We American Catholics, of course, look back to a time when no Catholic had ever served as president of the United States — a time, furthermore, when the thought of a Catholic president was controversial.

Article six, section three of the U.S. Constitution clarifies that "no religious test shall ever be required as a qualification to any office or public trust under the United States." It is a general, though not sufficiently nuanced, belief that all presidents other than Kennedy have been Protestant Christians. And there have been many people who have supposed that presidents, despite what the Constitution says, must be partakers in a supposed "civil religion" to be equated with some sort of generic Protestantism. To this day, in spite of the Constitution's insistence on "no religious test ... ever," it remains questionable whether anyone clearly non-Christian could be elected president.

It is instructive to return to Kennedy's address to the Greater Houston Ministerial Association on Sept. 12, 1960, a few weeks before the general presidential election. Kennedy framed the issue as a statement of "what kind of America I believe in." He stressed the non-discrimination guaranteed by the Constitution but still to be achieved in our society.

Kennedy's words to the ministers display an uplifting defiance of attitudes held, "in some quarters less responsible than this," by those who would suppose that Catholics are essentially foreigners directed by an alien meddler, the pope. "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."

He noted that, in regard to himself, a U.S. Navy veteran, and his brother Joseph who died in World War II, "no one suggested that we might have a 'divided loyalty.'" He continued: "If this election is decided on the basis that 40 million Americans lost their chance of being president on the day they were baptized, then it is the whole nation that will be the loser."

Since 1960, many of Kennedy's statements in this speech have impacted the ongoing struggle in our country to articulate how religious conviction plays its necessary role in our public interaction. It is unfortunate that much of the impact has been toward the idea that public officials must look upon their religious convictions as "private" — in other words, that any initiative which might be construed as deriving from a body of religious belief must be suffocated. This misconception is one of the greatest problems with which the American people have lived. The issue is often understood as warding against the "imposition" of "private" beliefs on those who do not share a person's religious creed.

In fact, the freedom and non-establishment of religion which we enjoy in this country is the opportunity for American citizens to understand, first of all, that we have the right to our convictions, including those with a religious source. Further, we have the right to seek to convince fellow Americans of the rightness of our convictions, because they are right, not because they are ours. It seems, however, that human beings have a very hard time sorting out and recognizing these very important distinctions. We must yet build upon the eloquence of John F. Kennedy and continue to articulate what it means to act upon our religious convictions in public life.