Magic Underwear

Mitt Romney and Rick Santorum, the two candidates for the Republican presidential nomination who finished in a virtual tie in the Iowa caucuses, are a Mormon and a Catholic.

In 1928 Al Smith was the Democratic nominee for president, and he was the first Catholic to be a major party candidate. After losing to Herbert Hoover, Smith again sought the Democratic nomination in 1932 but lost to Franklin Roosevelt. Many were convinced the United States would never have a Catholic president, and there was much talk in 1960 about religion when John F. Kennedy was the Democratic nominee and some said he would take direction from the pope. JFK took on that question very directly and effectively:

"I am not the Catholic candidate for President. I am the Democratic Party's candidate for President who also happens to be a Catholic. I do not speak for my Church on public matters — and the Church does not speak for me."

But I am convinced the election of 1960 should not have been the squeaker it turned out to be. If not for the anti-Catholic vote, I believe Kennedy would have won by a much larger margin over Nixon. The "experts" said Kennedy got 70-80% of the Catholic vote, as that demographic showed its solidarity with the candidate, and that "cancelled out" the anti-Catholic vote.

I'm not buying that. Norman Vincent Peale, an influential Protestant minister (and author of the famous book, The Power of Positive Thinking), organized a committee of over 150 members of the clergy to oppose Kennedy. Peale said our culture was at stake and that election of a Catholic could mean the end of the First Amendment (meaning that Kennedy, under pressure from the Church, would seek to make this a Catholic country).

The influence of this anti-Catholic sentiment on the election cannot be easily gauged. There was no exit polling in 1960, and even if there had been, it is doubtful that many people who voted for Nixon because of anti-Catholic sentiment would have admitted that to a pollster.

Forty years later there was surprisingly little talk about religion when U.S. Senator Joe Lieberman was the Democratic candidate for vice president, the first Jew to be on a major party presidential ticket. And more than half a century later, little mention is made of the fact that Rick Santorum is Catholic.

The First Amendment to the United States Constitution says, "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof...." This means, among other things, that there is to be no official Church of the United States, as there was a Church of England, the existence of which was the principal reason for the first phrase. The Framers were determined that religious liberty would be a hallmark of American society.

Yes, we have had our problems with tension between Protestants and Catholics ever since the first big wave of Catholic immigration in the mid-1840s (remember the Irish potato famine?). But the election of Jack Kennedy seems to have taken us past that, at least in presidential politics.

Why, then, is it considered trendy - rather than highly politically incorrect - to make derisive references to polygamy, which officially ended as a matter of Mormon church doctrine in 1890, and "magic underwear?"

The practice of protestant Christianity includes little of the sort of religious ritual associated with Catholicism, Judaism, or Islam. And so I can understand that Protestants find the ritual wearing of a religious garment somehow strange. The first time a colleague mentioned "magic underwear" to me last year, I had no idea what she was talking about, because I had never read or heard very much about the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (known for short as LDS or the Mormon Church). So I did some reading. And, in the process, I learned a bit about the Temple garment worn by many members of the LDS church. I won't elaborate on it here, as those interested can easily read about it for themselves (see, for example, the Wikipedia article at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Temple_garment).

So, again, I can understand that most who know little or nothing about Mormonism would find this strange. What I cannot understand is why, in a nation that has been a beacon of religious liberty and tolerance to the world for well over two centuries, it is today considered somehow acceptable or appropriate to make this a subject of ridicule. We are better than that.