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Then Jim blurted in, “Mr. President, I can say plainly that the Catholics would just murder him. There's nothing Catholics hate worse in their own deep hearts than a renegade Catholic. They just don't trust him at all. You never could make them believe that there was anything high and noble about it. They would just feel dreadful about him. They'd much rather he be the blackest Protestant on earth. They'd be much more likely to vote for him than for a Catholic who had turned. It just makes them sick.”

Then Frank Walker added, “Whatever Protestants there are that are against Catholics would suspect him of being Catholic at heart. You just couldn't do it. You'd have rumpusses in both of these areas, which is very emotional in America. You can't put you finger on it, but it's emotional.”

I wasn't talking part in this, but at this point the President looked to me and said, “What do you think, Frances?”

I said, “I must say that I think they're right. I think that's exactly the way people would react. I campaigned for Al Smith and you know what I ran into. It would have been worse if he had been born a Roman Catholic and had changed his religion. When you get