Beyond belief: when will secularism be allowed in the public square?

• Author: Young, Cathy
• Position: Column

WHEN JOHN F. Kennedy ran for President in 1960, his Roman Catholic faith was widely viewed as a stumbling block to his campaign. Many voters feared that Catholic politicians would look to the Vatican for guidance, putting their loyalty to the Church above their obligations to the American people.

Kennedy responded by reiterating his absolute commitment to the separation of church and state. In a September 1960 address to the Greater Houston Ministerial Association, he declared his belief in "an America where ... no Catholic prelate would tell the president [should he be Catholic] how to act."

Fast-forward 44 years to the presidential campaign of another Catholic Democrat from Massachusetts, Sen. John Kerry. This time around, the charge is that he is insufficiently loyal to the Catholic Church.

In June 2004, the Los Angeles based Catholic lawyer Mark Balestrieri filed heresy charges against Kerry with the Boston Archdiocese, asking that he be excommunicated because of his support for legal abortion. Around the same time, Pope John Paul II's doctrinal adviser, Cardinal Ratzinger, sent a memo to the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops stating that politicians who support abortion rights should be denied communion. Four American bishops already had said they would deny Kerry communion.

Some commentators--including several conservatives, such as The Weekly Standard's Terry Eastland--noted that such tactics could backfire. But the controversy was generally seen as a liability and an embarrassment for Kerry. In his speech accepting the Democratic nomination at his party's convention in July, Kerry asserted that he did not wear his faith on his sleeve, yet much of his speech was crafted in religious terms.

Religion in politics has come a long way since 1960.

Kerry is not the first Democratic candidate to have a religion problem this campaign. The former front-runner, Howard Dean, was labeled too secular to be electable. A January 2004 cover story by Franklin Foer in The New Republic declared that Dean would have trouble shedding the "liberal" image--less because of his politics than because he was "one of the most secular candidates to run for president in modern history." (Dean, an Episcopalian turned Congregationalist, had openly said that he didn't go to church often and that religion didn't inform his public policy views.)

Other publications picked up on this theme. In a particularly bizarre moment, an interview with Dean by Newsweek's Howard...