Rick Santorum calls JFK a radical for believing in the separation of church and state
It may seem an odd way to appeal to a crowd of Massachusetts voters: First, attack Mitt Romney, the last Republican to hold the governor’s office. Then, go after President Kennedy, arguably the state’s most revered Democrat.
But Rick Santorum, a former US Senator from Pennsylvania who is courting conservatives as he weighs a presidential run, came to Massachusetts and did just that today, blaming Kennedy for marginalizing religion in public life and Romney for signing the Massachusetts health care law.
Santorum’s criticisms were striking not only because he targeted two of the state’s political figures on their home turf —- even criticizing the first Catholic president in a speech to a Catholic group — but also because he campaigned for Romney in 2008…
Santorum, who lacks Romney’s national political network and fundraising prowess, said he will decide in the next several months whether to run for president. He said he has visited New Hampshire 12 times and believes voters are hungry for an “authentic, conservative message.”
In remarks to about 50 members of the group Catholic Citizenship — which encourages parishioners to speak out on issues of public policy —- Santorum decried what he called the growing secularization of American public life.
He traced the problem to Kennedy’s 1960 speech to the Greater Houston Ministerial Association, in which Kennedy – then a candidate for president - sought to allay concerns about his Catholicism by declaring, “I believe in an America where the separation of church and state is absolute.”
Santorum, who is Catholic, said he was “frankly appalled” by Kennedy’s remark.
“That was a radical statement,” Santorum said, and it did “great damage.”
“We’re seeing how Catholic politicians, following the first Catholic president, have followed his lead, and have divorced faith not just from the public square, but from their own decision-making process,” Santorum said.
“Jefferson is spinning in his grave,” he added.
The crowd responded with nods and applause.
Santorum also criticized Catholic parishes for their “lukewarm faith” and urged the crowd not to donate to Catholic schools that stray from church teachings.
“You’re feeding the beast,” he said, sparking applause. “The heresy that goes in Catholic schools in America is amazing.”
Fielding questions, he spoke about shari’ah law, Israel, and liberal influence in American universities and media.
Asked by one man about “gay and transsexual activists” raising money for Democrats, Santorum said they had money to give away because “most of them don’t have kids.”
“We need to be more engaged, and we need to be unapologetic about who we are and why we’re doing it,” he said. “America needs the truth that believers bring to the public square.”
Jefferson is spinning in his grave? This Jefferson ?
Believing with you that religion is a matter which lies solely between Man & his God, that he owes account to none other for his faith or his worship, that the legitimate powers of government reach actions only, & not opinions, I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature should “make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof,” thus building a wall of separation between Church & State. Adhering to this expression of the supreme will of the nation in behalf of the rights of conscience, I shall see with sincere satisfaction the progress of those sentiments which tend to restore to man all his natural rights, convinced he has no natural right in opposition to his social duties.
Not to work Sarah Palin into this, but you know who made a similar dumbass remark a few months back?
Sarah Palin has found a new opponent to debate: John F. Kennedy.
In her new book, “America by Heart,” Palin objects to my uncle’s famous 1960 speech to the Greater Houston Ministerial Association, in which he challenged the ministers - and the country - to judge him, a Catholic presidential candidate, by his views rather than his faith. “Contrary to common newspaper usage, I am not the Catholic candidate for president,” Kennedy said. “I am the Democratic Party’s candidate for president who happens also to be a Catholic.”
Palin writes that when she was growing up, she was taught that Kennedy’s speech had “succeeded in the best possible way: It reconciled public service and religion without compromising either.” Now, however, she says she has revisited the speech and changed her mind. She finds it “defensive … in tone and content” and is upset that Kennedy, rather than presenting a reconciliation of his private faith and his public role, had instead offered an “unequivocal divorce of the two.”
Palin’s argument seems to challenge a great American tradition, enshrined in the Constitution, stipulating that there be no religious test for public office. A careful reading of her book leads me to conclude that Palin wishes for precisely such a test. And she seems to think that she, and those who think like her, are qualified to judge who would pass and who would not.
