44 / SEPTEMBER 2008 / theWAGonline.com KerryKennedy
Faith, Family, and Politics
By Catherine Censor
Kerry Kennedy agrees that we’re having a “Kennedy
year.” Seated in a neighborhood coffee house not
far from her Bedford home, she nods patiently as I
recount recent examples of her family name at the top
of the news: The outpouring of support for U.S. Sen.
Edward Kennedy as he heroically battles brain can-
cer, the magazine covers commemorating the assassi-
nation of her father, Robert F. Kennedy, 40 years ago,
and the frequent invocation of the family’s political
legacy on the presidential campaign trail. She adds,
“And in November, the state of New York is renam-
ing the Triborough Bridge the Robert F. Kennedy
Bridge.”
“Robert F. Kennedy is particularly extraordinary
because he never became president and he died 40
years ago. Yet people are still inspired by his life and
message of social justice,” observes Kerry, who turns
49 this month. She speaks eloquently of his ability
to “call forth people’s better angels” and his “under-
standing of people’s pain combined with the vision of
a greater America,” but one senses that no matter how
sincere and heartfelt her words, this is familiar turf—
a topic she’s had to address on countless occasions.
Kerry was just 8 years old when her father was
shot, but that event seems to have catalyzed a lifelong
search for spiritual meaning and passion for social
justice. It was during the California primary in the
1968 presidential race and Kerry, along with siblings
Courtney, Michael, and David, was traveling with the
campaign. In the preface to her new book, Being Cath-
olic Now: Prominent Americans Talk About Change in
the Church and the Quest for Meaning (Crown Publishers, 2008), Kerry writes, “We spent the morning at Disneyland … The next day, when my parents and David headed off to
the Ambassador Hotel to await the results and the much-anticipated victory party, Court-
ney, Michael, and I were sent off to bed. The following morning, I awoke early and turned
on the television to watch Bugs Bunny. A news flash interrupted the cartoon. That’s how I
learned my father had been shot.”
John Glenn, the astronaut and a family friend, came by a few hours later to confirm
the bad news. Kerry and her siblings were whisked back to Hickory Hill, the family’s
Virginia home. Late that night, when her older brother Joe called to say that her father
had died, Kerry remembers, “I ran into my room, buried my head in my pillow, and in-
stinctively began to pray. For my father and mother. For our family. And then I remember
clearly, praying, ‘God, don’t let them kill the man who killed Daddy.’ ” For those who
know Kerry, the recollection speaks volumes.
Four decades years later, the faith that sent Kerry to prayer as a young, grief-stricken
girl is still a vital part of her identity. A human rights activist and feminist, Kerry has lead
delegations to South America, Asia, Africa, and the Middle East. She established the
Robert F. Kennedy Memorial Center for Human Rights in 1988. She is the chair of the
Amnesty International Leadership Council and the author of Speak Truth to Power: Hu-
man Rights Defenders Who Are Changing Our World (Crown/Random House, 2000). Her
new book, published just this month, reflects her profound struggle to reconcile her faith
with her commitment to social justice.
The flesh-and-blood Kerry has a far less risqué existence than the woman depicted in the tabloids. Her daily life is built around the
schedules of her three middle-school-aged daughters. Human rights
activism and writing are sandwiched in between soccer games,
basketball tournaments, and bake sales.
But because Kerry Kennedy bears a name fraught with meaning and history, poli-
tics is also part of her identity. At what is almost universally acknowledged to be a
critical juncture in American history, our fascination with the Kennedys is as potent
as ever. We want—no, need—to know what the Kennedys are thinking. Which
candidate do they endorse? Does U.S. Sen. Barack Obama really offer, as Caroline
Kennedy put it, “the same sense of hope and inspiration,” as her father, John F. Ken-
nedy? Is he “a worthy heir” as Sen. Edward Kennedy proclaimed him to be? Who
deserves to lay claim to the Kennedy mantle?
The Kennedys themselves had a spirited debate over these very questions. “There’s
nothing our family likes to discuss more than politics,” Kerry acknowledges with a
laugh. And although the family is now firmly united behind Obama, the family split
allegiances during the primaries. Kerry,
along with her siblings Robert F. Kennedy
Jr. and Kathleen Kennedy Townsend en-
dorsed U.S. Sen. Hillary Clinton, while Ted
and his son, U.S. Rep. Patrick J. Kennedy
of Rhode Island, endorsed Obama.
