n February 1960 one of John F. Kennedy's aides sought the counsel of a leading West Virginia politician concerning the senator's prospects in the state's pivotal presidential primary.
The politician flatly predicted Kennedy would be ''whipped in West Virginia. Why? Because the senator is a Roman Catholic.''
During the campaign the Baptist Examiner newspaper said it was ''unalterably opposed to the election of Kennedy to the presidency. Regardless of that which might be said of him as to his character, personality, and qualifications, there is the factor that outweighs all the rest. He is a Roman Catholic.''
The archives of the John F. Kennedy Library offer eloquent and extensive testimony to the anti-Catholic bias that existed in 1960. One bulging file after another preserves the collection of articles, pamphlets, and resolutions attacking Kennedy because of his religion.
We've come a long way in American politics. This year a candidate has apologized for speaking at a college that has demonstrated a bias against Catholics. In 1960, Kennedy was targeted because he was Catholic. This sentiment was by no means restricted to the right wing. The father of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. said: ''I had expected to vote against Senator Kennedy because of his religion.'' The elder King changed his mind only after Kennedy called the wife of Martin Luther King Jr., to comfort her when her husband was in a Georgia prison.
In early 1960, Kennedy won the Wisconsin primary over Senator Hubert H. Humphrey of Minnesota. Yet, while Kennedy won in four predominantly Catholic congressional districts, he lost in the four predominantly Protestant districts. While the victory was important, the underlying message was that Protestants were not voting for him in anywhere near the numbers needed to win a national election.
In West Virginia, where 95 percent of the population was non-Catholic, local organizers for Humphrey were determined to make sure that the state's voters kept religion in mind. They chose ''Gimme that old-time religion'' as a campaign theme song.
Kennedy fought back.
''Nobody asked me if I was a Catholic when I joined the United States Navy,'' he said. ''Nobody asked my brother if he was a Catholic or Protestant before he climbed into an American bomber plane to fly his last mission.''
No sooner had the general election campaign against Vice President Nixon kicked off than Kennedy was attacked by a group of 150-plus Protestants, ministers and laymen.
The group, led by the Rev. Norman Vincent Peale, said a Catholic president would be ''under extreme pressure from the hierarchy of his church'' to make sure US policies were consistent with Vatican views.
The group asserted that the Roman Catholic church ''insists that he is duty bound to submit to its direction.'' Kennedy confronted the issue directly on Sept. 12, 1960, in an appearance before the Greater Houston Ministerial Association. He entered a room at the Rice Hotel packed with ministers in dark suits and grim expressions.
''I believe in an America where the separation of church and state is absolute,'' he said, ''where no Catholic prelate would tell the president ... how to act, and no Protestant minister would tell his parishioners for whom to vote. I believe in a president whose views on religion are his own private affairs, neither imposed upon him by the nation or imposed upon him as a condition to holding that office.''
''The question, he told the ministers, was ''not what kind of church I believe in, for that should be important only to me, but what kind of America I believe in.''
Ironically, Kennedy's Catholicism may have helped him in the end as much as it hurt him.
While he won the election with 49.7 percent of the popular vote to 49.5 percent for Nixon, he won the Electoral College by a much larger margin (303 to 219). The disparity between the popular and electoral vote resulted from Kennedy victories in large industrial states where the Catholic vote may well have made the difference.
Charles Kenney's book, ''John F. Kennedy: A Presidential Portfolio,'' will be published in October.
