Author James A. Michener recalled feeling quite startled when guests at publisher Bennett Cerf's early 1960 dinner party challenged John F. Kennedy's presidential candidacy on religious grounds. In an educated, professional crowd, Michener encountered "American liberals [who] ... had the most serious and deep-seated fears of a Catholic in the Presidency." One individual called the Vatican "dictatorial, savage[,] ... reactionary ... [and] brutal in its lust for power." Others feared that clerical pressures would determine Kennedy's political decisions. One colleague declared that "Irish priests" would manipulate a Catholic president "as if he were their toy." A Catholic at Michener's table characterized her church as antidemocratic and incompatible with church-state separation and religious liberty. According to Michener, these individuals claimed to know many other ideological liberals who mistrusted Catholic presidential candidates.(1)
Essayist Clifton Fadiman, on the other hand, perceived the religious controversy as a civil rights issue. Chastising those who would deny Catholics the equal opportunity to occupy the presidency, Fadiman countered, "I am unwilling to proscribe an entire body of people from high office merely because of their religion, which history has proved is a reasonably good religion that yields reasonably good results."(2) Likewise, in a 1961 account of the campaign, Michener recalled thinking,
I've fought to defend every civil right that has come under attack in my
lifetime.... I've tried to write as if all men were my brothers. In Hawaii
I've stood for absolute equality, and it would be ridiculous for a man like
me to be against a Catholic for President.(3)
Fadiman and Michener saw Catholics as a minority group that suffered prejudicial discrimination and intolerance. These liberals determined that a Catholic presidential candidate should not encounter unequal treatment, or exceptional skepticism, due to religious affiliation alone.
In college textbooks and classroom lectures, historians have described how the 1960 election ended the Protestant monopoly on the presidency. Most, however, have focused mainly on Republican, fundamentalist Protestant anti-Catholicism, which they explain with the theory of nativism--the movement to promote white, Anglo-Saxon Protestant individuals and institutions.(4) By portraying the issue as merely a Protestant-Catholic divide, scholars have failed to address the divisions within the liberal community that Kennedy's candidacy exposed. Even prior to the election year, a critical internal debate between two subgroups of liberalism appeared. Libertarians believed that Catholic candidates would be subject to pressure from their church hierarchy, and they feared that Catholic Church intervention in U.S. politics would undermine the religious liberty of non-Catholic Americans. They insisted on absolute separation of church and state, which they considered impossible in a Catholic president. Accommodationists, on the other hand, believed that active partnership between government and religious institutions would extend individual freedom and civil rights. These liberals defended citizens who sought to promote religious values and portrayed opposition to Kennedy or other Catholic Americans on religious grounds as intolerant and biased. Exposure of liberalism's disagreements regarding Catholicism and church-state separation threatened permanent fragmentation of the ideological and political liberal coalition.
This article explains how Kennedy's 1960 campaign prompted liberals to extend the principle of religious liberty to American Catholics. Despite strong opposition, Kennedy was able to win the Democratic presidential nomination by successfully distancing himself from unpopular Catholic political positions and strongly asserting his commitment to separation of church and state, thus allaying libertarian concerns. Once the nomination was secured, party solidarity silenced most remaining liberal critics in order to ensure a Democratic victory.
