South Bend, Ind., Sep 10, 2010 / 15:13 pm
As the 50th anniversary of John F. Kennedy's famous Houston speech on his Catholicism approaches, Prof. Michael McConnell gave a talk at the University of Notre Dame on Friday, discussing both the positive and negative effects of the late president's words. While JFK's address may have won a “great victory” for Catholics against a social climate of bigotry, the legal expert also argued that the president's 1960 speech distancing himself from his faith contributed to the belief that churches are “irrelevant to public affairs.”
Former federal judge Michael McConnell gave his remarks in a discussion titled “Remind Me: Why Did Anyone Care if JFK was a Catholic?” on Sept. 10 in the auditorium of the Hesburgh Center for International Studies. In addition to being a former federal judge, McConnell serves as the Richard and Frances Mallery Professor of Law at Stanford University, and is a leading expert on constitutional law.
McConnell began his talk on Friday by saying, President John F. Kennedy's address “has gone down in history as one of the finest and most effective speeches ever made by a candidate for President of the United States.”
“It addressed the critics’ most powerful fear: that Catholic officeholders would follow the instructions of the Catholic hierarchy on matters of public policy such as birth control, divorce, education, or foreign policy – either because they regarded the church as having final authority on matters touching morality or because of threats of excommunication.”