Kennedy & the Confessional

In the darkness of a Washington confessional, the priest hears through the opaque screen a certain Harvard-trained Boston accent. The President of the U.S. has some problems to discuss with his confessor: "Would it be immoral for me to resume U-2 flights? May I or may I not support another invasion attempt by Cuban exiles? Am I offending God by my position against federal aid to parochial schools?"

Thus last week the Rev. John L. Reedy, editor of the Catholic weekly magazine Ave Maria, imagined himself involved in a scene whose possibilities have bothered many Protestants and Jews. Like all Catholics, including the Pope, the nation's first Catholic President is bound by church law to go to confession at least once a year* -- and he has already been more than a year in office. For Catholics. non-Catholics, and any who feared that a Catholic President might try to resolve the nation's problems with the help of some unknown grey eminence in a confessional box, the fascinating speculation is: What would the Presidential confessor reply if such questions were asked? In his own answer. Father Reedy suggested that non-Catholic fears have been misplaced. " On all these questions," he said at the annual Wisconsin Catholic Action Convention, "my advice as a confessor would be the same: 'You have the responsibility; you have to make your own decisions.' I could talk principles, but the difficulty in these discussions lies in the fantastically complex set of concrete circumstances to which the principle must be applied. In the knowledge of these circumstances, the President would be expert, not the confessor. No one--bishop, pastor or confessor--can free him from the responsibility for making his own decision on matters of this kind. I know of no wise confessor who would dare impose an obligation in such matters except in the most clear-cut cases of dishonesty." Since President Kennedy has taken some public positions which do not agree with those of the Catholic hierarchy, said Father Reedy, "a few of the religious spokesmen who voiced the gravest preelection fears have unfairly implied that Mr. Kennedy is a good Catholic President because he is a bad Catholic. The judgment flows from an ignorance of the Catholic's personal responsibility to his conscience, from an ignorance of the ordinary relationships between the Catholic and his confessor."

* In fulfilling his obligation, the President is free to pick his confessor (most Catholics confess to whatever priest happens to be avail able) and to switch to another if he does not find him satisfactory. The Pope usually announces the identity of his own confessor, who is currently an old friend of his from Venice, Msgr. Alfredo Cavagna. But this procedure would obviously be impractical for the President, since it would focus embarrassing publicity on his confessor, attract undue attention to the President's private religious life.

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