The Pittsburgh Press (February 17, 1946)
Quits public life –
Clare Boothe Luce becomes Catholic
NEW YORK (UP, Feb. 16) – After five months of instructions, Rep. Clare Boothe Luce (R-Connecticut) was received into the Catholic Church at St. Patrick’s Cathedral today by Msgr. Fulton Sheen.
Msgr. Sheen, who also converted Henry Ford II, the late Heywood Broun, and others to Catholicism, declined to comment on the conversion of the congresswoman.
Rep. Luce, who is 42, announced tonight that she would retire from public life at the end of her present term in Congress.
In a statement issued through the Bridgeport (Connecticut) Post, Mrs. Luce said the question of her new faith might be injected “by a few cynical people into a campaign in our state.”
“Therefore,” she said, “I have chosen to be unavailable by design or draft for elective office.”
Mrs. Luce said she had intended “for a very long time” to enter the Catholic faith.
“It would naturally be asked at this time,” she said, “if this is related to my decision not to be a candidate for the Senate or the House. Plainly, there is a relation. For the question of faith which all Americans must always wish kept out of politics might be injected by a few cynical people into a campaign in our state.”
Mrs. Luce said that “tolerant people of all faiths in our state would not wish to see such a false issue obscure the many important political issues which face our nation today.”
Mrs. Luce apparently went into seclusion after deciding to issue her statement through a leading newspaper of her congressional district.
Mrs. Luce is the wife of Henry Luce, publisher and Protestant. She lost her only child, Anne Brokaw, in an auto accident two years ago.
Mrs. Luce graduated from St. Mary’s Episcopal School, at Garden City, New York. Her first husband was George Tuttle Brokaw, whom she divorced.