Once upon a time, a Catholic serving in high political office was a source first, of controversy, then, eventually, of celebration.

In 1960, the election of Democrat U.S. Senator John F. Kennedy as America’s first Catholic president was simultaneously a source of controversy or pride, depending where Americans stood on Catholicism.

Writing in his Pulitzer Prize-winning book The Making of the President 1960, author Theodore H. White noted that the “bosses and brokers of the Northeast” in the fight for the Democratic presidential nomination had looked at candidate Kennedy and “regarded him fondly as a fellow Catholic but, as a Catholic, hopelessly doomed to defeat.” There had never been a Catholic in the White House before, went the reasoning. America was supposedly too bigoted to elect one.

White went on to note that when candidate Kennedy campaigned in the Democratic primary in heavily protestant West Virginia, the handsome, young, war-hero Senator was pulling away in the polls, the latter of which showed him decisively defeating his opponent for the nomination, the Protestant Minnesota Senator Hubert Humphrey, by a 70-30 percent margin.

And then.

Then things suddenly and seemingly mysteriously changed, with Humphrey pulling ahead by a margin of 60-40 percent over Kennedy in the primary polls. White wrote:

“When Kennedy headquarters inquired of their West Virginia advisers what had happened to his (JFK’s) margin of December and the short end of the present 40-to-60 split, they were told, curtly, ‘But no one in West Virginia knew you were a Catholic in December. Now they know.’”

This ancient story is from another time in American politics. A time when anti-Catholic bias lay just beneath the political surface. (And noteworthy was that 32 years previously the 1928 Democrat nominee, the Catholic New York Governor Al Smith, was clobbered in that election. His huge defeat blamed in the day on his Catholicism.)

Yet those 32 years later the Catholic JFK confronted the issue of his religion head on in West Virginia, saying “I am not the Catholic candidate for President.” He added to a televised meeting with Baptists. “I am the Democratic Party’s candidate for president who happens also to be a Catholic.”) JFK won the West Virginia primary in an upset. And in the fall race between Kennedy and the GOP’s Vice President Richard Nixon, the Times not only endorsed Kennedy, the paper made no reference to JFK’s Catholicism at all in its endorsement. 

But it is now 2025 - a full 65 years after 1960 - and well into the then-far-distant-future of the 21st century. Anti-Catholic bias in American politics is, as a matter pf practice, long gone.

Or is it?

When one reads the recent New York Times front page story on President Trump’s Secretary of Transportation Sean Duffy, the answer is apparently “no.” Case in point? 

The Times headline on its Duffy story? 

The MTV Reality Star in Trump’s Cabinet Who Wants You to Have More Kids

Sean Duffy, once the resident playboy on “The Real World,” is now a father of nine who presents his family as an example for America.

Ohhhhh noooooo! A Cabinet member with lots of kids! Hmmm. For those old enough to recall - apparently there are none of those at today’s Times - in the brand new Kennedy administration of 1961 - no less than the then-new (Catholic) Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy (father of today’s RFK Jr.) had multiples of kids in the day, eventually reaching eleven. No complaints from the Times that I can find.

The National Catholic Register headlines: 

New York Times’ Hatchet Job of Sean Duffy Betrays Anti-Catholic Animus

EDITORIAL: A page-one hit piece reveals contempt for traditional faith-based values.

The NCR writes in its editorial: 

The New York Times, in a page-one hit piece published this week, went after Trump Secretary of Transportation Sean Duffy for — of all things — having a large Catholic family and being happy about it, revealing the contempt the “Gray Lady” has for traditional faith-based values.

The profile takes aim at Duffy and his wife Rachel Campos-Duffy for celebrating life with nine children on their podcast, From the Kitchen Table: The Duffys, and daring to suggest that having lots of kids is a good thing.

The premise of the piece, titled “The MTV Reality Star in Trump’s Cabinet Who Wants You to Have More Kids,” is that the 53-year-old Duffy was not always a paragon of virtue and therefore shouldn’t be taken seriously because of the way he behaved on three episodes of a reality show in the ’90s.

'Over three decades, Americans have watched him evolve from a sex-hungry 25-year-old on MTV’s The Real World, gyrating with a woman on a pool table, to Secretary Duffy, a devoutly Catholic husband and father at the helm of President Trump’s Transportation Department, pushing young Americans to have families as large as his own,” the Times tut-tuts.'

And the National Catholic Register was not the only media outlet to pick up on a perceived anti-Catholic bias in the Times Duffy piece.

That Times piece on the Duffy’s noted that Mrs. Duffy -- Fox host Rachel Campos Duffy, had been “noting that two (of their 9 kids) were away at Catholic camp, praying the rosary."

Ohhhhh nooooo! The Duffy’s send their kids to Catholic camp to pray the rosary! Quick! Alert the media!

Also noteworthy? Secretary Duffy is not just some qualified guy. Noooooo. He is, according to the Times: 

“…a devoutly Catholic husband and father at the helm of President Trump’s Transportation Department, pushing young Americans to have families as large as his own.

Over at Real Clear Politics, NewsBusters executive editor Tim Graham penned a column headlined: "New York Times Deplores Sean Duffy's Large-Family Conspiracy."

At United Cause this was the headline: "Duffy Article Sparks Elite Meltdown."

Newsready headlined: "NYT GOES AFTER Duffys—For Driving a Minivan?," noting: “New York Times journalist Caroline Kitchener published a highly critical piece targeting the Duffy family’s traditional Catholic lifestyle and their rejection of abortion.” 

Suffice to say, there was more zeroing-in on The Times Duffy hit piece.

Yet as can happen in American politics, sometimes an accident of politics can uncover a problem that was not seen or noticed as a problem. 

In this case of the hit piece on the Catholic Secretary Duffy, it should be noted this is published by the New York Times -- the paper that proclaims it publishes “All the News That’s Fit to Print.”

That The Times clearly has a Catholic problem is indeed “News That’s Fit to Print.” And for the record? I write this as a Protestant. Their object of fear is not the new pope as much as it is President Trump.