Anti-Catholicism had long permeated twentieth-century U.S. liberalism. Indeed, according to historian Robert Moats Miller, allegedly tolerant, "`enlightened' liberal Protestantism" proved more critical of the Roman Catholic Church than anti-alien, native-born Protestants.(5) Seven years before Kennedy's candidacy, author Peter Viereck attracted widespread attention by describing "Catholic-baiting" as "the anti-Semitism of the liberals."(6) Mid-twentieth-century American liberals rejected Catholic dogma, contrasting their supposed experimental, scientific method of empirical observation and discovery with the Vatican's hierarchical, authoritarian tradition.(7) Former First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt openly opposed federal aid to Catholic schools in the late 1940s and publicly clashed with New York Archbishop Francis Spellman regarding this issue.(8) During interviews in 1959 for a biography, Mr. Citizen, former President Harry S. Truman suggested that Catholics could not respect church-state separation because they pledged primary devotion to religious leaders: "[Catholics] have a loyalty to a church hierarchy that I don't believe in.... You don't want to have anyone in control of the government of the United States who has another loyalty, religious or otherwise."(9)
While the terms "libertarian absolutist" and "accommodationist" did not characterize all liberal reactions to Kennedy's Catholicism, these two subgroups catalyzed debates that defined important impressions of U.S. liberalism. Libertarians frequently charged the Roman Catholic Church with seeking state support, which they believed subverted the First Amendment's principle of absolute government neutrality toward religious organizations. This absolutism received clearest articulation in the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and Protestant and Other Americans United for Separation of Church and State (POAU). During the 1950s, ACLU Executive Director Patrick Murphy Malin and Associate Director Alan Reitman criticized Catholic pursuit of censorship in attempts to restrict access to anti-Catholic and pornographic books and movies and resistance to birth control.(10) POAU formed in 1949 to resist Catholic political goals of parochial school financial assistance and the appointment of a U.S. ambassador to the Vatican. Executive Director Glenn Archer, Associate Director C. Stanley Lowell, and legal counsel Paul B. Blanshard vigilantly pursued national support for complete separation between church and state.(11) Endorsing Supreme Court majority opinions that isolated sacred and secular matters, these groups joined rationalist publications The Liberal: A Rationalist and Freethought Journal and The American Rationalist to champion the court's limitations on federal aid to parochial schools.(12) A 1957 cartoon in the Liberal suggested that the Vatican even hoped to pervert America's celebrated symbol of freedom, the Statue of Liberty.(13)
Accommodationist liberals, on the other hand, interpreted the First Amendment to support government assistance of religious goals, believing that the First Amendment's guarantee of religious liberty promoted institutional religion's favored status in American society. While they denied the state's right to favor any particular denomination, they also proscribed the government from suppressing or hindering religious organizations. In the nondenominational Christianity and Crisis, Union Theological Seminary officials John C. Bennett, Robert McAfee Brown, and Reinhold Niebuhr expressed great fear that insistence on complete church-state separation would undermine all religious faith and promote secularism. University of Chicago theologian Yaroslav Pelikan shared this opinion that government should accommodate religious belief, and he supported some Catholic requests for federal financial assistance.(14)
Most Catholics adopted an accommodationist viewpoint and perceived libertarian absolutism as anti-Catholic bias. Catholic priests and professional organizations advocated religious-governmental partnerships to assist the underprivileged, regulate movie content, and financially aid religious education. Catholics had largely supported the liberal Franklin D. Roosevelt, who quoted papal encyclicals to justify government assistance for disadvantaged U.S. citizens.(15) Members of the Catholic Church hierarchy organized labor protests, boycotts of pornographic movies, and opposition to artificial birth control. Catholic organizations such as the Knights of Columbus and professional societies created subcultures within the U.S. political culture. Leading Catholics such as Archbishop Spellman perceived attempts to limit church participation in politics as prejudicial. Spellman's New York archdiocese frequently criticized POAU interpretations of absolute church-state separation and even depicted this organization as the modern equivalent of the Ku Klux Klan, which in earlier years had led movements to restrict state support of Catholic institutions.(16) Jesuit theologian John Countney Murray described POAU counsel Blanshard as a modern imitation of traditional anti-Catholicism.(17) While the Catholic Church officially avoided endorsements of either Kennedy or Nixon, Catholic publications noted criticisms of Catholicism and defended church policies.
Kennedy supporters perceived undeniable tension between liberalism and Catholicism. According to liberal historian and Kennedy advisor Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr., "[Kennedy's] candidacy touched uglier strains in the liberal syndrome, especially the susceptibility to anti-Catholicism."(18) Another member of Kennedy's campaign staff, economist John Kenneth Galbraith, also recalled substantial anti-Catholic attitudes among U.S. liberals. During the campaign, Galbraith and other non-Catholics actively implored New York's Jewish American liberals to overcome traditional religious antagonisms and support Kennedy.(19) Journalist David Halberstam noted liberal "uneasiness" about a Catholic president within "the New Republic crowd, the intellectuals and the liberals."(20) According to these observers of the 1960 campaign, liberal anti-Catholicism presented a serious obstacle to Kennedy's candidacy.
