Ted Kennedy’s Good FortuneBy Thomas F. Roeser, Chicago Daily Observer
Posted in Our Columns on May 27, 2008
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An excerpt.
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As a Kennedy Fellow.
“You go out there and tell the dean that you are head of the class,” he said. That was just about the last time I talked with him. I certainly don’t want to imply that because he gave me a pass to become a Kennedy Fellow I am indebted to Ted. But I know this. He has many things to mull over during this interregnum and the time he now has can be put to good use. I particularly would advise him to review the meeting he and Bobby called for the family estate at Hyannisport in 1964 before abortion had become a federal issue. But the issue was moving front and center in state legislatures and the meeting was called to provide advice for Bobby who was running for the New York senate seat—but also for future Kennedys like Ted who wanted to follow Bobby in the presidency.
“You go out there and tell the dean that you are head of the class,” he said. That was just about the last time I talked with him. I certainly don’t want to imply that because he gave me a pass to become a Kennedy Fellow I am indebted to Ted. But I know this. He has many things to mull over during this interregnum and the time he now has can be put to good use. I particularly would advise him to review the meeting he and Bobby called for the family estate at Hyannisport in 1964 before abortion had become a federal issue. But the issue was moving front and center in state legislatures and the meeting was called to provide advice for Bobby who was running for the New York senate seat—but also for future Kennedys like Ted who wanted to follow Bobby in the presidency.
Attending that huddle in Hyannisport were Fr. Robert Drinan SJ (Longtime Dean of BC Law, later to become a pro-abortion congressman from Massachusetts, RIP); Fr. Charles Curran, a non-Jesuit whose writings against Humanae Vitae were condemned later by the Vatican; Fr. Joseph Fuchs, SJ, a professor at Gregorian University, Rome; Fr. Richard McCormick, SJ, (RIP) later to become the Rose Kennedy professor of the Kennedy Institute for Bioethics at Georgetown and after that a theology professor at Notre Dame; Fr. Giles Milhaven, SJ (Former Jesuit) who later figured in the early operation of “Catholics for Free Choice” and Fr. Albert Jonsen, SJ (President of University of San Francisco (1969-1972) ).
According to Philip Lawler in his brilliant new book about how Catholicism receded in Boston, The Faithful Departed: The Collapse of Boston’s Catholic Culture [Encounter: 2008, the hireling theologians worked for two days to develop a rationale for the Kennedys to handle the issue. “Eventually they reached a consensus, which they passed along to their political patrons. Abortion, they agreed, could sometimes be morally acceptable as the lesser of two evils. Lawmakers should certainly not encourage abortion but a blanket prohibition might be more harmful to the common good than a law allowing abortion in some cases…President Kennedy hads already laid the foundation for the argument that a Catholic politician must not attempt to enact his private religious views; now his brothers were prepared to take the next step forward. They were ready to explain that they were personally opposed to the abortion ban, but…”
From that time on, a smattering of Jesuit theologians provided a cover for that effort, writes Lawler including after “Roe” Ted Kennedy’s front-and-center support for abortion rights and his vote even for partial birth abortion—though stopping short at supporting the “Born Alive” ban (which Barack Obama personally endorsed while a member of the Illinois legislature, differing from such worthies as Kennedy, Barbara Boxer and Diane Feinstein).
At the Democratic national convention in Chicago in 1968 with his brother Robert dead, Eugene McCarthy failing to pick up the liberal slack and Hubert Humphrey unattractive to the peace delegates, Mayor Richard J. Daley privately joined with powerful California state house speaker Jesse (Big Daddy) Unruh to try to draft Ted Kennedy at the last minute for the nomination. Ted could have gotten the nomination without a struggle since McCarthy had expressed to this writer and others that he would withdraw in Ted’s favor (“which is what I wouldn’t have done for Bobby”)—but Ted turned it down. His tender age, 36, wasn’t a problem, McCarthy told me later since most of the founders were young men when the Constitution was ratified—Jefferson, 43, Madison, 35, Hamilton, 36.
Link to the full piece in The Chicago Daily Observer, entitled Ted Kennedy’s Good Fortune
Link to Karen Hall's blog Some Have Hats, her post is entitled, The Not-So-Saintly Ted Kennedy
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