I never understood why the Catholic Church didn’t stand up to the Kennedy’s positions on abortion...
Because like many churches, it was more interested in currying favor with celebrity politicians than preaching the word of God.
Lots of senior citizens in my church who have been Dems their whole life.
One jumped me when I was wearing a McLame and Palin shirt before the election. I said, I'm not voting for the baby killer. You could have heard a pin drop. Never got any more grief when I wore my shirt.
The "Kennedy position" on abortion was developed by Roman Catholic clergy (Fr. Robert Drinan, Fr. Charles Curran, Fr. Joseph Fuchs, Fr. Richard McCormick, and Fr. Giles Milhaven).
These priests met with Robert and Edward Kennedy, as well as Sargent Shriver, at Hyannisport in 1964 to explain to them why it was OK for them to support abortion. Many accounts of this meeting exist.
The bottom line is that the Catholic Church tolerated its clergy FORMULATING the "Kennedy position".
"Standing up" to that position would have required some sort of rebuke or correction to the priests who designed it - and that never happened.
Draw your own conclusions.
Answer: Money.
Because Teddy's older brother had been their opening wedge that cut into the Protestant establishment that had prevailed throughout the entire prior history of the U.S. Once the bishops hitched their star to the Kennedy wagon, objectivity went out the window. It's the same reaction blacks have had to their first (sorta) black president -- it really hasn't mattered to them what he has done, hasn't done, or what he stands for.
Superficial loyalty based on ethnicity is both politically naive and unChristian, and it makes me sad for how far the standards of education have fallen in both the public school civics classes and in religious understanding.