Prior to 1960, Kennedy's attitude toward church-state separation appeared undefined, though independent from Catholic accommodationism. As a Massachusetts congressman, Kennedy rejected claims that Catholics were biased against non-Catholic schooling. Kennedy's private nondenominational boarding school experience and Harvard University education proved that Catholics could demonstrate political autonomy from church instruction. As Kennedy explained, "There is an old saying in Boston that we get our religion from Rome and our politics at home." While Congressman Kennedy sought to mediate compromise and ensure some federal aid to Catholic schools, as a presidential candidate he opposed the Roman Catholic Church's ambitions for both a U.S. ambassador to the Vatican and federal aid to parochial schools.(21) While some writers have supported author Theodore H. White's portrayal of Kennedy as a "profoundly Christian" man who applied religious principles to social welfare, others have described Kennedy's religious attitudes as superficial and cynical.(22) As Jacqueline Kennedy supposedly said, "I think it is unfair for Jack to be opposed because he is a Catholic. After all, he's such a poor Catholic. Now if it were [his brother] Bobby: he never misses mass and prays all the time."(23) Whether one perceived John Kennedy's religious attitudes as complex or simple, this Catholic presidential candidate interpreted church dogma broadly.
In 1960, POAU lawyer and author Paul Blanshard was the most articulate and outspoken libertarian opponent of Catholic Church participation in U.S. politics. Since 1949, Blanshard's books had argued that Catholic power threatened American democracy and global religious liberty. With titles such as American Freedom and Catholic Power, Communism, Democracy, and Catholic Power, and The Irish and Catholic Power: An American Interpretation, Blanshard advocated a "resistance movement" against the Vatican's goals in the United States and the world.(24) Blanshard viewed the Catholic Kennedy's presidential ambitions as potentially subversive to U.S. freedoms.
More than two years prior to the 1960 presidential campaign, Blanshard challenged all Catholic presidential candidates to answer specific questions about the Vatican's political authority. In the February 1958 issue of Church and State, POAU's monthly newsletter, Blanshard publicly demanded that Kennedy and other Catholic presidential candidates address three contentious church-state subjects: "the Catholic boycott of public schools, the drive of Catholic bishops for public funds, and the appointment of a Vatican ambassador." Though he denied any intent to organize a "blanket boycott" of Catholic presidential aspirants, Blanshard nonetheless issued no such requirements to non-Catholic candidates.(25)
Kennedy refused to respond specifically, claiming that Blanshard's inquiry violated the U.S. Constitution's guarantee of equality before the law: "The mere presentation of a list of questions such as you have suggested betrays a dangerous tendency which is not consistent with the spirit of our Constitutional principles." In particular, Kennedy invoked the Constitution's Article VI, which stipulated that "no religious Test shall ever be required as a qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United States." Libertarians mocked Kennedy's attempts to label Blanshard's questioning as discriminatory, countering that his response avoided legitimate questions about church-state relations. Church and State endorsed Catholics' right to pursue the executive office, but again demanded Catholic candidates' opinions "concerning certain anti-democratic policies of the Catholic hierarchy."(26)
Debate within the ACLU revealed internal libertarian divisions about religious questioning of Catholic candidates. ACLU's leadership decried Kennedy's unwillingness to answer religious questions, denying that Article VI proscribed inquiry about political candidates' religion. Some Catholic supporters of absolute church-state separation, however, considered questioning only Catholic candidates a violation of civil liberties. In a letter to Alan Reitman, Vincent Carrafiello, a Catholic ACLU member, asked the organization's leadership to defend Catholics from selective religious interrogation. He claimed that Article VI banned religious tests for public office and described such questioning of a Catholic candidate as "flagrant violation of our Constitutionally guaranteed civil liberties."(27) Reitman countered that the First Amendment's free speech clause protected individuals who questioned Catholic candidates' religious and political loyalties. Still, if anyone pursued legal restrictions on Catholic rights to enter public service, Reitman assured Carrafiello, "the American Civil Liberties Union would be the first to enter the fray."(28) POAU and ACLU leaders defended the questions to Catholic candidates as a legal and unbiased political challenge.
