"Of all the great and necessary freedoms listed in the First Amendment, freedom to exercise religion (not just to believe, but to live out that belief) is the most important; before freedom of speech, before freedom of the press, before freedom of assembly, before freedom to petition the government for redress of grievances, before all others.
"This freedom of religion, freedom of conscience, is the trunk from which all other branches of freedom on our great tree of liberty get their life....
"
JFK delivered a speech to the Greater Houston Ministerial Association to dispel suspicions about the role the Catholic church might play in the government of this country under his administration. Let's make no mistake about it -- Kennedy was addressing a real issue and real prejudice at the time. But on that day, Kennedy chose not just to dispel fear, he chose to expel faith....
[A few snippets from what Kennedy said that night....
"I believe in a President whose views on religion are his own private affair....
"I want a Chief Executive...whose fulfillment of his Presidential office is not limited or conditioned by any religious oath, ritual, or obligation....
"I ask you...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....
"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.
"But if the time should 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."]
"The idea of strict or absolute separation of church and state is not and never was the American model....While the phrase 'separation of church and state' doesn't appear in the Constitution, the concept of protecting religion from the government does....
"Kennedy's misuse of the phrase constructed a high barrier that ultimately would keep religious convictions out of politics in a place where our founders had intended just the opposite....
"Ultimately Kennedy's attempt to reassure Protestants that the Catholic Church would not control the government and suborn its independence advanced a philosophy of strict separation that would create a purely secular public square cleansed of all religious wisdom and the voice of religious people of all faiths....
"I agree with the founders that there is a natural law which can be known through the exercise of reason against which the positive or civil law must be measured and if needed amended....
"a major political offshoot of Kennedy's articulated philosophy, sometimes referred to as the 'privatization of faith,' was best illustrated by
Mario Cuomo's speech at Notre Dame in September 1984. There he espoused his nuanced position on abortion: that, as a result of his religious convictions he was personally opposed to abortion. But he then applies Kennedy's thesis and refrains from imposing his values upon others whose views, because the truth is indiscernible, are equally valid....
[A few snippets from what Cuomo said that night....
"Catholic public officials take an oath to preserve the Constitution....And they do so gladly, not because they love what others do with their freedom, but because they realize that in guaranteeing freedom for all, they guarantee our right to be Catholics: our right to pray, our right to use the sacraments, to refuse birth control devices, to reject abortion, not to divorce and remarry if we believe it to be wrong....We know that the price of seeking to force our belief on others is that they might someday force their belief on us [This argument ignored the Natural Law & seemed to intimate that issues of human life & marriage/family were just peculiar Catholic peccadillos.]....
"I can, if I am so inclined, demand some kind of law against abortion, not because my bishops say it is wrong, but because I think that the whole community, regardless of its religious beliefs, should agree on the importance of protecting life -- including life in the womb, which is at the very least potentially human & should not be extinguished casually [Take note of this "potentially human" heresy against science.]....
"The values derived from religious belief will not -- and should not -- be accepted as part of the public morality unless they are shared by the pluralistic community at large, by consensus. So that the fact that values happen to be religious values does not deny them acceptability as part of this consensus. But it does not require their acceptability, either [This seems to have become the game plan for so-called "pro-choice" Catholic politicians. Act as though questions about human life & marriage/family are just peculiar Catholic peccadillos. Ignore the existence of the Natural Law.]....
"On divorce and birth control, without changing its moral teaching, the Church abides the civil law as it now stands, thereby accepting -- without making much of a point of it -- that in our pluralistic society we are not required to insist that all our religious values be the law of the land. The bishops are not demanding a constitutional amendment for birth control or on adultery" [In fairness to Cuomo, errors of prudential judgment by some of the hierarchy, as well as the presence of a Catholic priest in the U.S. Congress(See below.) may have misled him. In addition, we have come to learn that some of what was - & is - passed off as "contraceptive" is actually abortifacient.]
Many modern Catholics may be unaware that - from 1971 till 1981 - Father Robert Drinan, S.J. served in the United States House of Representatives. They might be absolutely shocked and scanalized to learn that this Jesuit priest / congressman was a zealous advocate for abortion & advocated for partial birth abortion after leaving congress!
"Drinan's position has always been that he fully accepted Catholic teaching on the subject [of abortion.]. However, even before the [1973 Roe v. Wade] Supreme Court decision he had supported, with increasing passionate intensity, every proposal to make the procedure legal and to fund it with tax money....Shortly after Roe v Wade, Drinan wrote a public defense of the decision, recognizing that it had flaws but finding it on the whole a beneficial judgment. He then proceeded, over the next several years, to compile an almost perfect pro-abortion voting record in Congress, often speaking passionately about a woman's 'constitutional right' to abort, even while stating that this right went completely contrary to his own conscience. If Drinan’s superiors, prior to l973, had found practically no one who criticized the priest’s presence in Congress, they now found themselves barraged with statements of outrage from all kinds of people, including other Catholic members of Congress" (Catholic World News, 7/1/96)
"Many generations are never called to do great things, make great sacrifices to maintain liberty. We are the fortunate ones who have the opportunity not only preserve but build on the founders' vision of freedom supported by virtue which in turn is supported by a vibrant faith -- a mutually strengthening interface of church and state that with respect and our collective effort will keep America that beacon of hope, that shining city on the hill. May God continue to bless our country. May we do our part to carry the torch of freedom and pass it successfully to the next generation" (
Rick Santorum, 3/30/12).
