JFK and Biden: Faith a pressure point for America's Catholic presidents. Here's why.
NASHVILLE, Tenn. — American voters have elected only two Roman Catholic presidents: John F. Kennedy and Joe Biden.
Both Democrats faced pushback because of their beliefs. While Kennedy dealt with pressure from outside the Catholic Church, Biden's is coming from within it.
"The political situation could not be more different than it is now," said Monsignor Owen Campion, who spent 40 years working in Catholic media.
Kennedy campaigned amid anti-Catholic prejudice and criticism his presidency would lead to undue influence by the Catholic Church. In 1960, Kennedy addressed the Greater Houston Ministerial Association, telling the group that he was not the Catholic candidate, but the Democrat running for president who happened to be Catholic.
"I do not speak for my church on public matters and the church does not speak for me," Kennedy said.
"If the time should ever come — and I do not concede any conflict to be remotely possible — when my office would require me to either violate my conscience or violate the national interest, then I would resign the office."
U.S. bishops put Biden in the hot seat
Fast forward six decades. Biden is in the hot seat and it is American Catholic bishops turning up the heat.
In a move seen as a potential rebuke of Catholic politicians who back abortion rights, the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops recently voted to draft a teaching document on the Holy Eucharist. Biden, who has faced scrutiny for his stance on abortion and actions taken during his presidency, said he did not think he would be denied Communion and called it a private matter.
US CATHOLIC BISHOPS: US Catholic bishops OK steps toward possible rebuke of Biden, politicians for supporting abortion rights
So what changed between Catholic president No. 1 and Catholic president No. 2?
The shift from external pressures to internal ones shows an increased acceptance of religious diversity in the U.S., said Kent Syler, a political science professor at Middle Tennessee State University and special projects coordinator for the Albert Gore Research Center.
But it also underscores just how hyper partisan Americans are today, he said.
"We have simply found more ways to divide ourselves," Syler said. "The bishops are more religious than partisan, but most voters today put partisan differences ahead of religious differences."
Catholic voters are split nearly in half politically. Forty-eight percent identified as Republican or leaning toward the GOP while 47% said they were Democrats or Democratic leaning, Pew Research Center polls showed in 2018 and 2019.
That played out in the 2020 presidential election. AP VoteCast showed Biden and former President Donald Trump split the Catholic vote. Whereas Kennedy won about 80% of it in 1960, according to America Magazine.
But Kennedy's party could not save him in Democratic-rooted Southern states like Tennessee. Syler pointed to the late U.S. Sen. Albert Gore Sr.'s analysis of why Richard Nixon won the Volunteer State in 1960 and not Kennedy: "The religious factor surely dealt us a death blow as far as the state is concerned."
Kennedy didn't face controversy over abortion
Kennedy was a Catholic darling, but he did not face an issue as controversial within the Catholic community as abortion is today, said Campion, the former editor of the Nashville diocese's newspaper. The U.S. Supreme Court would not hand down its watershed Roe v. Wade decision until 1973.
"Abortion is the chief issue for a lot of Catholics," Campion said.
Despite the Catholic Church's official opposition on abortion, a 2019 Pew Research Center survey shows Catholics are split along partisan lines over their views on the procedure. Among Democratic or Democratic-leaning Catholics, 77% said abortion should be legal while 63% of Republican and Republican-leaning Catholics said it should be illegal.
"The culture of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops was born in abortion politics," said Steven P. Millies, a public theology professor at Catholic Theological Union in Chicago, Illinois.
Abortion and politics are wound up in the latest Communion debate within the American church.
About two-thirds of all U.S. Catholic adults think Biden should be able to receive Communion, a Pew Research Center poll showed in March. But they are divided along party lines with 55% of Republican or Republican-leaning Catholics saying Biden's abortion stance disqualifies him while 87% of Democratic or Democratic-leaning Catholics say he should be able to receive Communion.
If Trump would have won, it is unlikely the bishops would be so preoccupied right now with the Communion issue, said Millies, who studies the Catholic Church's relationship to politics. But he thinks there is a bigger picture issue at play, too.
"They're concerned about the loss of their public relevance, their grip on the imagination of Catholics and non Catholics, and so what they do control is access to the sacraments," Millies said.
Biden likely to still receive Communion
Communion is a sacrament in the Catholic Church. The archbishop of Washington said Biden, who attends Mass regularly, can take Communion at churches in the archdiocese. Biden personally opposes abortion, but does not want to impose his view on others.
Knoxville Bishop Richard Stika, who sees an abortion stance like Biden's as a "false statement," voted in support of drafting the teaching document on the Holy Eucharist.
Over the past five years, moral issues like abortion, euthanasia and more have been coming to a head, Stika said. He has watched Catholic politicians use their platforms to provide clarity on Catholic beliefs, but said sometimes what they share runs counter to church teachings.
But Stika said he told priests in his East Tennessee diocese not to make a point to deny Communion to Catholics like Biden who support abortion rights if they present themselves at Mass because it would make a spectacle. A private conversation is better, he said.
"There's a lot of Catholic politicians who will go to Mass, but will refrain from the Eucharist because perhaps a bishop or their pastor had a nice conversation with him and said, 'You know, you're causing scandal,'" Stika said.
Once drafted, the Communion teaching document will be submitted to the American bishops' for consideration.
"I think the dialogue is good and it's healthy," Stika said. "It's not going to attack any individual. It's going to teach very clearly where the church sees the Eucharist."
Contributing: The Associated Press.
Follow Holly Meyer on Twitter: @HollyAMeyer.