Ted Kennedy's Catholicism

Aug 27, 2009
by Dennis Coday

Over on PoliticsDaily.com, David Gibson has one of the more interesting critiques of Ted Kennedy's life and times -- especially as it relates to his Catholicism -- that I have read. A teaser:

It is tempting to view Ted Kennedy's passing as the end of an era, both politically and culturally, but also religiously -- the end of a reform-minded, socially oriented Catholicism that entered the mainstream in the 1960s ...

Yet conservatives shouldn't be too quick to bury the past and proclaim their own orthodoxy as the true heir of the American Catholic future. Surveys of young adult Catholics over recent years have shown that, in many respects, the younger generation resembles Kennedy's approach to faith and politics, with social justice and equality for women and gays as public markers of their religion, and devotion to the sacraments the lodestar of their private devotion.

Read the full column here: Camelot Catholicism: The Once and Future Church?

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