The Catholics have always been married to the democrat left, before JFK they had either a permanent majority democrat vote, or they may have had a slight majority support Eisenhower in 1956 as an incumbent, it depends on which polling you use.
So at most, the Catholic vote had gone GOP once, before JFK.
Agreed. The Catholic voter’s love of Democrats goes back way beyond JFK. We started looking around for someone to punish the EEEEEEVIL Anglo-Saxon Protestant Robber Barons in the late 19th. Century.