He made me proud to be a Catholic

Is this serious? Really? Ted Kennedy makes you proud to be a Catholic? He was a punchline for decades.

The aging Boomer fascination with the Kennedys is so strange. One sees it resurrected a bit with the goo-goo ga ga over Obama. Liberal Catholicism aims to put the Church at the service of liberalism. So naturally, liberal Catholics gravitate toward political messiahs that will inaugurate the kingdom, rather than the real one.

Fortunately, young Catholics that take their faith seriously don't buy this silliness.

Maureen, with all due respect, I can appreciate your nostalgia for the Kennedys, but I cannot understand why you would insist that Senator Edward Kennedy was a "champion of the welfare of 'the least of these'" among us. He was not.

At best, Mr. Kennedy was highly selective in which of the least among us he would defend. Case in point: Abortion. The senator established his record squarely on the extremist position of defending the legality of abortion. Many are not aware that he was originally publicly pro-life (I comment on the details of his transformation from pro-life to pro-abortion here: http://patrickmadrid.blogspot.com/2009/01/sons-of-perdition-how-certain-...).

As a result of Ted Kennedy's indefatigable championing of the pro-abortion movement, tens of millions of the "least among us" — unborn girls and boys — were killed through abortion under his senatorial auspices.

Whatever his positive qualities may have been, and no doubt he had some, the tragic reality is that Senator Kennedy's long political career was squandered by his vociferous, relentless promotion of abortion. And that, sadly, will be his enduring legacy.

I agree with you that tears are appropriate upon hearing the news of this man's death, but not for the reasons you are crying them.

Wow - how can one be a Catholic and not be pro-life? Ted had such a hideous record on voting against life - as a former mass of cells - I truly disagree with most of what he stood for. May God have mercy on his soul - I truly mean that.

While my first reaction to the news was prayers for the repose of his soul, I can hardly see how any Catholic can look to the late senator as anything but an absolute disgrace.
Need I remind you of his consistent support for Abortion Rights? He was the very public face for what the Church describes as an "intrinsic evil".
Need I remind you of his support for embryonic stem cell research?
Need I remind you of Chappaquiddick?
Need I remind you of the Good Friday antics in Florida some years ago, in which his nephew and accomplice in debauchery was accused of rape?
On the political level, his positions were consistently socialist. Need I remind you that Pope Pius XI, in Quadragesimo Anno, wrote, "If Socialism, like all errors, contains some truth (which, moreover, the Supreme Pontiffs have never denied), it is based nevertheless on a theory of human society peculiar to itself and irreconcilable with true Christianity."

Senator Kennedy was, by all accounts, quite affable, and may have accomplished much good, but to claim him as a model catholic is nothing short of absurd.

Save your tears for the victims of his support of abortion that deserve them infinitely more.

Matthew 2:18 A voice in Rama was heard, lamentation and great mourning; Rachel bewailing her children, and would not be comforted, because they are not.

It is rich to talk about justice when you support killing babies before they have had a chance to live.

The Catholic does does not, and has never, approved of any "justice" that includes the violation of the basic principles of the dignity of each person and the protection of life from natural conception to natural death. Kennedy may have called himself a Catholic, but he was not a faithful one.

That is not to say he never did any good in his life, and we certainly pray for the repose of his soul. We must be honest though about where his ideological principles stood, and they were not with the Church.

- A Catholic Director of Religious Education

The torch has been passed to us? What torch? The torch of killing unborn, innocent human beings? You speak of the Kennedy's adherence to the "least of these" and their "great Catholic social justice tradition", but Ted Kennedy championed the cause of abortion, even into the ninth month of pregnancy. I'm sorry he's gone and it does seem like the end of an era, but to say that he made you proud to be a Catholic must mean that you are not a very good Catholic or Christian for that matter.

Maureen,
My tears today are not for Senator Kennedy, but instead for the "least among us...the millions of aborted unborn babies!" May God have mercy on the Senator's soul! My 3PM Divine Mercy will be said for Senator Kennedy.
Nancy Hood

May he rest in peace and may God have mercy on his soul. +
That being said, in no way was he a model for faithful Catholics. To actively promote abortion, as he did, and to wholeheartedly support a candidate who has been unprecedented in spreading abortion globally, is to cease to be Catholic. This writer has lost all sense of logic and of knowledge of what it truly means to be Catholic.

Kennedy certainly was not a champion of civil rights for unborn women. He will have to answer to God for his treatment of the "littlest among us."

What kind of torch is it that he is passing on? It's certainly not the torch of life....

