this election is decided on the basis that 40 million Americans lost their
chance of being president on the day they were baptized, then it is the whole nation
that will be the loser — in the eyes of Catholics and non-Catholics around the world,
in the eyes of history, and in the eyes of our own people.