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1 Reverend Meza, Reverend Reck,

2 I'm grateful for your generous invitation to state my views. While the so-called
3 religious issue is necessarily and properly the chief topic here tonight, I want
4 to emphasize from the outset that I believe that we have far more critical issues
5 in the 1960 campaign; the spread of Communist influence, until it now festers
6 only 90 miles from the coast of Florida - the humiliating treatment of our
7 President and Vice President by those who no longer respect our power - the
8 hungry children I saw in West Virginia, the old people who cannot pay their
9 doctors bills, the families forced to give up their farms - an America with too
10 many slums, with too few schools, and too late to the moon and outer space.
11 These are the real issues which should decide this campaign. And they are not
12 religious issues- for war and hunger and ignorance and despair know no
13 religious barrier.

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

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

26 I believe in an America that is officially neither Catholic, Protestant nor
27 Jewish; where no public official either requests or accept instructions on
28 public policy from the Pope, the National Council of Churches or any other
29 ecclesiastical source; where no religious body seeks to impose its will directly
30 or indirectly upon the general populace or the public acts of its officials,
31 and where religious liberty is so indivisible that an act against one church is
32 treated as an act against all. For while this year it may be a Catholic against
33 whom the finger of suspicion is pointed, in other years it has been - and may
34 someday be again - a Jew, or a Quaker, or a Unitarian, or a Baptist. It was
35 Virginia's harassment of Baptist preachers, for example, that led to Jefferson's
36 statute of religious freedom. Today, I may be the victim, but tomorrow it may be
37 you - until the whole fabric of our harmonious society is ripped apart at a time
38 of great national peril.

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

46 That is the kind of America in which I believe. And it represents the kind of
47 Presidency in which I believe, a great office that must be neither humbled by
48 making it the instrument of any religious group nor tarnished by arbitrarily
49 withholding it - its occupancy from the members of any one religious group.

50 I believe in a President whose views on religion are his own private affair,
51 neither imposed upon him by the nation, nor imposed by the nation upon him¹ as a
52 condition to holding that office. I would not look with favor upon a President
53 working to subvert the first amendment's guarantees of religious liberty; nor
54 would our system of checks and balances permit him to do so. And neither do I
55 look with favor upon those who would work to subvert Article VI of the
56 Constitution by requiring a religious test, even by indirection. For if they
57 disagree with that safeguard, they should be openly working to repeal it.

58 I want a Chief Executive whose public acts are responsible to all and obligated
59 to none, who can attend any ceremony, service, or dinner his office may
60 appropriately require of him to fulfill; and whose fulfillment of his
61 Presidential office is not limited or conditioned by any religious oath,
62 ritual, or obligation.

Grade 11 Supporting Details

Based on the information in the passage, it can be inferred that Article VI of the Constitution, referenced in line 55 of the passage, prohibits

the President from speaking publicly about religion.
citizens being required to take a religious test to work in the government.
immigrants from having to adopt a new religion when they enter the country.
Baptist preachers from speaking out against the President in public forums.

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Supporting Details Question

Grade 11 Supporting Details