Kennedy spoke out on church-state issues in a March 1959 Look magazine article, denying any obligation to obey clerical political dictates. "Whatever one's religion in his private life," he said, "for the officeholder nothing takes precedence over his oath to uphold the Constitution and all its parts--including the First Amendment and its strict separation of church and state."(29) Kennedy also firmly opposed aid to parochial schools. Such statements supported the libertarians' demand for absolute boundaries between government and church actions, but accommodationist liberal Protestants considered them too exclusive of religion. Believing rather that state policies should enhance religious institutions, accommodationists expressed shock and dismay over Kennedy's comments. Martin Marty, associate editor of the liberal Christian Century, called the Massachusetts senator "spiritually rootless and politically almost disturbingly secular."(30) Robert McAfee Brown characterized the Catholic candidate in Christianity and Crisis as "rather an irregular Christian."(31) In appearing to align with libertarians, Kennedy risked losing the support of accommodationist liberals.
Although Kennedy appeared to comply with libertarian requirements of a Catholic candidate, Blanshard remained unconvinced, and his 1960 book, God and Man in Washington, offered libertarians the most detailed argument yet against Catholic Church participation in U.S. politics and culture. In his private notes, Blanshard revealed deeply entrenched beliefs that the Catholic Church's political goals threatened libertarianism and liberalism. "Belonging to the Cath. Ch. for a genuine liberal is like a Democrat belonging to the [anti-civil rights] Dixiecrat Party at the same time," he wrote. He characterized Catholics as deviant, ignorant, and illiberal and stated in another note, "Blanshard's law of Catholics: the members of the Catholic hierarchy will be as reactionary as they dare to be and still retain favor."(32) Such extreme cynicism about Catholic Church motives made Blanshard's support for Kennedy difficult, if not impossible.
These confident criticisms of Catholic power veiled Blanshard's personal indecisiveness about Kennedy as he struggled to reconcile abstract arguments against Vatican laws and practices with Kennedy's support for absolute separation of church and state. Since Blanshard had obsessively dwelled in the theoretical realm of constitutional law and Catholic dogma, concrete reality challenged his ambitious accusations. As he recalled in his 1973 autobiography, "As the 1960 presidential campaign approached I was intensely unhappy.... [W]ith the appearance of a Catholic presidential candidate who had a reasonable chance of election, discussion of the issues was personalized in a way I had tried to avoid."(33) But this discomfort failed to deter Blanshard from questioning Kennedy's susceptibility to religious pressures.
Blanshard justified inquiry into Kennedy's Catholicism by distinguishing criticism of church politics from opposition to private belief. In his 1949 book, American Freedom and Catholic Power, Blanshard depicted religious resistance to Catholic Democratic presidential nominee Alfred E. Smith's 1928 candidacy as largely motivated by "personal bigotry." The Ku Klux Klan and other anti-Catholic organizations, for example, used immigrant Catholic stereotypes to depict Smith as unsophisticated and ignorant.(34) Blanshard described criticism of Catholicism in 1960 as an ideological battle about public policy, not private religious faith: "The new opposition [to the Catholic Church] ... is strongest among the liberals who have always stood most courageously for personal tolerance."(35) Liberal intellectuals could legitimately contradict Catholic political policy, Blanshard believed, without criticizing individual spiritual belief.
