The Religion Issue (Contd.)

Tanned and relaxed from a week in Florida and Jamaica, Jack Kennedy buoyantly strode into a rally at the Stonewall Jackson Hotel in Clarksburg, W. Va. Cheers from 300 Democrats rang out so loudly that the county Democratic chairman, Benjamin Stout, tumbled right off his perch of official neutrality. Carried away by the excitement, he introduced Kennedy as "a man who probably will be the next President of the U.S."

But Kennedy himself, especially in offstage moments, seemed more uncertain than ever before. He worried about signs that Minnesota's Senator Hubert Humphrey, his only opponent in West Virginia's May 10 primary, was gaining ground. Kennedy's own pollster, Lou Harris, reported that 1) Humphrey had edged slightly ahead, and 2) most of those polled were aware of Kennedy's Roman Catholicism and many of them wary of it.*

"Real Issue." Well aware that defeat in West Virginia's popularity poll (it has no binding effect on delegates) would be interpreted as a death notice, Kennedy switched from the white-glove tactics he had used in Wisconsin. In a three-day foray he struck at Humphrey as a "hatchet man" who could not win the nomination himself but was "being used" by Texas' Lyndon Johnson and Missouri's Stuart Symington in a "stop-Kennedy" gang-up. Retorted Humphrey: "He's acting like a spoiled juvenile."

With an edge of anger in his voice, Kennedy told his audiences that the "real issue" in West Virginia was economic distress, "not where I go to church on Sunday." In Fairmont he rumbled that "one of the issues of this campaign is my religion. I don't think it's anyone's business but my business ... Is anyone going to tell me that I lost this primary 42 years ago on the day I was baptized?"

Legitimate Question. No one was saying that. In fact, almost no one was saying that religion would be an issue in the fall campaign between Democrats and Republicans. But religion had become the biggest issue in the struggle for the Democratic nomination, and Kennedy decided that he had better meet it as boldly as he could. Scheduled to address the American Society of Newspaper Editors in Washington on "America's Stake in the Underdeveloped World," he switched to a vigorous, carefully drafted half-hour speech on his own religious position.

His candidacy, he told the A.S.N.E., did not in itself raise any religious issue. He was not appealing to the "so-called Catholic vote," he said. "Even if such a vote exists--which I doubt--I want to make one thing clear again: I want no votes solely on account of my religion . . . Nor have I ever suggested that the Democratic Party is required to nominate me or face a Catholic revolt in November." He indirectly charged the press with "magnifying" the religion issue in the Wisconsin primary, scoffed at reports that Wisconsin Roman Catholics had voted for him almost as a bloc (TIME, April 18).

"Is the religious issue a legitimate issue in this campaign?" he asked rhetorically. "There is only one legitimate question underlying all the rest: Would you. as President, be responsive in any way to ecclesiastical pressures or obligations of any kind that might in any fashion influence or interfere with your conduct of that office in the national interest? I have answered that question many times. My answer was--and is--no." He is opposed to federal assistance for parochial schools ("clearly unconstitutional"), opposed to sending an ambassador to the Vatican ("It was last proposed by a Baptist President"), and if confronted with a bill providing foreign aid funds for birth control, "I would neither veto nor sign such a bill on any basis except what I considered to be the public interest.

"I am not the Catholic candidate for President," said Kennedy. "Do not expect me to explain or defend every act or statement of every Pope or priest . . . If there is bigotry in this country, then so be it--there is bigotry. If that bigotry is too great to permit the fair consideration of a Catholic who has made clear his complete independence and his complete dedication to separation of church and state, then we ought to know it. But I do not believe that this is the case."

Suggesting Blackmail. Kennedy got a full minute's hand from the 400 editors when he sat down, and no one responded to his invitation to ask questions. But the New York Times's Washington Correspondent James Reston next morning raised a couple that the editors neglected. In scoffing at the evidence of Roman Catholic bloc-voting in the Wisconsin primary, said Reston, Kennedy was bucking some convincing statistics. Kennedy's denial of a possible Catholic revolt if he is rejected by the convention "helps remove the vague suggestion of blackmail that has hung over his campaign for the last few months." But it was "odd," said Reston, that Kennedy should doubt the existence of a "Catholic vote" when his own staff had repeatedly claimed that the strength of the Catholic vote was a compelling reason for nominating him.* When Kennedy was fighting for the Democratic vice-presidential nomination at the 1956 Democratic convention, said Reston, Kennedymen circulated a memo arguing that the Catholic vote would swing several key states to the Democrats if Kennedy was on the ticket (TIME, April 18). Principal architect of the memo: Ted Sorensen, key man in the Kennedy-for-President organization.

Name-Calling Condemned. Whether or not Kennedy was getting hit with his own Roman boomerang in West Virginia, as Columnist Reston implied, men of good will all over the U.S. spoke out against the injection of religion into the campaign. The Protestant Christian Century, which has done its share of tough talking to Candidate Kennedy, called for a moratorium on political use of such "name-calling" terms as "bigotry." In Minneapolis, the founding convention of the new American Lutheran Church condemned opposition to any presidential candidate because of his religion as "unfair, unwise and not warranted." Dean Liston Pope of the Yale Divinity School voiced a fear that the religion issue in the campaign might set back the "growing ecumenical movement" toward Christian unity.

Presidential possibilities in both parties joined in. Said Hubert Humphrey in a preface to his A.S.N.E. speech on disarmament: "I would not want to be President if it meant that my own party might be torn apart on this extraneous issue." Missouri's Stuart Symington said that it would be "deplorable for a man's religion to become an issue in the campaign." Texas' Lyndon Johnson, campaigning in Salt Lake City, echoed the sentiment. New York's Governor Nelson Rockefeller declared that a candidate should be judged "on the basis of his integrity, his ability and his record, and not because of his religion." And Vice President Richard Nixon told the A.S.N.E. meeting that there is only one way that religion could be a legitimate issue in the campaign: "That would be if one of the candidates for the presidency had no religious belief."

* West Virginia has been popularly pictured as "5% Catholic, 95% Protestant." Actually, a 1957 report by the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the U.S.A. on church membership showed 4.9% Catholic, 27.5% Protestant, the rest unaffiliated or nonChristian.

* In a blunt talk to Pennsylvania's Kennedy-cool top Democrats last December Kennedy warned that if he goes to the convention with plenty of delegate votes but is denied the nomination because of his religion, the Democratic Party will run the risk of losing the election.

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