Jesuit-run Journal America, Slammed J.F.K. For Pandering To Protestant Bigots

Catholic media throughout the nation, including the Jesuit-run journal America, slammed J.F.K. for pandering to Protestant bigots. The publication of the Holy Cross Fathers, Ave Maria, noted: “No man may rightfully act against his conscience. To relegate your conscience to your ‘private life’ is not only unrealistic, but dangerous as well…because it leads to secularism in public life.” Appalled that the Church did not give Jack carte blanche, J.P. K. wrote to a friend in the Vatican, “I am really more than annoyed or upset – I am downright disgusted! . . .I deplore the pettiness of the Catholic Press and I deplore the weakness of some of the hierarchy for not speaking out, at least in some measure in Jack’s defense. . . .My relationship with the Church will never be the same and certainly, never the same with the hierarchy.” And it wasn’t.

Publicly, the Kennedys patronized the Church, but privately they helped create a shadow church of religious laymen and clergy who helped them rationalize their own version of Catholicism. The Catholic pro-abortion movement, for instance, was hatched at the Kennedy compound in Hyannis Port. In the summer of 1964, Bobby and Ted Kennedy met at the Cape with some leading dissident priests – Robert Drinan, Richard McCormick, Joseph Fuchs, and Charles Curran – to figure out how Catholic politicians could pander to the growing abortion movement without upsetting their Catholic constituencies. 

According to one witness, the theologians “concurred on certain basics. . .that a Catholic politician could in good conscience vote in favor of abortion.” The action plan developed that week in Hyannis Port, in sociologist Anne Hendershott’s judgment, contributed to effectively neutralizing the Catholic laity and “helped build the foundation for the [Democratic] party’s reincarnation as the party of abortion.” New York’s Cardinal John O’Connor, criticized a 1984 letter signed by pro-abortion Democratic Vice Presidential nominee Geraldine Ferraro, concerning Catholics for a Free Choice because it contained “some things about abortion relevant to Catholic teaching which are not true.” Senator Edward Kennedy went ballistic, suggesting that anyone who opposed Ferraro was a bigot. He accused Archbishop O’Connor of “blatant sectarian appeals” and argued that not “every moral command” could become law. Ted Kennedy also scuttled the late Robert Bork’s nomination to the Supreme Court with scurrilous charges of racism and other slanders because Bork was perceived as pro-life. The Kennedy’s shadow church has damaged Catholic standing in the public square and has given cover to the likes of Mario and Andrew Cuomo, Joe Biden, John Kerry, Dick Durbin, and Nancy Pelosi. All in all, a sad legacy for a family that American Catholics once put on a pedestal.
Link (here) to The Catholic Thing