Members of the Kennedy family pose in 1967 with Richard Cardinal Cushing of Boston at the christening of Patrick Joseph Kennedy, held by grandfather Joseph P. Kennedy and his niece, Ann Gargan. In the rear are Rose Kennedy, Joan Kennedy and Sen. Edward Kennedy. Joining their brother are Edward Jr. and Kara, in the foreground.

AP

WASHINGTON, D.C. -- When the archbishop of Boston said John F. Kennedy’s funeral Mass in 1963, he departed from the Latin text to address the late president in English. “May the angels, dear Jack, lead you into Paradise,” said Richard Cardinal Cushing. “May the martyrs receive you at your coming.”

This, in a time before the Vatican softened the strict formality of its rites, was a gesture that embodied the relationship between the Roman Catholic Church and its most-celebrated family.

When Cardinal Cushing baptized the newest baby in the clan four years later, nobody could have foreseen that Patrick J. Kennedy would one day find himself in such conflict with Catholic teaching that his bishop would suggest that he “perhaps find another fine Christian denomination where he can be more comfortable.”

Nearly five decades after President Kennedy’s election heralded the full assimilation of Catholics into the nation’s power structure, his nephew’s dispute with Providence Bishop Thomas J. Tobin has been one of the one most serious andpublic rifts in the complex and evolving relationship among the church, its preeminent family and society at large.

Many issues have figured in the sea change — divorce, contraception, the movement of homosexuality from the shadows of American life. But as the dispute between U.S. Rep. Kennedy and Bishop Tobin has demonstrated anew, abortion overshadows all the other controversies.

There is “a critical difference,” Bishop Tobin said last month, between abortion and other difficult moral issues. “The Catholic Church has been very consistent about saying that abortion is always and everywhere intrinsically wrong.”

The dispute recalls questions about the role of the church in public policy that John Kennedy, as a presidential candidate, addressed in a pledge to an audience of Protestant ministers almost half a century ago:

“I believe in an America that is officially neither Catholic, Protestant nor Jewish; where no public official either requests or accepts instructions on public policy from the Pope, the National Council of Churches or any other ecclesiastical source; where no religious body seeks to impose its will directly or indirectly upon the general populace or the public acts of its officials; and where religious liberty is so indivisible that an act against one church is treated as an act against all.”

ROUGHLY FROM THE RISE of Joseph P. Kennedy Sr. between the world wars to his son’s election to the presidency in 1960, “ordinary Catholics and the church itself were very insecure about their place in American society because it was a Protestant society,” said Alan Wolfe, an expert on politics and religion at Boston College.

U.S. Rep. Patrick J. Kennedy, left, presents the Pope John Paul II a book of portraits by President John F. Kennedy’s personal photographer, Jacques Lowe, during a private meeting at the Vatican on Monday, July 1, 1996.

AP/ ARTURO MARI

While anti-Catholicism was fading, it remained a political force in some quarters and lived in the memory of older Catholics who were close to their immigrant roots. The influential church and the prominently Catholic Kennedy family took opportunities to help each other.

The Kennedys were such distinguished guests of Pope Pius XII at his installation in 1939 that young Edward received his First Communion from the pontiff. For their part, the Kennedys put a distinctly Catholic stamp on their philanthropy, building churches and parochial schools in Massachusetts and beyond.

As Catholics gradually gained political power and affluence, the need for ethnic and religious solidarity ebbed, even as they felt the shifting tides in the larger society — rising divorce rates, relaxed sexual mores, a decline in church attendance. At the same time, Rome’s liberalization of the church opened an argument about such long-held traditions and doctrines as priestly celibacy, the role of women and birth control.

BEFORE THE SUPREME COURT’S Roe v. Wade decision in 1973, there was relatively little division among Catholic politicians about what Ted Kennedy called “abortion on demand.” In one 1970 speech, the Massachusetts Democrat decried abortion in terms every bit as harsh as those he would marshal years later to oppose the Supreme Court nomination of federal Judge Robert Bork, an abortion foe.

President John F. Kennedy and Pope Paul VI during their historic meeting at the Vatican in July 1963. Kennedy, who faced anti-Catholic bias during his presidential campaign, only shook hands with the pope rather than kiss his ring, as is the usual practice.

AP

“How about the kids in the mental hospitals?” Kennedy said. “How about the old people in institutions?” he demanded of abortion-rights supporters. “Do you want to exterminate them, too?”

Kennedy — like many Catholic Democrats — later became a strong supporter of abortion rights. In 1975, Fall River Bishop Daniel A. Cronin criticized the senator for what he called “the weakening of your personal convictions.”

But Kennedy and other Catholic legislators have gotten “a free pass” at the polls on their differences with church doctrine on such issues as abortion because so many Catholic voters doubt the teachings themselves, according to Washington political analyst Charlie Cook.

“Every single day, tens of millions of American Catholics ignore the leaders of the church,” Cook said — on birth control, divorce, abortion, in vitro fertilization and others.

Divorce between Catholics had become common by 1981, when Ted and Joan Kennedy ended their marriage. The senator married Victoria Reggie in a civil ceremony 11 years later, but he had yet to secure an annulment of his first marriage. Joan Kennedy later said the church subsequently granted an annulment of that marriage on grounds that “his marriage vow to be faithful had not been honestly made,” according to Kennedy biographer Adam Clymer.

Another Kennedy divorce — between then-Rep. Joseph P. Kennedy II and Sheila Rauch in 1991 — led to headlines when she charged in a 1997 book that he had secretly obtained an annulment through his family’s influence with the church. Rauch appealed to the Vatican, which undid the annulment in 2005.

Notwithstanding Ted Kennedy’s departure from church leadership on abortion and other public issues, “they backed off” the powerful senator for the most part, according to political analyst Cook.

Indeed, said the Rev. Thomas J. Reese, a Jesuit scholar at the Woodstock Theological Center in Washington, D.C., it is only a minority of American bishops –– fewer than 20, he estimates –– who favor strict sanctions, such as publicly withholding Communion, for officials who promote abortion rights.

FOR PATRICK KENNEDY, dealings with the church have been comparatively free of public controversy –– at least until last month. In fact, Kennedy said last week, a high point of his life as a Catholic was a meeting with the late Pope John Paul II after his work as a junior member of Congress to help church leaders end civil strife in East Timor.

But in an interview last month, Kennedy sharply criticized the Catholic bishops’ opposition to any health-care overhaul that did not include a strict ban on federal subsidies for abortion. Bishop Tobin shot back in irritation, noting that the bishops have long supported reform of health care.

The continuing exchange escalated over the ensuing weeks and exploded last week when Kennedy disclosed that the bishop instructed him not to receive Communion. Bishop Tobin said he had made a request in a 2007 letter.

With the abortion question still burning, the emergence of new issues such as stem-cell research, and the demise of the generation of Catholics old enough to remember Cardinal Cushing, there is every prospect of continuing rifts between the church hierarchy and American Catholics.

“There’s going to be an awful lot more of it over the next 20 years,” said Wolfe.

jmulligan@belo-dc.com