| Reverend Meza, Reverend
Reck, I'm grateful for your generous invitation to state my views.
While the so-called religious issue is necessarily and properly the
chief topic here tonight, I want to emphasize from the outset that
I believe that we have far more critical issues in the 1960 campaign;
the spread of Communist influence, until it now festers only 90 miles
from the coast of Florida -- the humiliating treatment of our President
and Vice President by those who no longer respect our power -- the
hungry children I saw in West Virginia, the old people who cannot
pay their doctors bills, the families forced to give up their farms
-- an America with too many slums, with too few schools, and too late
to the moon and outer space. These are the real issues which should
decide this campaign. And they are not religious issues -- for war
and hunger and ignorance and despair know no religious barrier.
But because I am a Catholic, and no Catholic has ever been elected
President, the real issues in this campaign have been obscured --
perhaps deliberately, in some quarters less responsible than this.
So it is apparently necessary for me to state once again -- not what
kind of church I believe in, for that should be important only to
me -- but what kind of America I believe in.
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, and no Protestant minister would
tell his parishioners for whom to vote; where no church or church
school is granted any public funds or political preference, 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.
I believe in an America that is officially neither Catholic, Protestant
nor Jewish; where no public official either requests or accept instructions
on public policy from the Pope, the National Council of Churches or
any other ecclesiastical source; where no religious body seeks to
impose its will directly or indirectly upon the general populace or
the public acts of its officials, and where religious liberty is so
indivisible that an act against one church is treated as an act against
all.
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. It was
Virginia's harassment of Baptist preachers, for example, that led
to Jefferson's statute of religious freedom. Today, I may be the victim,
but tomorrow it may be you -- until the whole fabric of our harmonious
society is ripped apart at a time of great national peril.
Finally, I believe in an America where religious intolerance will
someday end, where all men and all churches are treated as equals,
where every man has the same right to attend or not to attend the
church of his choice, where there is no Catholic vote, no anti-Catholic
vote, no bloc voting of any kind, and where Catholics, Protestants,
and Jews, at both the lay and the pastoral levels, will refrain from
those attitudes of disdain and division which have so often marred
their works in the past, and promote instead the American ideal of
brotherhood.
That is the kind of America in which I believe. And it represents
the kind of Presidency in which I believe, a great office that must
be neither humbled by making it the instrument of any religious group
nor tarnished by arbitrarily withholding it -- its occupancy from
the members of any one religious group. I believe in a President whose
views on religion are his own private affair, neither imposed upon
him by the nation, nor imposed by the nation upon him1 as a condition
to holding that office.
I would not look with favor upon a President working to subvert the
first amendment's guarantees of religious liberty; nor would our system
of checks and balances permit him to do so. And neither do I look
with favor upon those who would work to subvert Article VI of the
Constitution by requiring a religious test, even by indirection. For
if they disagree with that safeguard, they should be openly working
to repeal it.
I want a Chief Executive whose public acts are responsible to all
and obligated to none, who can attend any ceremony, service, or dinner
his office may appropriately require of him to fulfill; and whose
fulfillment of his Presidential office is not limited or conditioned
by any religious oath, ritual, or obligation.
This is the kind of America I believe in -- and this is the kind
of America 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 when they fled here to escape religious test oaths that denied
office to members of less favored churches -- when they fought for
the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, the Virginia Statute of Religious
Freedom -- and when they fought at the shrine I visited today, the
Alamo. For side by side with Bowie and Crockett died Fuentes, and
McCafferty, and Bailey, and Badillo, and Carey -- but no one knows
whether they were Catholics or not. For there was no religious test
there.
I ask you tonight to follow in that tradition -- to judge me on the
basis of 14 years in the Congress, on my declared stands against an
Ambassador to the Vatican, against unconstitutional aid to parochial
schools, and against any boycott of the public schools -- which I
attended myself. And instead of doing this, do not judge me on the
basis of these pamphlets and publications we all have seen that carefully
select quotations out of context from the statements of Catholic church
leaders, usually in other countries, frequently in other centuries,
and rarely relevant to any situation here. And always omitting, of
course, the statement of the American Bishops in 1948 which strongly
endorsed Church-State separation, and which more nearly reflects the
views of almost every American Catholic.
I do not consider these other quotations binding upon my public acts.
Why should you?
But let me say, with respect to other countries, that I am wholly
opposed to the State being used by any religious group, Catholic or
Protestant, to compel, prohibit, or prosecute the free exercise of
any other religion. And that goes for any persecution, at any time,
by anyone, in any country. And I hope that you and I condemn with
equal fervor those nations which deny their Presidency to Protestants,
and those which deny it to Catholics. And rather than cite the misdeeds
of those who differ, I would also cite the record of the Catholic
Church in such nations as France and Ireland, and the independence
of such statesmen as De Gaulle and Adenauer.
But let me stress again that these are my views.
For contrary to common newspaper usage, I am not the Catholic candidate
for President.
I am the Democratic Party's candidate for President who happens also
to be a Catholic.
I do not speak for my church on public matters; and the church does
not speak for me. Whatever issue may come before me as President,
if I should be elected, on birth control, divorce, censorship, gambling
or any other subject, I will make my decision in accordance with these
views -- in accordance with what my conscience tells me to be in the
national interest, and without regard to outside religious pressure
or dictates. And no power or threat of punishment could cause me to
decide otherwise.
But if the time should ever come -- and I do not concede any conflict
to be remotely possible -- when my office would require me to either
violate my conscience or violate the national interest, then I would
resign the office; and I hope any conscientious public servant would
do likewise.
But I do not intend to apologize for these views to my critics of
either Catholic or Protestant faith; nor do I intend to disavow either
my views or my church in order to win this election.
If I should lose on the real issues, I shall return to my seat in
the Senate, satisfied that I'd tried my best and was fairly judged.
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.
But if, on the other hand, I should win this election, then I shall
devote every effort of mind and spirit to fulfilling the oath of the
Presidency -- practically identical, I might add, with the oath I
have taken for 14 years in the Congress. For without reservation,
I can, "solemnly swear that I will faithfully execute the office
of President of the United States, and will to the best of my ability
preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution -- so help me God.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
1ill-figured redundancy (antimetabole). Kennedy probably meant to
say, "neither imposed by him upon the nation, nor imposed by
the nation upon him."
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