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violent and vituperative. It was just talk of the sidewalks of New York and the common people, “What do you think of having a Catholic there?” It wasn't violent, but it was an element that had to be taken care of.

Smith just dealt with it directly. He never did anything about it at all. He never let for one moment anybody forget that he was a good Catholic. He was very insistent on that. He didn't parade it, but when he was campaigning upstate, he always got up and went to Mass on Sunday morning. He was frank about it. No one ever attempted to say, “With this community, perhaps you'd better not. Why don't we go to the golf club?” There was none of that. He was honest. His mother taught him his religion and that was his. He was faithful to it. It was absolutely clear.

One of his great points of strength was that had a religion and was faithful to it. He said his prayers and did the will of the Lord so far as he knew it. He respected and revered the church which had shielded him against many sins and many misunderstandings and had taught him how to live and so forth and so on.

He often asked people to sit around when he was going to have a conversation that he knew might be ticklish. There was an archbishop in Boston, who was supposed to know everything that had to do with the regulation of child