What They Wished For: American Catholics & American Presidents, 1960–2004 by Lawrence J. McAndrews (review)

In this text, St. Norbert College historian Lawrence J. McAndrews traces the influence of America’s largest religious denomination, Roman Catholicism, on modern presidential politics from the election of the nation’s first Catholic president, John F. Kennedy in 1960, to the defeat of his first Catholic successor, John Kerry in 2004. Kennedy and Kerry provide McAndrews nice bookends to argue that the Catholic Church has exerted tremendous influence in the almost half century between the two men. Faced with discrimination, Catholics put their religion before their fractious politics to help propel Kennedy. Having then gained acceptance economically and politically, however, Catholics were able to put their politics ahead of their religion in helping to defeat Kerry. Catholicism had arrived. As the power of American Catholics grew, McAndrews argues, it always struggled with its diversity and hardly won every battle. Nevertheless, it was not just the secularism of the 1960s and 1970s, or the power of the Protestant Religious Right that resulted in the 1980s and 1990s, that guided America’s leaders. Catholics had gained a place at the table, influencing politics and policy in a way as never before.

Summarizing the influence of a religion that is diverse and historically fractious, needless to say, is no easy task. Not only are there racial, cultural, economic, gender, and partisan divisions among American Catholics, the church has evolved. It has never been stagnant. Moreover, the range of policy issues is quite broad while the political parties were themselves dynamic. In short, there are a lot of moveable parts in McAndrews’s story. To give his analysis some order, McAndrews provides the necessary introduction in which he notes the context and defines his terms. After a brief historical overview of Catholicism in America, McAndrews explains the church hierarchy and theology that he uses to define Catholicism. The “fundamental tenets” (4) that McAndrews employs include the idea of a “just war” in international affairs and, in domestic and social matters, the concepts of “general justice” and the pursuit of the “common good.” McAndrews notes how the church has interrupted these concepts over time, including a concern that the free market did not always result in social justice. Also important to the church, McAndrews adds, were issues of “life and death,” including contraception and abortion. “Throughout these tumultuous times, many American Catholics warily and yet wisely negotiated the political landscape by taking on the courts, playing off the political parties, fending off other churches, and fighting off critics within their own ranks,” McAndrews concludes. “The more their adversaries told them to stay out of politics, the further these Catholics, led by their popes and bishops, waded in.” American Catholics “never found shelter from the prevailing political winds,” but they were, nevertheless, frequently “effective in steering those concepts in the direction of the Church” (9).

Having set the stage, McAndrews proceeds chronologically through nine chapters, one chapter for each president. At the end, McAndrews provides a brief conclusion. The Cold War, Vietnam, and civil rights not surprisingly play prominently in McAndrews’s discussion of Kennedy and Johnson, where the church had more success than in matters of birth control. Interestingly, McAndrews notes that the anti-authoritarian views of the Johnson and Nixon years ensured that the church’s leaders were “only as effective as their reception by the people in the pews” (93). McAndrews clearly favors the theology espoused but remains impartial in judging the church’s challenges and effectiveness. Nixon, McAndrews adds, was especially interested in winning the perceived “Catholic vote,” which, in the end, moved him toward peace in Vietnam and away from welfare reform. With abortion growing as an issue, McAndrews’s discussion of Carter’s struggles and Reagan’s certitude are the most interesting portions of the book. Readers will find the material on the most recent presidents familiar, leaving the impression once again of mixed success. In the end, the Catholic Church “achieved measurable...