Last weekend, we passed the 46th anniversary of the assassination of President John Fitzgerald Kennedy. Like many people my age, I remember just where I was when I heard the news — my 2nd grade classroom. And I remember the tears my teacher shed as she shared what she had just learned with us.

An awful lot of Americans weren’t even born on November 22, 1963. For many of them, the seminal moment in their lives is likely September 11, 2001. Their lives after that date have been filled with fear and dread, suspicion and division. This post is for them.

On September 12, 1960 — in the middle of the presidential campaign — Kennedy delivered a speech to the Greater Houston Ministerial Association. The speech came about because Kennedy was a Roman Catholic, much like Barack Obama’s race speech last year. We’ve forgotten what Kennedy said that day, and I think it’s imperative that we remember.

While the so-called religious issue is necessarily and properly the chief topic here tonight, I want to emphasize from the outset that we have far more critical issues to face in the 1960 election; the spread of Communist influence, until it now festers 90 miles off the coast of Florida — the humiliating treatment of our President and Vice President by those who no longer respect our power —  the hungry children I saw in West Virginia, the old people who cannot pay their doctor bills, the families forced to give up their farms — an America with too many slums, with too few schools, and too late to the moon and outer space.

These are the real issues which should decide this campaign. And they are not religious issues — for war and hunger and ignorance and despair know no religious barriers.

But because I am a Catholic, and no Catholic has ever been elected President, the real issues in this campaign have been obscured — perhaps deliberately, in some quarters less responsible than this. So it is apparently necessary for me to state once again — not what kind of church I believe in, for that should be important only to me — but what kind of America I believe in.

I believe in an America where the separation of church and state is absolute — where no Catholic prelate would tell the President (should he be Catholic) how to act, and no Protestant minister would tell his parishoners for whom to vote — where no church or church school is granted any public funds or political preference — and where no man is denied public office merely because his religion differs from the President who might appoint him or the people who might elect him.

I believe in an America that is officially neither Catholic, Protestant nor Jewish — where no public official either requests or accepts instructions on public policy from the Pope, the National Council of Churches or any other ecclesiastical source — where no religious body seeks to impose its will directly or indirectly upon the general populace or the public acts of its officials — and where religious liberty is so indivisible that an act against one church is treated as an act against all.

For while this year it may be a Catholic against whom the finger of suspicion is pointed, in other years it has been, and may someday be again, a Jew — or a Quaker — or a Unitarian — or a Baptist. It was Virginia’s harassment of Baptist preachers, for example, that helped lead to Jefferson’s statute of religious freedom. Today I may be the victim– but tomorrow it may be you — until the whole fabric of our harmonious society is ripped at a time of great national peril.

Finally, I believe in an America where religious intolerance will someday end — where all men and all churches are treated as equal — where every man has the same right to attend or not attend the church of his choice — where there is no Catholic vote, no anti-Catholic vote, no bloc voting of any kind — and where Catholics, Protestants and Jews, at both the lay and pastoral level, will refrain from those attitudes of disdain and division which have so often marred their works in the past, and promote instead the American ideal of brotherhood.

There’s more, but you get the idea. I bring this up because earlier this month, the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops joined in the House negotiations on health care reform, creating language that is almost certain to eliminate insurance coverage for abortions in the near future. The conference did so because Catholic representatives — Democratic Catholic representatives — announced loudly that they would not vote for a bill that was not approved by their bishop.

I have to think that Kennedy rolled in his grave, and, since the bishops are now stamping their feet at the Senate, is still doing so.

What part of an “absolute” separation of church and state do these bishops — and Congress — not understand? When Kennedy said

I believe in an America that is officially neither Catholic, Protestant nor Jewish — where no public official either requests or accepts instructions on public policy from the Pope, the National Council of Churches or any other ecclesiastical source — where no religious body seeks to impose its will directly or indirectly upon the general populace or the public acts of its officials

it was the clearest statement ever on the place of religion in politics. My, how we’ve changed. During John Kerry’s campaign for president, we heard a lot about certain bishops decreeing that he should not take communion because of his position on abortion. And now, a Kennedy — the assassinated president’s nephew Patrick — has been told not to do so.

And my beloved colleagues, of course, have completely forgotten Kennedy’s message. They’ve forgotten a lot of other things, too. Like, for example, the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops’ stand on the death penalty.

We believe that in the conditions of contemporary American society, the legitimate purposes of punishment do not justify the imposition of the death penalty.

In arguing for the abolition of the death penalty, the bishops make four key points.

• Ab0lition sends a message that we can break the cycle of violence, that we need not take life for life, that we can envisage more humane and more hopeful and effective responses to the growth of violent crime.
• Abolition of capital punishment is also a manifestation of our belief in the unique worth and dignity of each person from the moment of conception, a creature made in the image and likeness of God.
• Abolition of the death penalty is further testimony to our conviction, a conviction which we share with the Judaic and Islamic traditions, that God is indeed the Lord of life.
• We believe that abolition of the death penalty is most consonant with the example of Jesus.

Funny. I’ve not heard a single bishop call for the supporters of capital punishment to refrain from communion.

Ten years ago in Texas — of course — jurors used the bible to justify their sentence of death for Khristian Oliver, convicted of shooting and bludgeoning an elderly man to death. The courts — all the way up to the Supreme Court — have refused to overturn the sentence. And the jurors, interestingly enough — who were reading the Old Testament book of Numbers to decide the sentence — stopped short of the verses that call for an “alternative sentence” of being sent to a city of refuge until the high priest dies, at which time the convicted is free to go. Learned that from PZ Myers, who noted that a sentence like that was pretty unlikely in 21st Century America.

But the barbaric death penalty is very likely. Three years after Kennedy’s death, less than half of Americans favored capital punishment. Now? 75 percent.

And for what? Retribution? Revenge? Yes, and yes. I gotta tell ya, Christians are an odd lot sometimes. Wasn’t one of the big teachings of Jesus forgiveness, turning the other cheek? I don’t remember any exceptions to that. Guess that’s why the conservative religionists want to “retranslate” the bible to get rid of liberal ideas like not killing people.

Seriously. A few weeks ago, we were all a-twitter over the execution of the Beltway Sniper, John Allen Muhammad, presumably because everyone thought he was a Muslim terrorist or something, with a name like that. Don’t you feel all better now that he’s dead? Jesse Taylor:

I, for one, am glad that we finally stopped the Beltway Sniper from not committing all those murders in maximum security prison.

It’s comforting to know that years after he actually did kill people, and after one of the most powerful displays imaginable of our prison system’s ability to keep him from shooting anyone else, we finally got that fucker.  I know I’ll sleep better tonight knowing that the next psychopath with a sniper rifle will be deterred from going on a rampage after he first goes on a rampage, is caught, imprisoned, put on trial and kept under lock and key for several more years before lethal chemicals are injected into his strapped-down body.

Rest safe, Pandagonians.  If someone does something terrible to you or someone you love tomorrow, then by 2020 or so they’ll almost certainly be dead, which will make everything better.

Next up, let’s kill Nidal Hasan. And after that, of course, those really nasty terrorists who will be going on trial on American soil, during which, of course, they’ll be given a soap box to spread their views in a federal courtroom where no recording devices of any type except pencil and paper are allowed.

And after that, we’ll kill ‘em. But no bishop will object, and we’ll have have communion afterward.