Some analysts are suggesting that Rick Santorum may have lost the Michigan primary because of his criticism of Jack Kennedy’s Houston speech in which JFK assured Americans that his administration would not be beholding to the directives of a religious leader in Rome. I would suggest that the reason there are as many Catholics in elected government positions as there are today is because Americans took JFK’s assurances to heart and voted for these candidates’ political positions rather than for their Catholic affiliation. If Catholics want to reverse that trend, I can think of no better way than to now assure Americans that Catholics candidates will place their allegiance to the Church above their allegiance to their country.
I’m not suggesting that a candidate’s religious preferences do not or cannot inform their policy choices, but I think the OP severely underestimates the blow back that might result from a coordinated effort to establish this as a Catholic country. While Catholics may count on support from other sects in regards to issues such as gay marriage and abortion, that support could very well be offset or even over-ridden by other issues such as immigration reform, contraceptive use and death penalty abolition where a significant number of Americans disagree with Catholic positions.