Kerry breezily denies any hard feelings
over the rift. “Everybody is wholeheartedly
working and campaigning for Barack Obama,
who will be our next president, and I am
so thrilled to be working for this man who
whenever he speaks about his vision for a bet-
ter world, causes our spirits to soar,” she says.
“I think we’re on the path of creating great
change in our country, particularly after the
devastation both nationally and internation-
ally of the Bush Administration.” In fact, Ker-
ry is matching her words with deeds. On the
same day as our interview, Kerry is headed to
a fundraiser for the candidate at Hickory Hill,
where her mother still resides.
Ask Kerry why she backed Clinton, how-
ever, and you’ll get a quick introduction to
the issues that drive her. “I have worked in
international human rights for 27 years,” she
says. Although her voice stays calm, her inten-
sity builds as she ticks off a list of injustices:
“Around the world, one out of every three
women is sexually assaulted during her life-
time. In the United States, one out of every five
will be sexually assaulted by the time she’s 21.
There are 700,000 rapes in the U.S. every year.
Women still make 79 cents on the dollar made
by men. In many states, women have to pay for
birth control while Viagra is covered by insur-
ance. And I’m the mother of three daughters.
What we have learned around the world is that
to create dramatic change in human rights,
health care, development—all the measures of
what makes life worthwhile—you have to em-
power women. And I thought that Hillary Clinton as president of the United States would
have empowered women in our country and inspired women around the world.”
At a nearby table, two older gentlemen, who just minutes before had been argu-
ing about politics as if they were panelists on a small-town version of Crossfire, have
fallen silent, politely eavesdropping on us. Kerry, her face animated by passion,
is unmistakably her father’s daughter and this small audience has taken notice. If
Kerry is aware of their attention, she doesn’t show it. She picks at her fruit salad and
sips her herbal tea, outwardly oblivious to the attention—but to me, it’s palpable, a
tiny taste of what it’s like to be a Kennedy.
To be a public touchstone is more complex than merely being famous. It carries,
I realize, weightier burdens of expectations and assumptions. The endless curiosity,
no matter how polite, must be exhausting at times. And
Kerry has been the subject of some not-so-polite curios-
ity. She was divorced from Andrew Cuomo, the attor-
ney general and son of former governor Mario Cuomo,
in 2003 after an unhappy marriage. That’s all she wants
to say about the subject but the tabloids, of course, were
not nearly as reticent.
The flesh-and-blood Kerry has a far less risqué exis-
tence than the woman depicted in the New York Post.
Her daily life is built around the schedules of Cara,
Mariah, and Michaela, her three middle-school-aged
daughters. Human rights activism and writing are
sandwiched in between soccer games, basketball tourna-
ments, and bake sales.
Kerry’s home is a singularly unpretentious place that
looks as though it was put together with comfort and
family in mind. Mementoes crowd every wall. Photos
and letters from the likes of Bill Clinton and Mahatma
Gandhi jostle with pictures of her on her father’s lap.
Kerry resides comfortably among it all, both active par-
ticipant and curator of a great American heritage. For
her mother’s (Ethel Skakel Kennedy) recent birthday,
Kerry compiled a book of more than 75 essays and 350
family photos.
Historically, Catholicism has always played an im-
portant role in the Kennedys’ political and personal
lives. During JFK’s historic presidential campaign (his
election as the first Roman Catholic president was
both a milestone and source of pride for many Catholic
Americans), some darkly speculated that a Kennedy win
would put America in thrall to the Pope in Rome. And
while the Kennedys’ political positions have often de-
parted from church doctrine, the family’s faith has been
a source of comfort and strength through the years. For
Kerry, however, the conflict between her faith and her
humanism required closer examination.
“I felt that religion was always important to me and I
felt torn by the gap between my perception of what Jesus
stood for and what I was hearing from some in the hier-
archy of the Catholic church,” she says. “The pedophilia
scandal and the failure to protect victims and demand
accountability, homophobia, the issue of women’s re-
productive rights, condom distribution in the age of
AIDS, and end of life issues—these are a few of the areas
where the actions of some in power in the church were
at odds with mine. I was struggling with balancing be-
ing a Catholic and being a human rights defender. So I
wanted to take some time to explore the issues and to
deepen my spirituality. I decided to speak with Catholics
of all different stripes about their faith and ask how they
grapple with these issues, how they envision heaven and
hell, and what they would do if they were pope. The an-
swers were deep, full of meaning, sometimes funny and
wonderfully insightful.”
