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There was a poignant footnote to President Obama's historic July 10 meeting with Pope Benedict XVI at the Vatican. Behind closed doors in the papal library, Obama handed Benedict a letter that Senator Edward Kennedy had asked him to personally deliver to the Pontiff. White House spokesman Robert Gibbs later told reporters that nobody - not even the President - knew the contents of the sealed missive. Obama asked Benedict to pray for Kennedy and called the ailing Senator afterward to fill him in on his encounter with the 82-year-old Pope...
...letter, most likely already resealed and tucked away in the Vatican archives, was probably just a dying Catholic's request for a papal blessing. (UPDATE: At Kennedy's burial at Arlington on Saturday, retired Cardinal Theodore McCarrick read excerpts from Kennedy's letter; he also provided portions of the Vatican's response to it.) In the eyes of the traditionalist wing of the Church, however, Kennedy should have been asking the Pope for forgiveness. The Vatican's official newspaper L'Osservatore Romano reported Kennedy's death, praising his work on civil rights and fighting poverty, but noted that his record...
When Kennedy spoke publicly about religion, it was usually in political - not personal - terms. In 1983, several months after he mistakenly received a fundraising letter from the Moral Majority asking for help battling "ultra-liberals like Ted Kennedy," he accepted an apologetic invitation to speak at Jerry Falwell's Liberty Baptist College (now Liberty University). The Senator delivered an address on the topic of "Faith, Truth and Tolerance," but it was less a personal discussion of his faith than a chance to prove that he wasn't afraid to show up in the lions' den. In a speech that went...
Indeed, abortion was the main topic for which Kennedy received criticism from church leaders. He had begun his political career opposed to abortion - in a 1971 letter, Kennedy wrote, "Wanted or unwanted, I believe that human life, even at its earliest stages, has certain rights which must be recognized." But like many other Democratic politicians, he became a supporter of abortion rights by the 1980s. By the end of his career he was regularly awarded a 100% positive rating from NARAL Pro-Choice America for his abortion-related votes, a record that put him at odds with Church leadership...
...there are just a few groups of people exempted from the daytime fast, including pregnant women, the sick and the elderly. Though the Koran doesn't cite any excuses based on profession, as with all other religions there are Muslims who are more and less observant of the letter of the law, with the requirements of their jobs sometimes playing a role...