Bob Jones Sr. Quotes

JFK was running for the Presidency and was Roman Catholic. There was a great deal of anti-Catholic prejudice in the country with many people fearing that a Catholic President would mean Papal control of the United States. Peale was the most influential American clergyman of the day, and while he did not overtly oppose the Kennedy candidacy, he did state that he thought the election of a Catholic would profoundly change America. Kennedy won by a thin margin, but none of the events that the anti-Catholics feared, came to pass.

Smith was the first Catholic to run for the Presidency. There were many who opposed him who were anti-Catholic bigots. Were it not for this religious discrimination Smith would almost certainly have been President.

It was not until 1780 that Catholics were allowed to even be members of Town Corporations.

Kennedy was a Roman Catholic and there was a great deal of anti-Catholic prejudice in the country then. Al Smith, the only Catholic who had run for the Presidency, was defeated with almost all his opposition coming from anti-Catholic forces appealing to the then popular prejudice that if a Catholic became President, the Pope and the Vatican would be running America. Richard Nixon, a master politician with few scruples, cleverly kept raising the religious question in the voters minds by saying that he would not make Kennedy’s religion and issue of the campaign. Kennedy barely won.

The then current example was with same sex marriage. Some people who claimed that their religion declared same sex marriage as a sin and prohibited their aiding and abetting that activity. As a result, they claimed that their right of religious freedom allowed a county clerk to refuse to issue the marriage license or a hotel to refuse to allow a gay couple to rent their facility for a wedding, or a retail store to refuse to sell the couple bedding.

Kennedy was being hurt be fears that as a Catholic, he would be beholden to the Pope and the Catholic Bishops. There were many protestants who believed that the Catholic Church was antithetical to democracy and some who even believed that Catholicism was the religion of Satan. Kennedy decided to confront the issue head on.

This quotation was used by the Lyndon B. Johnson 1964 Campaign as: “We represent the majority of the people in Alabama who hate niggerism, Catholicism, Judaism, and all the isms of the whole world.” So said Robert Creel of the Alabama Ku Klux Klan. He also said, “I like Barry Goldwater. He needs our help.” The second statement was made at a different time.

Michener had chaired a county campaign committee and discovered that most great amount of the virulent, anti-Catholic, messages and materials that impinged on the campaign were tax-exempt religious publications and church newsletters.

Responding to criticisms by Rev. Jerry Falwell about America's moral decline: See also, Mark Russell

What the historian did not know was how similarly the Protestants would behave against the Catholics when they had the power. Since the Catholics were the established church, and the Protestants the new “heretics” the Protestants were on the receiving end of most of the atrocities at the beginning. However, as if they had been scholled by their horrible experiences, they repeated them just exchanging the perpetrators and the victims.

While this was his opinion, it was never issued in a Papal Bull or had the force of Catholic law. Meanwhile, almost all of the socialist movements in the West have had Catholics in their leadership and many democrats of modern times would have been considered socialist. Many countries with high proportions of Catholic voters have elected socialist governments in secluding Spain and Italy.

Actually, there was no initial concern or protest. The New York Boards voted unanimously to approve th project, Then one woman started complaining to the media and there were a number of people who also opposed the construction of a Then Islamaphobic people joined the protest, Many politicians observed that in Saudi Arabia, the nation from which most of the 9-11 attackers came from, it is but the country, it is illegal to bring a Bible into tnot only illegal to build a Christian Church or Jewish Synagogue ANYWHERE in the nation while America already has thousands of Mosques, Most other Islamic countries make it difficult if not impossible for a non Muslims to build a place of worship. Bloomberg reminded Americans that there was no objection that the government Constitutionally could make to the proposed mosque. Although other nations may prohibit religious construction, America was unique in adopting our First Amendment, the Separation of Church and State, and while a number of countries since have emulated America, most nations have not reached the point where they have matured sufficiently to realize the importance of separation of church and state. The fact that other nations do not follow American fundamental political principles which our founding Americans adopted, certainly does not mean that we should emulate them and abandon that which has made America such a great country and an example to the world. Ironically, the Muslim Imam in charge of the building project.

The origins of the extreme religious intolerance of Spain occurred centuries before the excesses of the Spanish Inquisition. Before the Conference the Visigoths and their king had been converted to Christianity but not all cared for the new religion.

New Ross was under siege by Cromwell and his English Parliamentarian troops. After two days, the town tried to negotiate terms of surrender and one of the main things they asked for was freedom of religion to practice Roman Catholicism. This famous response set the stage for religious bigotry over the next years. Cromwell’s reasons for not allowing Catholicism to be practiced was not only one of religious zeal. At the time, the Roman Catholic Church was a major geopolitical power under a Pope who commonly supported or even dispatched troops for geopolitical and religious ends. The Vatican was particularly resentful of England for separating from the Church and asserting that the King of England was the head of the Church and not the Pope. Therefore Cromwell and many Englishmen had to deal with the reality that every practicing Catholic in the realm was a potential spy, traitor, and/or rebel. This fear of control of countries by the Pope strongly affected America, and was responsible for the defeat of the first Catholic Presidential Candidate, Al Smith. It was also a major factor in the election of John F. Kennedy so he dealt with it head on.