Newt Gingrich says Rick Santorum wrong about Kennedy speech

Boston Herald ^ | Tuesday, February 28, 2012

[Red Steel]

-snip-

Gingrich and Santorum, each a Catholic seeking the GOP nomination, view Kennedy’s words differently. Santorum says he felt sick after reading Kennedy’s 1960 speech and believes it advocated absolute separation of church and state.

Gingrich calls it a "remarkable speech." He told Fox News Channel on Tuesday that Kennedy was reassuring voters that he wouldn’t obey any foreign religious leader. Gingrich said Kennedy was declaring "that his first duty as president would be to do the job of president, and I think that’s correct."

Gingrich does share Santorum’s position on President Barack Obama

[madison10]

I wish we could combine Rick Santorum and Newt Gingrich into one person.

[Outlaw Woman]

I like that idea. Santorum was wrong on Kennedy’s speech though; he has since expressed regret for his comment.

[FerociousRabbit]

Kennedy was fighting quite a bit of anti-Catholic sentiment in the election. The accusations that he would be taking orders from Rome were rampant. The speech did its job and even though there were things to quibble over it was a decent speech to allay the fears of a foreign influence over the White House, especially considering the time.

Santorum’s response has been way over the top.

That said, Kennedy proved he was CINO (like all Democrats) and the world might have been a much better place if Nixon won.

[HiTech RedNeck]

Revolutionary era concepts of what an “established religion” would be were a far, far cry from the way the issue is viewed today. The revolutionary era ideal was that no denomination of Christian church would get the special blessing of Washington. Generic Judeo-Christianity and direct biblical teaching were not even considered controversial. In a country which emerged crying “we have no king but Jesus” that made eminent sense. Now it’s like “we have no king but worldly trends.”

But anyhow. Newt’s view isn’t the most important controversy between Gingrich and Santorum. If anything it seems to hark back to the more purist “we have no king but Jesus.” We respect the pope but he won’t be permitted to dictate American policy and if he tries to use a president to that end then that president will resign rather than be an instrument for that. Showing Newt’s Baptist roots?

[RobbyS]

The free exercise clause is more than free speech: it allows free participation in the civil life of a country.All the rights listed after the free exercise clause and all the rights of private association.

[duffee]

I prefer Newt just as he is.

I didn’t realize until this evening that I have become addicted to FR. It was difficult doing without it most of yesterday and all of today as I was otherwise occupied attending two of Newt’s events in Nashville and then driving the two hundred miles back to Mississippi yesterday. Today I thought we’d been shut down. rollwage doesn’t fully understand my preoccupation with FR but I’m sure she will when she retires in a few weeks.

We attended the Healthcare Roundtable at the Baker, Donelson law firm and the Rally on the steps of the Tennessee Capitol. Newt was great at both events. He discussed as did the panelist the effects of obamacare on the healthcare industry and what should be done when obamacare is removed. At the Capitol he spoke primarily about gasoline and energy and his own way describes how and why we are where we are and what we need to do about it. Problems identified, solutions proposed.

[RobbyS]

No,Kennedy was pandering. I remember at the time that that was the most common conclusion. He was implying what was true, that he was less likely to help the Catholic Church than Nixon. This was what pleased the Baptist ministers who took him at his word. Men like Criswell were still skeptical. but others realized he had offered his political fortunes as hostage should he take the part of the Church on such matters as aid to parochial schools.

[TigersEye]

I've never been a fan of JFK but I have a hard time disagreeing with the content of that particular speech.

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9:33 PM MST Operation #EFAD bump (Fast and Furious related, check it out)

[RobbyS]

Newt doesn’t know the mind of the audience that Kennedy was addressing as well as I do. He needs to read the back issues of the Baptist Standard I read them when they were first published.

[Outlaw Woman]

I’ve talked to people close to me that stated it was to assure people that the vatican wouldn’t be running the country.

[ansel12]

Kennedy actually did better with protestants in 1960 than Democrats had done in a while, Kennedy got 43% of the protestant vote.

America would be a truly great nation today, with a great future if Kennedy had lost that election, no Vietnam, no 1960s, no LBJ, no Immigration and multiculturalism and on and on and on.

[RobbyS]

You have to read the speech in the light of the present situation. “Separation of Church and States “ was made a shibboleth by Hugo Black, an anti-Catholic southern Protestant when he used the term in the Everson case. Now it has taken on a meaning that also excludes the Baptists, who were among the original “separatists” under the Tudors and Stuarts. Our elites then were Protestant; now they are agnostics and secularists, more like the Jacobins of the French Revolutionary period.

[TigersEye]

Nope, I can't do that. The face-value content of the speech is all that is relevant now and that was what Santorum quoted and spoke to. It's not possible to expect anyone to take the words of the speech, more precisely the excerpt used, and understand them today. Won't work.

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9:48 PM MST Operation #EFAD bump (Fast and Furious related, check it out)

[TigersEye]

Correction: It's not possible to expect anyone to take the words of the speech, more precisely the excerpt used, and understand them today in the context of what Kennedy meant sixty years ago.

[baysider]

You are absolutely correct. I remember the 1960 election and the noxious idea that a Roman Catholic should never be elected to the Presidency because he would take orders from the Pope .

In fact, I was enraged when the Rector of my church (Episcopal) stood in the pulpit and preached against electing Kennedy on those very grounds.

[RobbyS]

No, it was to convince voters though a Catholic would keep the pope—and the bishops— at a further remove than he would Billy Graham. ( Graham was opposed to him). The whole Establishment was hostile to Catholicism, chiefly because of the post-war growth of the Church in wealth and numbers. This included,liberals as well as Fundamentalists. Mrs Roosevelt had engaged in a rather hot public dispute with Cardinal Spellman over the issue of aid to parochial schools no many years before. What Kennedy did was a political tactic, and most Catholics thought of it as such. They realized that Kennedy was no position to help them , at least until he won re-election. What has happened, of course, is that his concession to public opinion became a precedent that allowed Catholic pols to take their “personally opposed” stance on abortion, for instance.

[cynwoody]

Now it has taken on a meaning that also excludes the Baptists

It was originally intended to apply to all religions, including Baptists. Black got the phrase from Jefferson, who wrote in a letter to the Danbury Baptist Association in 1802:

... 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.

[RobbyS]

I disagree. The “face-value content”of that speech is secularism. It rejects not only the political authority of the pope but the dictates of a conscience formed by the teachings of the Church when they conflict with public opinion. I am relying on what I recall from what I read in the Baptist Standard 62 years ago, but I think that the editorial said pretty much that. Criswell, or his editor, was no fool.