Jack may have been a lib (and a cafeteria Catholic), but back then liberals weren't advocating homosexuality, abortion, and a world totalitarian state to "protect the planet." Even Bobby Kennedy died almost five years before Roe v. Wade and a year before "Stonewall."
Kennedy made it clear his religion was one thing, his political office quite another. It was the type of covering argument used by the Jesuit priest and Mass. Rep. Robert Drinan as he lent every support he could to more liberal abortion laws.
The doctrine of separation of political action and religious belief has become so firmly established that how lately it was born is forgotten.