�鶹��

Available for over a year

Good morning. Today marks the 60th anniversary of the assassination of John F Kennedy, a tragedy from which the United States never recovered its self-confidence. In popular myth, Kennedy was a virile war hero who had rescued the world from the Cuban Missile Crisis. His rhetoric pledged peace, reconciliation and the conquest of the moon. His very election, in 1960, was a historic first: the first Catholic to serve as president, a sign that religious intolerance was fading. Lee Harvey Oswald’s senseless act robbed America of this youthful promise. Of course, Kennedy did make mistakes in office - and had he lived, had his looks faded and his extra marital affairs become known, he might be remembered less fondly. There’s a debate, too, about the nature of his religion. Kennedy insisted that he wouldn’t let the Pope tell him what to do, and he opposed federal funding for church schools and respected a ban on school prayer. The price of integrating Catholics into political life, grumbled some of his contemporaries, was the downplaying of what made Catholics different. JFK governed at a time when America was becoming more secular and liberal, triggering the conservative reaction that led all the way to former president Donald J Trump. In the decades after his assassination, America’s politics became uglier and more partisan, and many voters even think Oswald was part of a wider conspiracy - that perhaps the government itself covered up the truth. One thing Americans do agree on, however, is their admiration for JFK. He routinely places high in polls for best presidents - perhaps less for what he actually did than the potential he embodied. Shared historical experience, good or bad, binds us together. Ask people of a certain age “where were you when Kennedy was shot?”, and they’ll tell you - just as many remember his son, John Jr, barely three years old, saluting at the funeral. John Jnr was later killed in a plane crash. Robert Kennedy was assassinated, too. The Kennedy family embody the possibilities of life and its fragility- the importance of making the most of one’s talents and directing them towards service of others. I’d say Kennedy ranks as one of our “secular martyrs”, men and women - of some faith and none - who were killed while trying to make the world a better place. Jack’s motivation was belief in God’s purpose for his country and for humanity. Shortly before his murder he had quoted a mix of Proverbs and the Book of Joel: “Your old men shall dream dreams, your young men shall see visions,” he said, and ”where there is no vision the people perish.” Nations, like individuals, require hope to thrive.