Based on this rationale for religious questions, God and Man in Washington detailed the specific issues any Catholic candidate should address. Seeking to expose Vatican interference in U.S. public policy, Blanshard defined six particular points of contention with Catholicism--state support of Catholic schools, censorship of movies and books, discrimination against Protestants and Jews in mixed marriages, segregation of Catholic children by schools, a U.S. ambassador to the Vatican, and the banning of birth control in Catholic hospitals--and challenged voters to consider whether a Catholic presidential candidate would support the Vatican's stated positions on these issues.(36) By addressing such practical and personal issues as marriage and education, Blanshard sought a wider audience than lawyers and intellectuals, and his national tour to promote the book consistently raised criticisms and questions about Catholic presidential candidates.(37) Blanshard's articles and books contained an explicit claim to defend liberalism from Catholic power, and inevitably they inspired liberal doubts about Kennedy's candidacy.
Kennedy's supporters quickly recognized that Blanshard's libertarian arguments contained serious challenges to any Catholic presidential candidate. Many anti-Kennedy pamphlets and letters--and even church bulletins--quoted and/or referenced Blanshard's works.(38) Liberal Protestant leaders consulted Blanshard before publicly discussing the issue in early 1960. Methodist Bishop G. Bromley Oxnam and Episcopalian clergyman Eugene Carson Blake commissioned Blanshard to ghostwrite a Look magazine article on Catholics and the presidency.(39) Kennedy assistant Theodore C. Sorensen acknowledged Blanshard's authority on church-state issues and asked Blanshard to respond to a proposed statement by Boston Archbishop Richard Cushing, who defended Catholic loyalty to the constitutional principle of church-state separation. When Blanshard declared in a three-page letter that Cushing's argument failed to support absolute separation of church and state, the Kennedy campaign decided not to distribute Cushing's document.(40) While Kennedy may have wanted merely to appease Blanshard's doubts through flattery, such deference to the libertarian leader's opinion reveals Blanshard's influence regarding church-state issues.
At the same time, prominent accommodationist liberals and Kennedy supporters confronted Blanshard's claim to profess the authoritative liberal view of Catholicism. In a late March edition of the New Republic, three non-Catholic liberal intellectuals defended Catholic perspectives on education, free speech, and diplomatic relations. While Blanshard chastised Catholics for "boycotting" state schools, Union Theological Seminary's John C. Bennett characterized the preference for parochial schooling as "a natural response to the secularization of public education." In an article in the New Republic, University of Chicago historical theology professor Jaroslav Pelikan directly confronted the libertarian position on church-state separation, asserting that this "militant minority" promoted "an authoritarian and totalitarian liberalism" that sought to suppress Vatican religious teaching. Such absolutism, Pelikan claimed, substituted "the Grand Inquisitor" with "the professional Pope-baiter." According to Pelikan, libertarians perceived a "democratic faith" and "the American way of life" as religious principles, revealing a "new idolatry" that subverted traditional religions.(41) By treating liberal democracy as a sacred institution, rationalists merely promoted one theological perspective over another.
ADA member and Kennedy advisor Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr. applied this accommodationist liberal perspective to the presidential election, comparing anti-Catholicism to racial prejudice against African Americans:
It seems to me inconsistent with the whole theory of our democracy to deny
nearly 40 million Americans the right to aspire to the highest office in
the land. It is terrible to do this to the Negro, and it is no less
terrible to do it to the Catholic (or, for that matter, to the agnostic or
atheist).(42)
Schlesinger's words targeted liberals who supported civil rights for black Americans but who also questioned Catholic loyalty, while his parenthetical reference to nonbelievers appeared designed to attract anticlerical, secular humanists. Schlesinger rejected Blanshard's libertarian questions about a Catholic presidential candidate's commitment to religious liberty and portrayed the debate about Kennedy's Catholicism as a civil rights issue.
Although Pelikan had characterized libertarians as a "militant minority," New Republic editor and publisher Gilbert A. Harrison was surprised at the degree of reader resistance to these accommodationist opinions. In a letter to Schlesinger, Harrison admitted that "[E]ven though I had anticipated a rather fierce response from some readers, I was not prepared for the persistence and the emotional intensity and extent of the anti-Roman Catholic bias." No particular geographic or economic class predominated among the missives; rather, "They are clearly from the poorly educated and the well educated [and are] evenly distributed across the country." According to Harrison, 95 percent of the letters accused the magazine of disloyalty and "having `sold out' to the Vatican."(43) Such significant anti-Catholicism among this liberal publication's readership dramatically confirmed the strength of libertarian resistance to a Catholic president.
