A while back Joe Komanchak posted on Murray's invovlement in JFK's Houston Speech to Protestant ministers. The Fordham Center on Religion and Culture (disclosure: I am co-director) had a session on January 16 that looked at the speech. A great session.Shaun Casey who has a book coming out on the 1960 election and has been at work in the Kennedy archives said the following (from the transcript):

"...The speech was vetted by three Catholic intellectuals to varying degrees. These were Bishop John Wright of Pittsburgh; John Courtney Murray, the legendary theologian; and John Cogley, the former editor of Commonweal and director of the Fund for the Republic. Each made specific contributions. Cogley drilled JFK on possible questions he might face in the Q&A session.

"Sorenson read the speech to Murray over the telephone. Now, Murray apparently did give a paragraphs worth of advice, which was not directly incorporated into the speech but does show up in the Q&A session afterwards. This is where Kennedy makes a distinction between faith and morals, on the one hand, where he argued that any Catholic leaders the Pope, cardinals, bishops did have some influence over all Catholics; but in terms, on the other hand, of policy, he argued that they indeed had no status to coerce him into any position, nor did they have the authority really to coerce any Catholic politician into accepting particular public policy views. So he used the distinction that Murray introduced. Now, obviously, in the current ethos thats a very difficult distinction to sustain on the part of Catholic politicians and Catholic church leadership.

"Wright was the one who suggested the resignation clause that you saw a moment ago. His argument was that if Kennedy were to promise to resign in case of a conflict, it would show Catholics, on the one hand, the seriousness of his faith; on the other hand, it would show Protestants his commitment to the Constitution. So, far from downplaying his faith, Wright argued by making that statement he was affirming the power of his faith, although Kennedy himself could envision no kind of dire conflict that he talked about."

The full transcript will be posted next week.