If there’s one thing that differentiates Robert F. Kennedy Jr. from President-elect Donald Trump, it’s that Kennedy grew up in a devout Christian home where faith was serious business.
While Trump’s upbringing in New York City was marginally influenced by the late Norman Vincent Peale, then pastor of Marble Collegiate Church, Kennedy comes from a Roman Catholic family in Massachusetts.
Last April, when Kennedy was running as an independent candidate for president, he gave an interview to The World Over with Raymond Arroyo, a Catholic weekly podcast. In that interview, Kennedy talked about how growing up, “the centerpiece of our lives was Catholicism.”
“We said the rosary at least once a day, oftentimes three times a day,” Kennedy said. “We prayed before and after every (meal). We read the Bible every night. We read the lives of the saints. We went to church, sometimes twice a day. We would go to the 7 o’clock Mass and 8 o’clock Mass in the summers. It was our whole family, and it was really our whole community. It was part of me growing up.”
Now, Kennedy is Trump’s controversial pick to head the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. He is a well-known conspiracy theorist who sows doubt about vaccines and fluoridation in water. And although Catholic, he has supported a woman’s right to abortion.
Known commonly as RFK Jr., he is son of the late Sen. Robert F. Kennedy and nephew of former President John F. Kennedy. Most of the Kennedy family has spoken against his beliefs and proposed policies.
Robert F. Kennedy Jr. with Raymond Arroyo (screencap)
The man slated to head federal health initiatives says his faith helped him overcome drug addiction.
He was 14 years old when his father was assassinated. Soon after, he became addicted to drugs, including heroin, until he was 28 years old.
“During that period of time, I wouldn’t say I lost my faith, but when you’re living against conscience, which you have to do if you’re addicted to drugs, you push God out over the periphery of your horizon,” he said. “So the concept of God was, although it never was erased from me, it was just a distant concept that was not part of my day-to-day life.”
However, as a young adult he experienced “a profound spiritual realignment” that has been “the centerpiece of my life ever since.”
“I had a spiritual awakening very early in my recovery.”
“I had a spiritual awakening very early in my recovery, which I was lucky about because I no longer had to struggle with the compulsion to take drugs,” he said. “That was lifted away from me. But you can’t live off the laurels of a spiritual awakening. You have to renew it every day, and you renew it through service to other people.”
The peace he now knows, he said, relates to his favorite saints, St. Francis and St. Augustine.
While many Catholics might find agreement with Kennedy’s views opposing transgender athletes, his views on abortion do not align with Catholic teaching.
Kennedy said he does not see himself as a “doctrinaire on either side” of the abortion debate.
He said in April he disagrees with Trump’s plan to leave abortion policies up to the states. While saying “every abortion is a tragedy,” he believes pregnancy decisions “should be up to the mother” and he does not “trust government officials and bureaucrats” to be involved in the issue.
Instead of adopting restrictions on abortion, Kennedy proposed a plan to subsidize day care “to make sure that no American mother ever has an abortion of a child that she wants to bring to term because she’s worried about her financial capacity to raise that child.”
He also advocated for greater emphasis on adoptions, to increase incentives for women to carry pregnancies to term.
“I would like to maximize choice but also minimize the number of abortions that occur every year,” he said.
“I would like to maximize choice but also minimize the number of abortions that occur every year.”
Earlier last year, in an interview on The Sage Steele Show, Kennedy said he wants to leave abortion decisions to the pregnant woman “even if it’s full term.”
“I don’t think it’s ever OK,” he said. “I think we should do everything in our power to make sure that never happens, everything that we can do. But I think ultimately, nobody sets out to do that and there are always some kind of extenuating circumstances that would make a mother make that kind of choice, a terrible, terrible choice which is, you know, you can’t overstate how bad that is, but ultimately, I think we have to trust the woman.”
He concluded: “I come down to the fact that I don’t trust the state and I think we need to trust the woman.”
Apart from his views on abortion, Kennedy is well-known for promoting a variety of demonstrably false views on other issues. The New York Times last November published a list of “Seven Noteworthy Falsehoods Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Has Promoted.”
Kennedy “has for decades promoted baseless conspiracy theories,” the newspaper said.
Seven such claims cited by the newspaper are:
- He has falsely linked vaccines to various medical conditions.
- He has rejected established science showing HIV causes AIDS.
- He pushed the idea that the coronavirus spared Jews and Chinese people.
- He has made baseless claims about a connection between gender dysphoria and chemical exposure.
- He has falsely linked antidepressants to school shootings.
- He has bolstered a conspiracy theory that the CIA assassinated his uncle.
- He has said Republicans stole the 2004 presidential election.
Back in 2023, Phil Lawler wrote for the website Catholic Culture: “RFK Jr. comes with the same flaws that have characterized the Kennedy political dynasty: a checkered personal history and an indifference (at best) toward the Gospel of Life. Unless he experiences a dramatic conversion, his presidential candidacy will be only a matter of passing interest — certainly not a cause worth embracing — for serious Catholic voters.”
While Kennedy’s presidential campaign did indeed go nowhere, throwing his support behind Trump late in the game was a win-win for both men. It removed the possibility of Kennedy drawing off enough Trump voters to be a spoiler in a tight presidential race. And Trump in return elevated Kennedy to a higher profile than he had as an improbably presidential nominee.
Conservative Catholics remained an essential part of Trump’s political base.
Meanwhile, conservative Catholics remained an essential part of Trump’s political base.
Writing for the website The Catholic Thing, George J. Marlin explained: “As for the overall 2024 national generic Catholic vote, 58% supported Trump, 40% Harris. Even more striking, 66% of Catholics who attend Mass at least once a week cast their ballot for Trump. Those who go to church only a few times a year voted 56% Trump.”
But all this comes at a political cost.
Mike Cosper, special projects editor for Christianity Today, recently took aim at Kennedy’s nomination in a post on X.
“Many pro-life evangelical friends told me it was immoral to vote for anyone but Trump. Today, Trump nominated a radical pro choice activist to be the HHS secretary. But as Abe Greenwald would say, it’s worse than that. He’s not just immoral, he’s stupid. A rabid conspiracy theorist who once claimed COVID was designed to spare Chinese people and Jews. His advocacy against the MMR vaccine led directly to the deaths of dozens of kids in American Samoa. He continues to falsely link vaccines with autism. And that’s the tip of the iceberg for his lunatic conspiracy theories.
“Given power, he will unleash bureaucratic stupidity like we’ve never seen, and it will yield the deaths of an untold number of kids. So congrats pro-lifers who insisted we vote for Trump. There’s nothing pro-life about this party or this man or his appointees. And for those frustrated by the economics of the Biden years, I urge you to call your senators and pray they block the dumber of these appointments, of which RFK is the highest on the list. And pray with fury that the Senate finds their spine to block him. What a disaster if he gets confirmed.”
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