For all my days on this earth there has existed a popular fascination with theories of a conspiracy behind the assassination of President J. F. Kennedy. From the earliest investigations of credentialed government panels, through blockbuster films by Hollywood aristocracy, through stated priorities of the current presidential administration, the murmur and hum has persisted that some organization foreign or domestic was behind it.
Just a few months ago I found a chapter of a valedictory work by a great American novelist given over to his own calculations and convictions on the subject. That the scenario he spun was credible and compelling speaks more to his greatness as a novelist however old and cranky than it does to what is likely to have occurred.
For all these days I have remained skeptical of these theories. No one of them has captured the high ground of probability and evidence, and all of them have settled into the homogenous murk of suspicion and excitement in which all conspiracy theories are consigned to dwell. Never have I understood what keeps these miasmic creations alive. Never, that is, until today.
For all this last week the tune of a long-ago song by The Carpenters has been in my mind as I have had to explain to people that rainy days and assassinations always get me down. How to refocus on the tasks of the moment and the goodness of God has eluded me. Every drop of information, every reaction and discovery have brought new waves of sadness and disappointment.
I did not know the murdered man at all. I had heard his name but never his voice, nor seen his image, nor even read one solitary statement by him. These have all been put before me in the minutes and days that followed and compound the shock and grief. Who does this to such a one?
The discoveries that followed bring no consolation. The one who did this to him, how he prepared and did it, why he said he was doing it, how he came to be captured and his picture displayed everywhere. There, finally, we have not resolution or release, but the obstacle: this nice young man from a nice family looking frightened and sullen but otherwise normal in his suicide-prevention dress. How could he have done this?
What happened to him? Who talked him into this? Who turned him into this? What was being poured into his young brain, what ideology or technology or twisting external influence deprived him of his own self-knowledge and self-love and self-preservation until he woke up from the horrible trance alone and naked in a cell? Whom was he serving, to whom was he listening? There must be some system, or some syndicate. It was them clearly, not any of us. There has to be a them, because to look at him is to see a human being, to see one of us.
This is where the conspiracy theories come in. They are a coping mechanism for which people reach to deal with the great evil that was done by somebody with whom they have too much in common; with whom, in fact, we have everything in common, our very nature. It is more than familiarity, more than similarity that we see. We see our very selves. And we are horrifying.
Our capacity for delusion is accomplice to our capacity for evil. We are all too willing to relinquish our hard-bought self-knowledge and self-love when there is an opportunity for self-aggrandizement. For everything we know and understand and treasure about ourselves has been purchased for us by our God at the price of His Son. When we see what He endured, we look not only at what we are worth, but also what we are capable of doing. We could any one of us lay down our lives to save another; and we could any one of us nail to a cross the very one who is coming to save us.
It was the killer’s family that showed me who they are, and thus the other side of who we are. For his own family realized what he had done, and his own family insisted on what he had to do about it, at great and lasting cost to themselves. Now his family is riven by simultaneous affection and revulsion, love and horror, compassion and conviction. In your charity, pray for them all. In this prayer, you will find the selflessness that is our lifeline, however thin the thread.
After wondering for decades why conspiracy theories about assassinations continue to have the power to arouse passionate advocates, I think I finally understand. These people are all trying to prove that he couldn’t have done this on his own, which is their way of asserting that I couldn’t have done this on my own. Though they try for all their days on earth, still they fail.
Monsignor Smith
