TruthBook Religious News Blog

August 28, 2009

BY CATHLEEN FALSANI Religion Columnist

"I recognize my own shortcomings -- the faults in the conduct of my private life. I realize that I alone am responsible for them, and I am the one who must confront them. I believe that each of us as individuals must not only struggle to make a better world, but to make ourselves better, too."

-- Sen. Edward Kennedy, in a speech at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University, Oct. 25, 1991

Ted Kennedy was a complicated man with a complicated life. Deeply faithful and deeply faulted, Kennedy was a lion of a man full of contradictions. Fierce and loyal. Dangerous and wise. Strong and yet felled by all-too-human weaknesses.

It is the complexity of his story and his character that made him such a compelling person, a heroic figure in an arena where they are few and far between.

I grew up in an Irish-American family in New England where the Kennedy clan was like royalty. They were icons -- culturally, politically and in some ways spiritually.

My parents were married the year John F. Kennedy was assassinated. As a child, I was aware of the depths of tragedy the Kennedy family endured time and time again, and I was taught to admire the family's resilience in the face of despair. The way they kept picking themselves up and soldiering on. Their commitment to public service. Their devotion to caring for the poor, the weak and those on the fringes of our society.

For all of my life, Sen. Kennedy was the patriarch of the Kennedy clan -- an avuncular, kind and fun-loving Irishman who forged into political issues with dead seriousness, but never took himself too seriously.

Ted Kennedy made many mistakes. The most infamous occurred 40 years ago when he drove his car off a bridge in Chappaquiddick, Mass. He was able to swim safely to shore, while his passenger, Mary Jo Kopechne, drowned. He neglected to report the accident until the next morning. A reckless and selfish act of cowardice to be sure.

"I think he was chastened by it," Randall Balmer, a professor of religion at Barnard College in New York and author of God in the White House: A History, said, referring to Chappaquiddick. "He did have his period later in life -- this kind of wild period -- but he repented of that as well and then settled down.

"He was a human being," Balmer said. "He had faults. But he was big enough to acknowledge them, and that's fairly uncommon for a politician."

This op-ed piece is interesting, for it gives a good example of an honest (and very public) attempt at Self-Mastery, one of the ideals we learn in the pages of The Urantia Book.

Please click on "external source" for the complete article

Labels: Cathleen Falsani, character, self-control, Ted Kennedy

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