Someone on the BBC’s website linked to my earlier Kennedy comment. More than a few e-mails in response tell me that I deserve to die for spitting on the dead. (I’ll leave out the more colorful language.)

The fact is: I was moved by the sight of Ted Kennedy at Mass. Senator or intern, we’re all facing the same choices and challenges on a basic human level. Maybe I had more in common with Ted Kennedy than I would have ever realized from going to CPAC.

As Bill says, we can’t lie about the facts of life and death in the life of Ted Kennedy. We can’t forget Mary Jo Kopechne. We can’t neglect his treatment of Bob Bork. We can’t pretend that it’s okay to call yourself Catholic (or an “ardent, practicing one“) and be a proponent of legal abortion, for one thing. But some of us are optimistic that there is a hope of redemption. And I say that for the sinner who is Kathryn Lopez as much as anyone.

While raising questions recently about President Obama’s health-care push, New York’s Archbishop Timothy Dolan said that he is “praying with and for the president.” We can do this sincerely even while raising moral and other principled and reasonable concerns about Obama’s policies. But at the end of the day, we are all in this together, facing the same end — and party affiliation won’t get you in the door.