If there is no religious test, then there is no need for a candidate’s religious affiliation to be “reconciled.” My uncle urged that religion be private, removed from politics, because he feared that making faith an arena for public contention would lead American politics into ill-disguised religious warfare, with candidates tempted to use faith to manipulate voters and demean their opponents.
Kennedy cited Thomas Jefferson to argue that, as part of the American tradition, it was essential to keep any semblance of a religious test out of the political realm. Best to judge candidates on their public records, their positions on war and peace, jobs, poverty, and health care. No one, Kennedy pointed out, asked those who died at the Alamo which church they belonged to.
But Palin insists on evaluating and acting as an authority on candidates’ faith. She faults Kennedy for not “telling the country how his faith had enriched him.” With that line, she proceeds down a path fraught with danger - precisely the path my uncle warned against when he said that a president’s religious views should be “neither imposed by him upon the nation or imposed by the nation upon him as a condition to holding that office.”
After all, a candidate’s faith will matter most to those who believe that they have the right to serve as arbiters of that faith. Is it worthy? Is it deep? Is it reflected in a certain ideology?
Palin further criticizes Kennedy because, “rather than spelling out how faith groups had provided life-changing services and education to millions of Americans, he repeatedly objected to any government assistance to religious schools.” She does not seem to appreciate that Kennedy was courageous in arguing that government funds should not be used in parochial schools, despite the temptation to please his constituents. Many Catholics would have liked the money. But he wisely thought that the use of public dollars in places where nuns explicitly proselytized would be unconstitutional. Tax money should not be used to persuade someone to join a religion…
Palin contends that Kennedy sought to “run away from religion.” The truth is that my uncle knew quite well that what made America so special was its revolutionary assertion of freedom of religion. No nation on Earth had ever framed in law that faith should be of no interest to government officials. For centuries, European authorities had murdered and tortured those whose religious beliefs differed from their own.
To demand that citizens display their religious beliefs attacks the very foundation of our nation and undermines the precise reason that America is exceptional.
Palin’s book makes clear just how dangerous her proposed path can be. Not only does she want people to reveal their beliefs, but she wants to sit in judgment of them if their views don’t match her own. For instance, she criticizes Rep. Nancy Pelosi (Calif.), a Democrat and a faithful Catholic, for “talking the (God) talk but not walking the walk.”
Who is Palin to say what God’s “walk” is? Who anointed her our grand inquisitor?
This is a woman who also praises Abraham Lincoln’s Second Inaugural, even though Lincoln explicitly declared, “But let us judge not that we not be judged.” The problem for those setting up a free-floating tribunal to evaluate faith is that, contrary to Lincoln, they are installing themselves as judges who can look into others’ souls and assess their worthiness.
Kennedy did not and would not do that, but not because he was indifferent to faith. In fact, unlike Romney or Palin, in fealty to both his faith and the Constitution, he promised on that day in Houston that he would resign if his religion ever interfered with his duty as president…
America’s first and only Catholic president referred to God three times in his inaugural address and invoked the Bible’s command to care for poor and the sick. Later in his presidency, he said, unequivocally, about civil rights: “We are confronted primarily with a moral issue. It is as old as the Scriptures and is as clear as the American Constitution…”
John F. Kennedy knew that tearing down the wall separating church and state would tempt us toward self-righteousness and contempt for others. That is one reason he delivered his Houston speech.
Palin, for her part, argues that “morality itself cannot be sustained without the support of religious beliefs.” That statement amounts to a wholesale attack on countless Americans, and no study or reasonable argument I have seen or heard would support such a blanket condemnation. For a person who claims to admire Lincoln, Palin curiously ignores his injunction that Americans, even those engaged in a Civil War, show “malice toward none, with charity for all.”
Palin fails to understand the genius of our nation. The United States is one of the most vibrant religious countries on Earth precisely because of its religious freedom. When power and faith are entwined, faith loses. Power tends to obfuscate, corrupt and focus on temporal rather than eternal purposes.
Somehow Palin misses this. Perhaps she didn’t read the full Houston speech; she certainly doesn’t know it by heart. Or she may be appealing to a religious right that really seeks secular power. I don’t know.