In April, Kennedy again expressed support for absolute separation of church and state and conceded several specific policy issues to the libertarians. Before the American Society of Newspaper Editors in Washington, D.C., he distanced himself from the Catholic hierarchy, denying that he would "be responsive in any way to ecclesiastical pressures or obligations of any kind." Repudiating policy positions favored by many Catholics, Kennedy condemned federal aid to parochial schools as "clearly unconstitutional" and refused to support an ambassador to the Vatican. He avoided a clear stand regarding legislative proposals to provide U.S. funds for international birth control programs, but he clearly stated that religious values would not determine his political decisions about this procedure: "I would neither veto nor sign such a bill on any basis except what I considered to be the public interest."(44) Kennedy's statement impressed Blanshard, who quoted the speech in a column for the Humanist.(45)
Kennedy's public denial of clerical power failed to discourage rationalist and freethought publications from opposing Catholic presidential candidates on religious grounds, however. In May, the Liberal printed a passionate anticlerical article, which the Voltaire Society published in pamphlet form. Entitled "Why Not a Catholic for President," the piece condemned the Vatican as an authoritarian and oppressive institution requiring uncritical acquiescence to clerical leaders. To defend his position, the author quoted an 1888 papal edict that said, "To every Catholic heart comes no thought but obedience ... you must not think as you choose, you must think as Catholics."(46) The American Rationalist also eschewed tolerance of Catholicism and questioned Catholic motives. "A Freethinker" propelling the skeptical libertarian argument to its logical conclusion, advocated revoking all Catholics' U.S. citizenship.(47) After all, if Catholics lacked sufficient independence from religious authority and could not impartially perform presidential duties, how could Americans trust such individuals with the franchise? These publications demanded absolute support for church-state separation, which libertarians believed no Catholic could honestly provide.
Having struggled to distinguish criticism of the Catholic hierarchy from Kennedy's presidential candidacy, Blanshard urged the POAU to avoid election politics. During the summer of 1960, however, Associate Director Lowell mobilized POAU efforts against Kennedy, characterizing religion as "the paramount issue in the campaign."(48) In a letter to Blanshard, Lowell outlined a plan to reprint past Church and State stories, including "much of the Kennedy material" and to distribute 750,000 copies of this publication "in newspaper form" only weeks before the Democratic convention. Lowell recognized potentially damaging ramifications: "I suppose the particular composite of stories will be suspect as to political intent" he said. "Of course we will throw in some innocuous ones to balance." Lowell claimed to act on behalf of POAU's constituency, particularly monetary contributors: "Bear in mind that we have been under terrific pressure from our members to do something, and that our financial appeal in the summer campaign also demands this."(49) In Lowell's view, political and economic ambitions justified POAU resistance to the Catholic presidential candidate. While Blanshard increasingly viewed Kennedy as an ally for libertarian absolutism, POAU's executives were determined to defeat Kennedy.
When this publication--called Church-State News---appeared, Blanshard expressed stern opposition to POAU's strategy. "Horrible biased reprints looking like the worst kind of anti-Catholic denunciation," he wrote.(50) Next to a large cover photo of Roman Catholic Labor Secretary James P. Mitchell kneeling before a Catholic bishop, Blanshard inscribed, perhaps for posterity's sake, "I objected to this as too bigoted and one-sided."(51) Writing to Lowell and Archer, Blanshard reiterated that "it gives the impression of crude and unbalanced anti-Catholicism." Blanchard believed the paper required both presentation of issues "in a more rational manner" and a more balanced account of Kennedy's opinion on church-state relations. Further, antiliberal critics of Catholicism could use POAU's publication as "a tool in the Presidential Campaign directed against Kennedy." POAU members would subsequently feel "that we have broken faith" Blanshard feared, and acted irresponsibly with the leadership's mandate to defend church-state separation. Attempts to revoke POAU's tax-exempt status in the U.S. Congress also worried Blanshard, who specifically mentioned Catholic House Majority Leader John W. McCormack's authority in the government's legislative branch, and he lamented the directors' failure to obtain the POAU counsel's approval for this publication.(52) "I am ... shocked by some of the things POAU puts out when I am not around to check them," he wrote.(53) Lowell's actions undermined Blanshard's goal of focusing on the Catholic hierarchy rather than on Kennedy's presidential bid.
