October 16, 2015:
A Noticeable Shift
October 16, 2015
TimeWatch Editorial
John F. Kennedy was quite young. Forty-three years of age. When he captured the Democratic Nomination for President in 1960, not only was he the youngest candidate to do so but he defeated Richard Nixon by 84 electoral votes and just 2% of the popular vote. This election compared rather well with other very close elections in American History. James Madison over Dewitt Clinton, 1812, John Quincy Adams over Andrew Jackson, 1824, James K. Polk over Henry Clay, 1844, Grover Cleveland over James Blaine, 1884, Benjamin Harrison over Grover Cleveland, 1888, James Garfield over Winfield Hancock, 1880, Rutherford B. Hayes over Samuel Tilden, 1876,
This election between John F Kennedy and Richard Nixon, would more than likely be the first really close race of the ‘modern era.’ He won by 112, 000 votes out of a total of 69 million votes cast. One would therefore imagine this to be enough excitement for one Presidential election, but there was an even more consuming “first” involved here. Kennedy was the first catholic to be elected president of the United States. Of course, he was not the first catholic to run for President.
Alfred Emanuel Smith, popularly known as Al Smith, had been elected Governor of New York four times. He was a Democrat and a Catholic. He was a Progressive Democrat. Progressive politicians embraced and still do to this day, concepts such as environmentalism and social justice. Smith was actually nominated to run for the Presidency in 1928. His candidacy powerfully motivated catholic especially women who had not voted prior to this. The Protestants, the German Lutherans, the Southern Baptists, convinced that the Catholic Church and the Vatican would take control of the political system in the United States, strenuously opposed his election.
The winner of that election was Herbert Hoover, the Republican. In the next election cycle, Smith again sought the nomination, but this time, he was defeated by Franklyn D. Roosevelt.
Twenty-eight years later young JFK would seek the same office. Again, the opposing forces were the same. In 1959, Reverend Carl McIntyre passed a resolution on the board of the American Council of Christian Churches, objecting to the nomination of Senator Kennedy. After his nomination, McIntyre repeated his opposition.
On Sept. 12, 1960, at the Rice Hotel, Houston, Texas, Kennedy gave a major speech to the Greater Houston Ministerial Association, a group of Protestant ministers, hoping to assure them that he would abide by the Constitution of the United States. Still the actual trust remained thin. The Protestants of the United States were still cautious of the covert methodology of the “Holy See.” But today this has changed.
Gradually, stealthily, the subversion has advanced until today the prophetic utterance of D'Arcy McGee to the Catholic Bishops of America at Buffalo, NY in the spring of 1852 has reached its crescendo:
“We are determined . . . to take possession of the United States, and rule them; but we cannot do that without acting secretly and with utmost wisdom. If our plans become known, they will surely be defeated. What will those so-called giants think of their matchless shrewdness and ability, when not a single Senator or member of Congress will be chosen, if he be not submitted to our holy father the Pope? What a sad figure those Protestant Yankees will cut when we will not only elect the President, but fill and command the armies, man the navies, and hold the keys of the public treasury? ” — Charles Chiniquy, Fifty Years in the Church of Rome, The Wickliffe Press, Protestant truth Society, Wickliffe Avenue, 104 Hendon Lane, Finchley, London, N3, 1885, p. 373.
It is indeed interesting that Marco Rubio presently running for President is Catholic, so is Rick Santorum and George Pataki and Jeb Bush and Bobby Jindal and Chris Christie and John Kasich and Martin O'Malley. With six Catholic Supreme Court Justices, 136 in the House of Representatives and 27 in the Senate, I would say that Mr. McGee has almost reached his objective.
Cameron A. Bowen
