John F. Kennedy
Address to the
Greater Houston Ministerial
Association
delivered 12 September
1960 at the Rice Hotel in Houston, TX
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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."
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.
newspaper usage, I am not the Catholic candidate
for President.
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.
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.
real issues, I shall return to my seat in the
Senate, satisfied that I'd tried my best and was fairly judged.
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
giving the American people a warning
society. And
we are as a people, inherently and historically opposed to secret
societies. To secret oaths and to secret proceedings. We
decided long
ago that the dangers of excessive and unwarranted concealment of
pertinent facts far outweigh the dangers, which are cited to justify
it. Even today, there’s little value in opposing the threat
of a
closed society by imitating its arbitrary restrictions. Even
today,
there is little value in ensuring the survival of our nation if our
traditions do not survive with it. And there is very grave
danger,
that an announced need for increased security will be seized upon by
those anxious to expand its meaning to the very limits of official
censorship and concealment. That I do not intend to permit to
the
extent it is in my control. And no official of my
administration
whether his rank is high or low civilian or military should interpret
my words here tonight as an excuse to censor the news to stifle
dissent, to cover up our mistakes or to with hold from the
press and
the public or to withhold from the press and the
public the facts
they need to know. For we are opposed around the world by a
monolithic
and ruthless conspiracy that relies primarily on covet means for
expanding its sphere of influence on infiltration, instead of invasion
on subversion, instead of election on intimidation, instead of free
choice on guerrillas by night, instead of armies by day. It
is a
system which has conscripted vast human and material resources into a
building of a tightly knit highly efficient machine that
combines
military, diplomatic intelligence, economic, scientific, and political
operations. Its preparations are concealed, not published.
Its
mistakes are buried, not headlined. Its dissenters are silenced, not
praised. No expenditure is questioned no rumor is printed. No
secret
is revealed. No President should fear public scrutiny of his
program.
For from that scrutiny comes understanding. And from that
understanding, comes support or opposition, and both are
necessary.
This administration intends to be candid about its errors.
For as a
wise man once said "An error does not become a mistake until you refuse
to correct it." We intend to accept full responsibility for
our
errors. And we expect you to point them out when we miss
them.
Without debate, without criticism no administration and no
country can
succeed and no republic
can survive. And that is why our press was
protected by the First Amendment the only business in America
specifically protected by the Constitution. Not primarily to
amuse and
entertain not to emphasize the trivial and the sentimental not to
simply ‘give the public what it wants’ this means greater coverage and
analysis of international news for it is no longer far away and foreign
but close at hand and local. And it means that government at
all
levels must meet its obligation to provide you with the fullest
possible information outside the narrowest limits of national
security. And so it is to the printing press to the recorder
of man’s
deeds the keeper of his conscious. The courier of his
news. That we
look for strength and assistance. Confident, that with your
help man
will be what he was born to be FREE
and INDEPENDENT.
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