Ted Kennedy had a great heart for the poor, and for some of the "least of these." It's a shame he would not include unborn children among the voiceless brothers and sisters he so eloquently defended; his inconsistency reflected poorly on the Catholic faith he claimed to hold. May God have mercy on his soul and overlook his shortcomings.

A champion of women's rights?! Really?!

His fearless embrace of the “least of these” apparently does not include babies where they should be the safest...in their mother's womb.

When I reflect on Ted Kennedy's legislative legacy, the words of Graciela Olivarez, the highest ranking woman in the Carter administration, come to mind: "The poor cry out for justice and peace and we respond with legal abortion."

I am sure it feels like the end of an era, also, for Mary Jo Kopechne and the millions of aborted babies whose deaths can be laid directly at the feet of this traitorous agent of demonic evil.

Hope he made a good confession before he died, otherwise the "torch" might be of an altogether awful magnitude and duration......

Yes Maureen, Senator Kennedy, and his siblings make me proud to be Catholic also. The made being Catholic more socially acceptable in an America then-dominated by harsh variant of Protestantism. True, his conscience would not permit him to criminalize abortion and send to prison the women who sought them or the doctors who performed them.

There is a clear distinction between being "Pro-choice" and "Pro-Abortion", though the spiritually and intellectually rigid will not acknowledge that distinction. But they make no difference. They would have been pleased with Al Capone, then, who was never known to help procure a single abortion. All of that "other stuff" is quite secondary.

Thank you for your found remembrance. I too wept as his death and pray that after a period of preparation in Purgatory, we will enter into the eternal happiness won for him by Christ on the cross.

Our catholic sisters are under investigation by the vatican, for straying from the teachings of the church, and homosexuality. They claim they are champians of social justice, but that does not include the unborn. They are merely social workers who have made their God out of the earth, and the worship of it. Satan entered, when they tore off their habits, and gave up the daily sacraments. May God Have Mercy On Their Soul's...By the way, many, believe Sal Lawinsky's Rules for Radicals is their bible..Ask George Soros, he funds many of our former nuns so called religious organizations.

It does seem silly to look back at a man's whole life and focus on just one little problem that he had: justifying and supporting the taking of 48 million human lives since Roe v Wade.

Seriously, that really is the most obvious thing to talk about here. Most of the Kennedys have been obscenely Pro-abortion. It's true and no one can argue it.

But, I am going to sidestep that for a minute, to focus on the last thing Patrick Madrid said: "I agree with you that tears are appropriate upon hearing the news of this man's death, but not for the reasons you are crying them."

We are supposedly preparing to die our whole lives, so if we practice a bad life, we aren't as likely to have a good death. I think everyone can agree on that.

Perhaps Ted Kennedy's family saw him turn his bad life over to God and repent, but we weren't priveledged to hear about any such thing from the family.

I can understand if they didn't want to deal with all of this and the media, while being scrutinized by people in the Church, like me, who saw this big funeral as a sham....after having lost someone important to them. But, with all this in mind, the rest of us Catholics are still responsible to acknowledge that this isn't the sort of life that is uplifting.

We should always celebrate life where we can, but should we celebrate the life of someone who helped end so many innocent lives? Ted Kennedy's life was something mourn not celebrate. He did far more damage to this world than good, by standing by the legalized taking of innocent human lives.

The fact that the Church made such an embarrassing to-do over his death should mourn us even more than the death of all of these children because the Church with her sacraments is our only hope. If we don't make offerings for the sake of the Church here on earth after things like this, we are all in danger of not being prepared for a happy death and should consider praying to Ted Kennedy to move over and make room for us wherever he landed.

Alot of people on this site have no idea what they are talking about and are being totally judmental. On one hand we judge people for abortions and the other hand we stay silent about captial punishment and war. Its all in th ename of politics.... What does our church leaders i.e. the pope, the arch bishop says is all that matters. I am young but have still lived to see desegrigation of Catholic schools in the SEVENTIES, thats right SEVENTIES... I have also lived to see Blacks not aloud to be members of Knights of Columbus, thus haveing to have reserved Knights of Saint Peter Claver instead. So before we go Pounding are chest about how catholic we are and what defines our catholic being, we need not look any furthur than what the pope says about the Kennedys because frankly any body not of the direction of his authority can not be trusted with there interpretation or opionion. There are 2 many two face catholics who will claim to be fighting for the unborn and in the same mass not willing to reach out for social justice which has a history of life ending circumstances e.g. war, capital punshment , healthcare. It is worst to be "Luke warm"...and we can all be "Luke Warm in our own mixture. Only listen to the Holy Father for direction.