[Full Disclosure: While I am not a practicing Catholic, I still consider myself to be a member of the Church. Growing up I attended 16 years of Catholic School, including St. John's University in NYC. --Tony Palmeri]
Given that he's running for the presidency in the middle of a global pandemic, depressed economy, and the most widespread racial justice protests since 1968, it's not surprising that Joe Biden's religious background has received limited media attention. Yet if he does prevail in November, Mr. Biden would be only the second Catholic ever to occupy the White House. The first of course was John Fitzgerald Kennedy. Biden takes his faith seriously, and in 2005 said, "The next Republican that tells me I'm not religious, I'm going to shove my rosary down their throat."
Back in the day, anti-Catholic bigotry made it virtually impossible for Catholic candidates to capture the presidency. New York Governor Al Smith, Democratic party nominee for president in 1928, could not overcome hysterical reactions to his Catholicism in some parts of the country; in the deep south the Ku Klux Klan campaigned actively for Republican Herbert Hoover. Political historian Allan Lichtman concluded that “the religious issue was by far the most important influence on voting.” (cited in Jay Dolan, "The Right of a Catholic to Be President," Notre Dame Magazine, 2008).
Above: Sample Ku Klux Klan rhetoric used against Al Smith in 1928. Klansmen argued that if a Catholic were elected President, he would take orders from the Pope. Such sentiments had widespread support in the United States for many years.
