Kennedy's Catholicism

At the risk of sounding disrespectful (what, in a blog?), as moved as I was watching Ted Kennedy's funeral service, I was also struck at how effective it was as a two hour infomercial for the Catholic Church. The old rituals and words were oddly comforting, and the basilica in Boston was beautiful and majestic.

Later that evening at the burial in Arlington, the letter Kennedy had written to the Pope in recent months was read aloud.

As the single eternal flame at John F. Kennedy’s grave burned just steps away up a grassy slope, and the Capitol dome and the monuments of Washington were illuminated against the night sky, Cardinal Theodore McCarrick stood next to Kennedy’s casket and recited excerpts from the letter, as well as a reply from an unnamed aide to the pope. It was a stunning and powerful moment that closed an extraordinary day of farewell observances.

“I have always tried to be a faithful Catholic, Your Holiness, and though I have fallen short through human failings, I have never failed to believe and respect the fundamental teachings,’’ Kennedy’s letter stated. “I continue to pray for God’s blessings on you and our Church and would be most thankful for your prayers for me.’’

The Vatican reply came two weeks later: “His Holiness prays that in the days ahead you may be sustained in faith and hope, and granted the precious grace of joyful surrender to the will of God our merciful Father.’’

The letters lent a deeply personal tone to what was otherwise a full military burial, taking place on a gentle rise in the heights overlooking Washington, under the shelter of two maple trees. The journey from Hyannis Port to Boston to this Virginia hillside ended as a bugler played taps, and Kennedy’s wife, Victoria Reggie Kennedy, clasped the flag that had draped her husband’s casket. Bells rang, chiming the hour of 8 p.m. At the command of “Ready, Fire!’’ a corps of seven riflemen from the US Army’s Third Infantry, standing nearby, fired three volleys.

McCarrick attributed the idea for reading from the letters to the senator’s widow.

“I was diagnosed with brain cancer more than a year ago, and although I continue treatment the disease is taking its toll on me. I am 77 years old, and preparing for the next passage of life,’’ Kennedy said in his letter to the pope, which was delivered by Obama on July 10.

Kennedy listed the ways in which his politics comported with Catholic social teaching, saying: “I have done my best to champion the rights of the poor and open doors of economic opportunity. I’ve worked to welcome the immigrant, fight discrimination and expand access to health care and education. I have opposed the death penalty and fought to end war.’’

Kennedy’s letter only obliquely referred to his support for abortion rights, a position that put him sharply at odds with church teaching; nor did the excerpt from the Vatican reply touch on the issue.

The Vatican response was strikingly pastoral in tone, expressing the pope’s “concern and his spiritual closeness’’ to Kennedy, and bestowing on the senator an apostolic blessing from the pope. That the Vatican responded at all is news - conservative bloggers have for days been claiming that the alleged lack of a response was evidence of the Vatican’s antipathy to Kennedy.