Kerry interviewed a prominent and diverse group
for her book—everyone from comedian Dan Akroyd
to author and Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist Anna
Quindlen, author Frank McCourt, and Cardinal Theo-
dore Edgar McCarrick. Did any one of her interviewees
strike a special chord? “Cokie Roberts attended the
Convent of the Sacred Heart, as I did. She combines
the greatest admiration for the nuns with a refresh-
ing dismissiveness towards any silly proclamations by
some of the men in the church. Nancy Pelosi was bril-
liant as always, and said her mother wanted her to be a
nun but she wanted to be a priest. Susan Sarandon is
very funny. She said, ‘I was told at a very young age that
I had an overabundance of original sin.’ And there were
people who surprised me. Politically, I’m so at odds
with Andrew Sullivan [a conservative/libertarian
political commentator], but he has such extraordinary
depth on spirituality issues and was particularly elo-
quent about his HIV-AIDS. It was interesting to hear
why he’s a Catholic despite being openly gay.”
“It was interesting to contrast his take with Cokie
Roberts. She says that when she hears something from
the church that’s anathema to her values, she just dis-
misses it. ‘They’re a bunch of old, white men. I don’t
pay any attention to them,’ she told me. Andrew said,
‘I try to go back and research and look at their logic
for their stance and take them on with their own argu-
ments. I look at the same books they look at to justify
their stance. He also points out that it’s a central
theme of Catholicism to quest for the truth. Truth is
not to be measured by your popularity or your ability
to convince others of it.”
Kerry says that one of the most moving stories she
heard came from Irish actor, writer, and producer
Gabriel Byrne who, as a child, was sexually abused
by a priest. “In the book, he talks about his attempt to
resolve that. He ran into the priest who assaulted him
at a football match and he decided to contact him. He
got him on the phone and felt like a child again. He
said he just wanted the priest to like him and couldn’t
get himself to say what he had called to say. A few
years later, he tried again, only to learn that the priest
had died. He wrote an open letter of forgiveness to
the priest that ran on the front page of the Irish Times,
which is like the New York Times of Ireland.” After it
was published, Kerry says, Byrne waited for a reaction
that never came. “No one said a word,” she says, mar-
veling. Gabriel Byrne, Kerry says, is one of the biggest
movie stars in Ireland, “yet no one responded. This
was the 1980s, and I think you’d get a difference re-
sponse today but nobody mentioned the article, ever.
Gabriel said, ‘After I’d written the piece, I was left with
the feeling that I’d stood up in front of the class, said
what’d happened to me, and that I was greeted with
total silence and then told to sit down.’ ”
That feeling of speaking and being greeted with un-
comfortable silence is familiar to Kerry. She had a sim-
ilar experience of her own when she met Pope Bene-
dict XVI last year. “I was in Rome for a conference on
Africa,” she recalls. “There’s an annual conference in
Rome for winners of the Nobel Peace Prize and I had
been asked to come to the conference to participate
on the panel. All of the participants were invited to an
audience with the pope. Now, this was not a private
audience. On Wednesday morning, the pope meets
300,000 people in St. Peter’s square and on this oc-
casion, I was one of them. When he came by to say
hello, I felt that I needed to take that opportunity to
speak, just to whisper something in his ear on behalf
of people who were suffering and would never have
that opportunity. I felt a little hesitant because I also
thought that this isn’t, perhaps, the proper time. But
it might be my only time. So I said, ‘Your Holiness, in
view of the suffering in Africa and on behalf of the 30
million people who are going to die of AIDS by the
year 2020, would you reconsider the church’s position
on condoms?’ He said, ‘God bless you, my child.’ ”
Was she ashamed? Does she regret the incident?
A slight smile forms on Kerry’s face. “That was in
November, but by February he had announced that
he had formed a committee to look into the use of
condoms,” she says. “You just never know when what
you say or do makes a difference and why somebody
in a position of tremendous power decides to take
up an issue. Maybe what I said had something to do
with it. But probably not. HIV-AIDS is a major issue
for the church which, aside from governments, is the
largest provider of social services in the world.” And
with that, Kerry gathers up her belongings and heads
out the door. On this evening, a presidential candi-
date is invited to an audience with her family and one
can bet that Kerry will once again be speaking her
conscience.
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