Santorum, JFK, Dolan

by Edd Doerr

Rick Santorum's recent "vomit" remark sliming of John F. Kennedy for JFK's 1960 defense of church-state separation earned an eloquent response in the March 4 Washington Post by JFK niece Kathleen Kennedy Townsend titled "JFK's message is lost on Santorum". Check it out.

On the same day the NY Times reported on New York Cardinal Timothy Dolan's March 3 speech to a Catholic audience blasting New York's passage of a same-sex marriage bill, smacking the Obama administration for putting the health and freedom of conscience claims of people of all religious persuasions employed or served by tax-supported hospitals and colleges ahead of the tenuous religious liberty claims of male clerics, and urging Catholic laity to carry the bishops' political messages to lawmakers ("Cardinal Urges Greater Political Activism").

This is the same Cardinal Dolan who, as archbishop of Milwaukee a decade ago, arranged to move over $40 million in church funds around is such a way as to avoid having to use any of the money to compensate the numerous victims of clergy sexual abuse. The story is covered by Catholic journalist Jason Berry in a long article in the National Catholic Reporter in late February. Check it out.

Dolan is a worthy successor to the late New York Cardinal Spellman, who helped to pull the US into the Vietnam war and who in the late 1960s was involved in the unsuccessful campaign to remove from the New York State constitution the provision (Article XI, Section 3) barring tax aid to sectarian private schools. The church-state separation side won the 1967 statewide referendum 72% to 28%. This referendum, the first in a long series of such referenda around the US, was the subject of my first book, The Conspiracy That Failed (Americans United, 1968).

It is important to note that most American Catholics do not agree with the bishops on birth control, church-state separation, vouchers for church schools, and a host of other issues.