JFK and Religion

Something in the readings this week affected me in a surprising way, and in this particular post, I think I’d like to be a little more personal than I’ve been before. Now, I have always been a fan of John F. Kennedy and the whole Kennedy family… I don’t really feel like I should, to be honest; I was born way after their political influence was at its peak, the family is incredibly wealthy and they can’t possibly relate to me in any significant manner, but I do admire JFK and Bobby Kennedy in a strange almost unexplainable way. 

Like John F. Kennedy, I would identify as a Roman Catholic. Growing up Catholic, there were always pictures on the wall of Pope John Paul II, sometimes (in other families) I’d see a Pope John XXIII picture, and I’d usually see a picture of JFK. As a kid and a young teenager, I would think: He was a Catholic, yeah, that’s cool but whatever. This week, for some reason, the reading of his speech struck me in a new way. For a long time, I never thought being Catholic was such a "heated" topic. I was raised as an Italian Roman Catholic, not because my family was particularly devout, but because my mom and my dad immigrated to America from Italy and being Catholic, for a lot of people, is just… Well, what you do over there. No one truly seemed that “into” it, except for Catholic holidays, but it was a foundation for an identity especially when they moved here. To make things a bit more specific, however, my mom is a Lutheran from Germany, but somehow the Catholicism was more pronounced growing up (although my Italian Grandmother had much to say against my mom, a divorced German Lutheran single mother, marrying her son… But that’s another story). 

Anyway, I never grew up thinking that being Catholic was not an American “thing.” I thought everyone was Catholic, except my Jewish friends - there certainly was a lot of people at the church after all. It wasn’t until later that I realized that Catholicism wasn’t exactly the “majority,” when people began to ask me questions about eating people, drinking wine, rosaries, why I had a St. Christopher’s medallion, and then later on, being the resident Catholic, defending against the child abuse scandal - something that is and forever will be indefensible. 

But, and I don’t mean to speak for every immigrant family or even every American Catholic, belief never really entered into the equation. I (and many others I know here in America) couldn’t care less about Jesus’s divinity or not, the nuances of Pauline epistles or the Book of Acts; being Catholic, to me and everyone I knew, wasn’t about that. Being Catholic was about connecting with a culture, with a family and a land that was thousands of miles away, separated by mountains, seas and oceans. Trying to “find your way” in America is difficult, and for the majority of Italians, Catholicism is such a central part of its culture that it became a way to feel connected to our home. It wasn’t what we believed as it was more of what we identified as that was the important aspect of the religion. We had pictures of the Pope because we are Catholic, and that’s what Catholics do because they've always done that and (probably) always will, and we were comfortable with the fact that our relatives back home were doing the same things. It became a touchstone, an important one especially when different languages within the generations are involved. 

It seems difficult to explain this to anyone who has grown up in a religious lifestyle that demands total belief with “all of your heart, all of your body and all of your soul,” but the priests, for us, never really seemed to care what we did, as long as we went to church or professed some sort of Catholic-esque belief in some round-about way. 

I understand that I completely got off the topic of JFK’s speech, but I think this all ties into the idea of what being an immigrant in America is like when viewed through the lens of religion. JFK’s speech resonated with me because it’s above the ideas of particular Catholic belief; it’s just a part of who he is, and it doesn’t affect his job or his performance. He, like so many immigrant families, understands that his religion, while important in helping to define his identity, does not disqualify him from an American life. His argument for the public's understanding of religious differences is beautifully stated, and one that I wish many people would consider before labelling or perpetuating incorrect beliefs and actions based solely on religious identification. 

Overall, I appreciate JFK a little bit more, even though he was a fatally flawed man. 

Anyway, I apologize for the lack of pictures and video, but here's a picture of a corgi that I wish was on every single bumper sticker.

Pictured above: Cool Corgi