Topic: CNSNews.com
CNSNews.com managing editor Michael W. Chapman turns in another one of his "news" articles that put a right-wing political agenda before facts in pursuit of the Media Research Center's dishonest war on Margaret Sanger.
In that Sept. 7 "news" article, Chapman obsesses over Sanger's criticism of Catholics, highlighting that "Planned Parenthood founder Margaret Sanger opposed the Catholic Church for decades because of its moral teachings and its theology in general, to the point that in 1960, when John F. Kennedy, a Catholic, ran for president, Sanger said if he were elected, she would “find another place to live.”
But Chapman is a curiously incurious "reporter": Completely missing from his article is the fact that Sanger was far from alone in opposing to Kennedy's election on the basis of his Catholicism. Indeed, two of the most prominent people in invoking anti-Catholic sentiment against JFK in the 1960 presidential election was his Republican opponent, Richard Nixon, and Billy Graham.
As detailed in the book “The Making of a Catholic President: Kennedy vs. Nixon 1960″ by Shaun A. Casey, major Protestant denominations and influential Protestant leaders teamed with the Republican Party and Nixon to feed anti-Catholic prejudice among the large Protestant voting majority to try and prevent JFK's election. One reviewer summarizes:
Famous names like the Rev. Billy Graham and Norman Vincent Peale are uncovered as joining in, nay, leading the charge, in order to keep the Catholic Kennedy from the White House.
Casey’s research shows how Protestant ministers and church leaders used their pulpits and their printing presses to blatantly state that no Catholic could ever be trusted to uphold the U.S. Constitution as president.
[...]
In going after the anti-Catholic vote, Nixon took up a suggestion from Rev. Billy Graham, who wrote in a letter to the then vice president, “when the chips are down I think the religious issue would be very strong and might conceivable work in your behalf.” Graham in fact shared his mailing list with the anti-Kennedy efforts.
Graham even lied to Kennedy about not being involved in anti-Catholic efforts against him. Randall Balmer writes:
On August 10, 1960, for example, Graham sent a letter to John F. Kennedy, the Democratic nominee for president and only the second Roman Catholic to run on a major-party ticket. Graham assured Kennedy in no uncertain terms that, contrary to rumors, the evangelist had no intention of raising the “religious issue” during the course of the campaign.
Eight days later, however, Graham convened a gathering of American Protestant ministers in Montreaux, Switzerland, to discuss how to derail Kennedy’s campaign. The follow-up to the Montreaux meeting was a closed-door gathering of 150 Protestant clergy at the Mayflower Hotel in Washington on November 7—the purpose of which, once again, was to sound the alarm about the dangers of a Roman Catholic in the White House.
None of this makes Chapman's article -- possibly because he's an admirer and sycophant of Graham's son, Franklin Graham, and would rather hide the truth than dare to make his idol mad. But then, hiding facts to advance a political agenda is what Chapman's CNS is all about these days.
