[ 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.
