Most Catholics fell for the con job that John F. Kennedy was the first American Catholic president. The reality is that he was virtually contemptuous of that faith community’s values. Kennedy received support from secular leftists like John Kenneth Galbraith and Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr. because they knew full well he took his Catholicism with a huge grain of salt. If Kennedy had genuinely embraced the Catholic faith—he would have never been elected president! The left-wingers who dominated the Democratic Party during that era would have gutted his campaign before it ever got off the ground. Traditional thinking Catholics, Protestants and Jews usually must become Uncle Toms if they have any chance of major political success. As matter of fact, I can hardly think of any exceptions to the general rule.
The politically naive John Courtney Murray thought that the United States was something of a religious center right country. He most assuredly didn’t think there was a snowball’s chance in hell that abortion would be legalized by the early 1970s. Alas, Murray was a very gullible man. It never dawned on him that his church/state theories would be used to rationalize away the surrender of Catholics to the demands of the pro-abortionist crowd. Murray unwittingly gave respectability to Catholic Uncle Tomism. The disgraceful behavior of perhaps the majority of Notre Dame’s faculty and students last week was merely a cruel reminder of how far things have deteriorated.
