WASHINGTON (CNS) — Although John F. Kennedy’s famous speech in Houston nearly 50 years ago could be seen as “a passionate appeal for tolerance,” the candidate’s remarks about how his Catholicism would affect his presidency “profoundly undermined the place … of all religious believers in America’s public life,” said Archbishop Charles J. Chaput of Denver.

“His speech left a lasting mark on American politics. It was sincere, compelling, articulate — and wrong,” the archbishop said in a March 1 talk at Houston Baptist University on “The Vocation of Christians in American Public Life.”

Speaking to the Greater Houston Ministerial Alliance on Sept. 12, 1960, less than two months before his election as the first Catholic U.S. president, Kennedy said that if his duties as president should “ever require me to violate my conscience or violate the national interest, I would resign the office.” He also said he would not “disavow my views or my church in order to win this election.”

“But in its effect, the Houston speech did exactly that,” Archbishop Chaput said. “It began the project of walling religion away from the process of governance in a new and aggressive way. It also divided a person’s private beliefs from his or her public duties.”

He said Kennedy’s talk led to a situation today when there are “more Catholics in national public office than ever before” but at the same time fewer who could “coherently explain how their faith informs their work, or who even feel obligated to try.”