In a front page story about the role of religion in Republican campaigns, Telegram & Gazette reporter John Monahan, spoke exclusively with Mathew Schmalz, associate professor of religious studies at the College of the Holy Cross, about his experiences as a media commentator on issues related to religion and politics. The pair also spoke at length about Rick Santorum’s recent criticism of President John F. Kennedy’s famous speech on the separation of church and state, a story that Schmalz commented on for the Associated Press.
“It wasn't long before the national media turned to College of the Holy Cross professor Mathew N. Schmalz, a religion and culture expert who blogs for the Washington Post, for some perspective on the candidate's remarks,” Monahan noted. “Mr. Schmalz's comments that Mr. Santorum represented a minority of very vocal Catholics were carried in hundreds of television reports and newspapers.”
Schmalz cautioned that Kennedy was not, as Santorum claimed, calling on people to leave their moral and religious views outside the public square. “He was speaking at a particular moment in Catholic history in the United States when Catholics were emerging from the Catholic ghetto and were becoming much more assertive in public life and had assimilated to large measure,” he told the Telegram & Gazette. “It was a time of transition within Catholicism in the United States and Catholicism as a whole and Kennedy was speaking to those issues.”
This "Holy Cross in the News" item by Sara Bovat '14.
