Mitt Romney’s Mormonism appears to be causing as much concern to Mormons as to some orthodox Christians, according to an article in today’s New York Times.

The problem is that Romney is offering what might be called a “Mormon Lite” version of his faith whenever he speaks in public. For example, when Romney was interviewed on 60 Minutes, he said, “I can’t imagine anything more awful than polygamy” –- notwithstanding the fact that his own Mormon ancestors had plural marriages.

The Mormon church outlawed the practice over a century ago but, according to the Times, Mormons are taught to understand that polygamy had a theological and historical context in the church, which Romney seemed to reject.

Similarly, when he was asked where he thought Jesus would return to earth at the time of the Second Coming, Romney replied that Jesus will return to the Mount of Olives in Jerusalem, “the same as the other Christian tradition.”

Not so, say other Mormons, who claim that Jesus will land in Missouri. It is apparently an article of faith for the Mormon church that “Zion will be built upon the American continent.”

It will be interesting to see how the controversy over Romney’s faith will affect the next presidential election.

The situation is analogous to the presidential election of 1960, when John Kennedy’s Catholicism made some Americans anxious. The U.S. had never before had a Catholic in the White House, and there were those who wondered how a Catholic president could reconcile his oath of office with his allegiance to a foreign pope. Even today, any Catholic who aspires to high office has to walk a fine line on the issue of abortion.

John Kennedy tried to defuse the controversy by saying that he was a Catholic “by accident of birth.” This answer may have satisfied some Protestants, but it also disappointed many Catholics –- in particular, conservative writer and commentator William F. Buckley, Jr.

Buckley replied to JFK’s declaration by writing a column about how another Catholic politician, Hillaire Belloc, had handled anti-Catholic bigotry over fifty years before.

Early in the 1900s, Belloc was campaigning for a seat in the British Parliament when a heckler demanded to know if he was a “papist.”

Never a man to mince words, Belloc pulled a rosary from his pocket and replied: "Sir, so far as possible I hear Mass each day and I go to my knees and tell these beads each night. If that offends you, then I pray God may spare me the indignity of representing you in Parliament."

The crowd cheered, and Belloc won the election.

Why can’t politicians talk like that today?