It wasn't until 1976, with Sen. Robert Kennedy (D-NY), Jack's brother, edged out Ronald Reagan to be elected the first Catholic President. But he was 50, not 43, when first elected, the prejudice had dimmed somewhat, and he had Fritz Hollings as his running mate, in addition to being the founder of the Democratic Federalist Council (DFC). But since his retirement in 1985 there has never been another Catholic President, or indeed another non-Protestant. Kennedy himself says that "if the Democratic Party opened itself up more to divergent viewpoints, we'd be doing better on the cultural warfare side. I don't feel comfortable in a Democratic Party where pro-lifers are mocked, unless you're a former president like me, and where our entire viewpoint on family values is belittled as Bible-thumping. Evangelical secularism has become the religion of the Democratic Party just as evangelical Protestantism is the Republican religion."