"It's Not The Pope, It's The Pop"

Bill Fling
Anaheim, California

This writer and others have warned the public of the political doctrines of the Roman Catholic Church as they would pertain to the election of a Catholic president. The pressure that could and would be brought to bear upon such a president to accomplish the Vatican's purposes is not just fantasy. But now another source of pressure comes into the problem.

Drew Pearson reports (Garden Grove Daily News, July 6th, 1960): "The Kennedy fortune rates well ahead of the Rockefellers', the Henry Ford's . . . and the Whitney's. Fortune magazine lists Joseph Patrick Kennedy, father of the Senator, 12th among America's ruling families with a fortune estimated between $200 and $400 million". Old Joe, now 72, made his money in theaters, Scotch Whiskey, real estate, and by operating some of the best-rigged pools in Wall Street."

Mr. Pearson relates how Joe Kennedy, the ambitious senator's father, fought prohibition and "copped one of the biggest prizes-the American distributorship for Haig and Haig," (whiskey, that is-B.F.)

This man pretty much gets his way. The columnist quotes Harry Truman as saying, "It's not the Pope wo worries me, it's the pop." He further reports that "Pop " "doesn't hesitate a minute to throw his weight into the back-stage political arena-in phoning Gov. Pat Brown of California to line up delegates for Jack, in demanding retractions from net work TV executives who he thinks have been unfair to Jack, or getting on the long distance phones so often to West Virginia editors during the key primary. . . And when his son-in-law, Peter Lawford, who played the leading role in the Thin Man, was worried about his future, old Joe picked up the phone to tell MGMs Joe Vogel what to do about it." (emphasis mine-B.F.)

Pearson, who "has known Joe Kennedy for '28 Years," did not mean to alarm the American public, but had that effect on this reader. When one contemplates the combination of such evil forces as an ambitious and aggressive father-son combine, working in connection with an "Infallible Pope," It frightens one's imagination. As you will be seeing for the next few weeks, politicians will trade just about anything to get elected or re-elected. I hope my freedom of speech and religion, and yours, will not be traded off for a White House so-journ of 48 months. It's not only the pop and the Pope that worries me, but the combination of the two working through the third.

Jesus said, "The children of this world are wiser in their generation than the children of light." It's time for Christians to use a little of this wisdom and to look ahead and plan ahead that our freedom of worship and freedom of speech will never be diminished or destroyed. It has happened; it could happen here!

Truth Magazine IV:11; p. 1
August 1960