Sons of Saint Patrick: A History of the Archbishops of New York, from Dagger John to Timmytown by George Marlin & Brad Miner

Author:George Marlin & Brad Miner [Marlin, George]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Spiritual & Religion
ISBN: 9781681497501
Publisher: Ignatius Press
Published: 2014-02-24T06:00:00+00:00

Spellman and the Making of a President—1960

Having met during the 1936 Pacelli visit, Spellman and Joseph P. Kennedy became fast friends. Kennedy frequently invited Spellman to his home in Bronxville, in an affluent section of the archdiocese. Spellman officiated at the marriage of several Kennedy children and baptized a few of the grandchildren. The two men took advantage of each other to achieve various ends.

When Kennedy was out of favor with FDR because of his support of British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain’s appeasement policies, he used Spellman as a back door to the White House. (But he never fully got on board with FDR and Churchill’s conduct of the war. He frequently spouted off to Spellman, particularly against the Allies‘ “unconditional surrender” policy.) Kennedy also leaned on Spellman to gain access to John J. Reynolds, a leading New York commercial-real-estate broker who had close ties to the Church. As Kennedy biographer David Nasaw wrote, “With the City’s premier broker working for him, [and his] connections to the Catholic Church. . . Kennedy ended up defying his own expectations and making at least as much money from [New York] real estate as he had from trading stocks.”94

Spellman, on the other hand, frequently turned to Kennedy for donations to fund various projects and programs, and he would seek Kennedy’s advice on investments.

Another reason Joe Kennedy valued his close relationships with Spellman and other leading prelates, particularly Archbishop Cushing of Boston and Chicago’s Cardinal Albert Meyer, is that he knew that if his son Jack was to have any chance of being elected president, he would need the overwhelming support of urban Catholics.

Although the Harvard-educated John F. Kennedy “possessed the affectation of a Brahmin”, he had gained an understanding of the social conservatism of his Roman Catholic constituents while representing Massachusetts in both the House of Representatives and the Senate. Biographer Thomas Maier points out that JFK “acted as a stalwart supporter of the Church, both for calculated political reasons and out of his own convictions”. In a speech he gave in 1950 at Notre Dame, Kennedy sounded like a Thomistic scholar when describing the nature of man: “You have been taught that each individual has an eternal soul, composed of an intellect which can know truth and a will which is free. . . . Believing this, Catholics can never adhere to any political theory which holds that the state is a separate, distinct organization to which allegiance must be paid rather than a representative institution which derives its powers from the consent of the governed.” He also cautioned the graduates about “the absorbing hands of the great Leviathan” and warned against the “ever expanding power of the federal government”. He even made a lucid statement on the principle of subsidiarity, when he said that “control over local affairs is the essence of liberty.”95

But when Kennedy had his eye on national politics, he could be equivocal on certain popular Catholic issues. After the public brawl between Cardinal Spellman and Eleanor Roosevelt over

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