“A journal of opinion,” former America editor in chief Joseph A. O’Hare, S.J., was fond of claiming, “must have an opinion.” It was his means of encouraging America’s editors to have a singular editorial place in every print subject, even when the occasions or actors of the day didn’t all the time appear to benefit a deep dive or prolonged evaluation. The state of affairs will get somewhat dicey relating to endorsing political candidates or events—America is a non secular non-profit, in spite of everything—however the editors do attempt to provide knowledge and perception on political problems with the day whereas steering away from demonizing or lionizing particular politicians.
Effectively, more often than not. The Nineteen Fifties introduced us a politician the America editors merely couldn’t resist, and he has remained an apparent favourite by means of the years: John F. Kennedy. We now have a joke across the workplace concerning the sheer variety of tales in America over time that begin with “What St. Ignatius can educate us about X,” however a detailed second is perhaps “What would J.F.Okay. do?”
The Nineteen Fifties introduced us a politician the America editors merely couldn’t resist, and he has remained an apparent favourite by means of the years: John F. Kennedy.
Kennedy himself wrote for America as a United States senator in 1957, revising a speech he gave on the Senate flooring on the political disaster in Algeria for publication within the journal. The best way France and the United Nations dealt with the way forward for the French colony (it might acquire independence in 1962), he warned, would have long-term penalties for the remainder of Africa as Europe’s outdated colonial empires fell aside. The speech, famous America editor Matt Malone, S.J., in a 2017 retrospective, “landed Kennedy on the entrance web page of The New York Instances and in scorching water with the pro-French international coverage institution.”
Sen. Kennedy’s conclusion would mockingly show painfully apt—not essentially for the French, however for the USA: “Neither France nor the Atlantic Alliance can afford one other Indo-China.”
Kennedy’s presidential victory three years later, although, actually elevated him within the pages of America. The editors in contrast his 1961 inaugural deal with to “deathless paperwork of the previous” like Abraham Lincoln’s second inaugural. “It was wealthy in literary, biblical and historic overtones,” the editors wrote, and “studded with quotable gems,” together with the well-known line: “And so, my fellow People: ask not what your nation can do for you—ask what you are able to do on your nation.” Certainly, the editors wrote, the speech “echoed the ringing phrases Shakespeare put into the mouth of King Henry V on the eve of Agincourt” in his well-known “St. Crispin’s Day” speech.
Kennedy’s election to the presidency, wrote the famous historian Charles R. Morris in America in 2009, “was the primary nice Catholic occasion of the last decade, and there was a definite emotional arc to America’s protection of his White Home run.” First, there was a dispassionate examination of the obligations of a Catholic officeholder; then open bitterness as Protestant anti-Kennedy mobilization portended one other prejudice-laced Al Smith marketing campaign; subsequent near-giddy incredulity on the Kennedy ballot surge after the primary televised debate; and at last unabashed pleasure on the last ratification of ‘full first-class citizenship’ for American Catholics.”
“We pray that he could relaxation in peace—his noble soul with God for all eternity, his nonetheless youthful physique awaiting the resurrection of the useless.”
The brand new president, the editors wrote, “a person who for all his youth has endured ache and lived with dying,” was “wedding ceremony American idealism and American energy” and had “summoned free males to a grand campaign.” When he was killed in 1963, the editors echoed a nation’s sorrow: “Phrase of the infamy of November 22 thundered upon us with the heart-stopping suddenness of a midair collision or of a step over the brink into darkness,” they wrote. “We pray that he could relaxation in peace—his noble soul with God for all eternity, his nonetheless youthful physique awaiting the resurrection of the useless.”
His dying, wrote Joe McAuley in 2014, left “a numbing ache that by no means went away and endless conspiracy theories that warped the nationwide psyche, as a substitute of the goals, the targets and the promise he needed the American nation to have and obtain.”
Within the years since, a protracted line of distinguished writers have opined in America on John F. Kennedy’s position and which means in American life: James W. Douglass, Helen Prejean, C.S.J., Francis X. Clooney, S.J., Karen Sue Smith, John Conley, S.J., James R. Kelly, amongst many others.
Would our editors and contributors be so keen on a younger JFK in the present day? Would the nation? Would American Catholics? CBS reporter Bob Schieffer, who coated Kennedy’s assassination, stated his dying and the encircling occasions have been the “weekend that America misplaced its innocence.” Wanting again by means of America’s pages, that remark rings considerably true: For higher or for worse, the starry-eyed optimism of 1961 is basically lacking today relating to any politician or political motion.
It’s been a minute since Psalm 146 warned us “Put not your belief in princes, nor within the kids of males,” and that recommendation holds in the present day. Nonetheless, it’s enjoyable to suppose on Camelot.
Would our editors and contributors be so keen on a younger JFK in the present day? Would the nation? Would American Catholics?
•••
Our poetry choice for this week is “Sunday Morning Mattress,” by Jasmine Marshall Armstrong. Readers can view all of America’s revealed poems right here.
On this house each week, America options critiques of and literary commentary on one explicit author or group of writers (each new and outdated; our archives span greater than a century), in addition to poetry and different choices from America Media. We hope it will give us an opportunity to supply you extra in-depth protection of our literary choices. It additionally permits us to alert digital subscribers to a few of our on-line content material that doesn’t make it into our newsletters.
Different Catholic Ebook Membership columns:
Theophilus Lewis introduced the Harlem Renaissance to the pages of America
William Lynch, the best American Jesuit you’ve most likely by no means heard of
Parish priest, sociologist, novelist: The various imaginations of Father Andrew Greeley
Leonard Feeney, America’s solely excommunicated literary editor (thus far)
Joan Didion: A chronicler of recent life’s horrors and consolations
Pleased studying!
James T. Keane
