Catholicism has been an issue in the presidency
The fiery crosses lit up the night sky along the route that a Catholic U.S. presidential candidate took during his visit to Oklahoma City.
The Rev. Don Wolf, pastor of St. Eugene Catholic Church, said it was the 1920 sand the Ku Klux Klan in Oklahoma wanted presidential candidate Al Smith to know just what they thought of his candidacy.
“He fulfilled ac ampaign promise to come to Oklahoma City and he came to the Civic Center Music Hall, which was a brand new building. The Ku Klux Klan burned a cross every mile along the railroad tracks for the last 15 miles of him coming into Oklahoma City,” Wolf said.
“The Klan hated, hated, hated Catholics. That was a troubling thing for the folks in Oklahoma at the time, that this guy, the former governor of New York, was widely celebrated as a great reformer and a great friend to the common P ru et tm an, but
he was a Catholic and that was the end of the story as far as some people were concerned.”
Wolf was among several
Catholic priests who recently discussed how Catholics—and nonCatholics — throughout history have related to Catholic individuals who seek the highest office in the land.
The issue came to the forefront as former Vice President Joe Bid en, who is Catholic, seeks to upset incumbent President Donald Trump in Tuesday's presidential election.
Smith was the first Catholic presidential candidate to be nominated by a major political party, the Democratic Party. Wolf said he was, by most accounts a likeable man and had good plans f or the nation should he have been chosen as president.
However, his Catholicism was among the barriers that kept him from the White House.
The KKK held cross burnings around the U.S. in opposition of Smith's nomination so Oklahoma wasn't the only state with this infamous occurrence.
Wolf said Smith's candidacy happened before his time, but Catholics have been talking about the history- making run for the presidency for decades. He said nonCatholic sin the U.S. feared that Smith would allow the pope to rule America from Rome. Republican candidate Herbert Hoover emerged victorious during the 1928 presidential election, beating out Smith in a landslide.
Wolf and the Rev. Bill P ru et ts aid John F. Kennedy had to deal with anti-Catholicism as well.
Pruett, pastor of St. James the Greater Catholic Church, said he was in seventh grade when Kennedy was running for president.
The priest had an interesting story to share about this because he and his family were Southern Baptists at the time and he attended a school where the majority of the students were also Baptists.
“I remember we were truly afraid that if John became the president, the pope would run the country — terribly afraid. We were terribly afraid that the pope would be running everything,” Pruett said.
“There was a Catholic family at the school and they would never talk about it. They would just smile but refuse to talk about it. They knew Baptists were afraid of it but they didn't talk about it.”
Pruett said many people changed their ideas about a Catholic president' s possible connection to Rome after Kennedy won the presidency in 1960, becoming the first Catholic American in the office and one of the nation' s most popular presidents.
“It turned out, the pope didn' t end up running everything and Kennedy ended up being the president that he was so a lot of attitudes changed about a lot of things during that time,” Pruett said.
Pruett converted to Catholicism as a young adult.
Wolf said he was about 5 when Kennedy was running for the presidency and members of his family were not Democrats. Though he was young, he remembered that Kennedy's Catholicism was a big issue for his relatives.
“There was certainly the tension of whether they ought to be voting for this guy just because he was a Catholic and that was certainly not the case, that just because he is, that's what we were going to do,” Wolf said.
“We were certainly not of the position that just because this guy's Catholic, he' s God' s answer to everyone' s concern.”
Stance on abortion stirs debate
By the time Sen. John Kerry came along as a Catholic Democratic Party presidential nominee in 2004, raging anti-Catholicism wasn't as much of an issue.
However, Kerry came under fire from within the Catholic Church on one key issue: His and his party's support of abortion rights.
Biden has been criticized for the same reason, while many Catholics and evangelical Protestants have praised Trump, who identifies as Presbyterian, for his support for antiabortion policies. Trump's successful nominations of two Catholics — Brett K av an aug hand Amy Coney Barrett — to the U.S. Supreme Court has also played well with many Catholics around the country.
In September, the Associated Press reported that Roman Catholic voters have been a pivotal swing vote in U.S. presidential elections, with a majority backing t he winner — whether Republican or Democrat — nearly every time.
Wolf said no one in his parish has come to him to discuss the matter of Biden being Catholic, either pro or con. That doesn't mean they don't have opinions about it and other aspects of the coming presidential election.
P ru et ts aid Bid en' s stance on abortion likely stands out for many Catholics as a key factor in supporting or rejecting his quest for the presidency.
The priest said he doesn't know about the wisdom or probability of trying to excommunicate the former vice president for his stance on abortion rights but Bid en supporting abortion rights is troubling for many Catholics.
“It' s a concern. Of course, there are Catholics who are pro-abortion but that is not the Church's teaching and never has been. Abortion will always remain a negative — it's a sin, kill i ng, murder,” Pruett said.
“Biden has been very public about his attitude toward it all. It's just a problem. He's not doing what the Church says he should do.”
The Rev. Stephen Hamilton, pastor of St. Monica Catholic Church in Edmond, said Biden's self-identification as Catholic stirs debate because his support of abortion rights is in stark contrast to the Roman Catholic Church's antiabortion stance.
He said Catholicism is about more than simply declaring one self a Catholic.
“I think what you find in those debates is what does it mean to be a Catholic and to give witness to the Catholic faith in your public life? This could be said of any Christian,” Hamilton said.
“So if I say I'm a fervent member of the Toastmasters Club but I never go to a meeting and I refuse to speak in public and I don't follow the practices of the group, well, what does that really mean? I could say I'm a toastmaster, I could pay my dues every once in a while, I guess, but if I'm not really engaged with what it really means to belong to that particular group, what does it really mean?
“That's kind of an analogy or image that you see going in with debates in the Church (about Biden). A person might be baptized Catholic, they might have been raised Catholic, they might go to Mass every Sunday or maybe not so frequently, but there' s more to the substance of being a Christian, of being a Catholic, than just saying I am this and I say this is my label.”
Hamilton said he knows these are the issues many Catholics are thinking about and that's good.
“I hope Catholics aren't voting for a candidate purely because he or she is Catholic but going deeper, beyond the surface, superficial matter to examine the substance.”