Candidate & Bishops

"Boy, that's Daniel, going into the lions' den," cracked a Washington reporter one warm afternoon last week. The Daniel: shock-haired John Fitzgerald Kennedy, 41, U.S. Senator from Massachusetts and front-running candidate for the 1960 Democratic presidential nomination. The lions: the 51-man Council of Methodist Bishops (membership: 10 million), on a long-planned tour to talk with top ranking Washingtonians, including President Eisenhower and Chief Justice Earl Warren, now waiting in Washington's Old Senate Office Building. Candidate Kennedy, head tucked in careful thought over each answer, was quizzed on his Roman Catholicism and how it might affect his decisions in office.

"I am a strong Catholic and I come from a strong Catholic family," responded Kennedy. "But I regret the fact that some people get the idea that the Catholic Church favors a church-state tie." Then, taking up a questionnaire formally delivered to him beforehand, he repeated again that he would not appoint an envoy to the Vatican. One bishop taxed him with the persecution of Protestants in Catholic Spain. "I deplore a loss of liberty under any circumstances," answered Kennedy. By now not sure what might lie in the bishops' minds, he felt it necessary to add, "I am opposed to forced conversions."

This odd inquisition was set up by Bishop G. Bromley Oxnam, 67, articulate firebrand of his church's liberal wing. Although the bishops talked with Texas' Lyndon Johnson (Christian Church), with Quaker-born (Presbyterian-attending) Richard Nixon, and Congregationalist (Methodist-attending) Hubert Humphrey, only Candidate Kennedy was quizzed on the church-and-state issues.

When he was finished, the bishops applauded warmly. One bishop's summary of the situation: "While Kennedy did not win over any Methodists who are strongly opposed to a Catholic and always will be, he did warm some of those who have not yet searched their souls on this problem."

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