Throughout the Democratic state primaries, no prominent Democrats had publicly supported libertarian challenges to Kennedy's candidacy. Kennedy had won several state primaries and secured endorsements from important party leaders, and leading Democratic officials could not publicly raise doubts about Kennedy's Catholicism without fatal political consequences. If liberal Democratic leaders rejected Kennedy on religious grounds, the party would alienate a critical voting base; in the 1958 Congressional elections, nearly 80 percent of Catholics voted Democratic.(54) In practical terms, libertarians threatened to alienate Catholic Democrats.
Evidence of latent anti-Catholic attitudes within the party nonetheless emerged in the primaries. In the March Wisconsin primary, Catholic voters overwhelmingly supported Kennedy, and Protestants largely endorsed Minnesota Senator Hubert H. Humphrey. After extensive interviews, reporter Samuel Lubell declared that "the question as to whether a Catholic should be President dominates the whole Wisconsin primary."(55) After national media focused attention on the Catholic issue in West Virginia's May primary, no prominent liberal Democrats publicly raised religious questions to block Kennedy's nomination, and some West Virginians even endorsed Kennedy merely to demonstrate the state's religious tolerance. In this 95 percent Protestant state, Kennedy's repeated pledges to support the absolute separation of church and state allayed libertarian doubts, and he won easily.(56)
As the Democratic national convention approached, Kennedy's overwhelming success in the Democratic primaries and substantial support from various delegations appeared uncontestable. Privately, however, liberal resistance to a Catholic nominee persisted. In response to one anti-Catholic letter, ADA National Director Violet M. Gunther informed ADA President Samuel Beer, "I'm getting a flock of this kind of thing."(57) Just as New Republic editor Harrison acknowledged widespread religious skepticism about a Catholic president, the ADA leadership recognized that some liberals still perceived Kennedy's Catholicism as a critical flaw in his candidacy.
As Democratic divisions about Kennedy's religion persisted, Harry Truman pressured him to decline the party's presidential nomination. In a dramatic pre-convention press conference, Truman resigned as a Democratic convention delegate and criticized party leaders--including Catholic Democratic National Committee Chairman Paul Butler--for supporting Kennedy. Although Truman cited Kennedy's inexperience and not his religion, suspicion of a Catholic president undergirded his opposition. Less than a year earlier, Truman had privately argued that no Catholic could separate church and state issues as president, and in January he had warned that a Catholic nominee would inevitably attract substantial opposition on religious grounds.(58) Scores of anti-Catholic letters arrived daily in the former president's Independence, Missouri, office, encouraging Truman to continue to oppose any Catholic presidential candidate.(59) Deference to the Democratic party's large Catholic constituency kept Truman from openly opposing Kennedy on religious grounds, but Kennedy's religion inspired the former president's private suspicions.
Although Kennedy secured the Democratic party nomination on the third ballot, the libertarian ACLU continued to defend religious inquiries of the Catholic candidate. In mid-August, Patrick Murphy Malin reiterated that the Constitution's Article VI prevented the government from excluding a candidate on religious grounds: "It would be unconstitutional" Malin declared, "formally to bar a Catholic or a Quaker--or a Baptist, a Jew, a Moslem, or an atheist--from becoming President, solely because of his religious, or non-religious, classification." Malin refused, however, to repudiate questions regarding the candidate's religious affiliation:
[I]t is not improper for voters to seek and consider information--including
a particular candidate's own views--about the effect on governmental
matters of organizational positions which his group may hold--for example,
Quakers on the use of armed force, Catholics on the use of public funds for
parochial schools.(60)
While Democratic leaders discouraged further discussion of Kennedy's religion, Malin sought to guarantee that the ACLU could publicly discuss these po