In The Shadow Of Mt Hollywood

While compiling the timeline in yesterday's post, I ran into the intriguing data item that Episcopalian Bishop of California James Pike had publicly opposed John F Kennedy's candidacy in the 1960 presidential election due to his Catholic faith. I was 12 years old at the time, and while I was vaguely following the election, I didn't notice this then, although I was aware of some concerns that if Kennedy were Catholic, he would somehow be under an obligation to do whatever the pope told him to do. A churchgoing Presbyterian at the time, I had only the sketchiest notion of Catholic teaching. I probably knew Catholics were even more opposed to divorce than Protestants as of 1960, but that was about it, and I was innocent of the other details. In any case, the media at the time covered the issue as a question of whether the pope, as part of a nefarious plan for world domination, could order Kennedy as president to attack, say, Paraguay. Returning to the issue over 60 ye...