From Houston's Rice Hotel, Senator John Kennedy is about to address a special meeting of the Greater Houston Ministerial Association to which he has been invited. During this telecast, Senator Kennedy will participate in an informal question and answer period. The telecast of this meeting is sponsored by the Kennedy-Johnson Texas Campaign Committee, and is being seen throughout Texas on a special 22-station network. The audience you are seeing is composed of clergymen of the Houston area who have been invited by the association.
Rev. Herbert Meza will introduce the Democratic presidential candidate... Reverend Herbert Meza, vice president of the association, and our program chairman.
MR.MEZA:
This program this evening does not constitute an endorsement of either the speaker or the party which he represents. The program has been motivated by the religious issues in this campaign, issues that are not modern. There are some who insist that nothing has changed within the Roman Catholic Church and there are others who insist that nothing should change. The problem is not to deny the religious issue or to brand as intolerant those who raise it. The problem is to place it in proper perspective and to determine where the candidate stands in relationship to that perspective. The extremists on both sides have tended to dominate the debate.
Contrary to common propaganda, the South is not a hotbed of religious or racial intolerance. There are many honest minds that are raising honest questions. Many Catholics differ with us on many questions that are relevant to the welfare of our country. The fact that the Senator is with us is to concede that a religious issue does exist. It is because that there are many serious minds decently raising questions that we have invited the speaker of the evening, and it is for that same reason that we have allowed this meeting to be broadcast to that end.
I should like to introduce, at this time, the Senator from Massachusetts and the candidate for President of the United States, Senator John F. Kennedy.
- Preliminary remarks from UCSB.edu
- Speech transcript from JFK Library
- YouTube Clip (excerpt)
- MP3 - audio only
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Reverend Meza, Reverend Reck, I'm grateful for your generous invitation to speak my views.
While the so-called religious issue is necessarily and properly the chief topic here tonight, I want to emphasize from the outset that we have far more critical issues to face in the 1960 election; the spread of Communist influence, until it now festers 90 miles off the coast of Florida -- the humiliating treatment of our President and Vice President by those who no longer respect our power -- the hungry children I saw in West Virginia, the old people who cannot pay their doctor bills, the families forced to give up their farms -- an America with too many slums, with too few schools, and too late to the moon and outer space.
These are the real issues which should decide this campaign. And they are not religious issues -- for war and hunger and ignorance and despair know no religious barriers.
But because I am a Catholic, and no Catholic has ever been elected President, the real issues in this campaign have been obscured -- perhaps deliberately, in some quarters less responsible than this. So it is apparently necessary for me to state once again -- not what kind of church I believe in, for that should be important only to me -- but what kind of America I believe in.