Here is Pelosi kissing the Popes hand...then turning around and standing pretty much opposed to what the Vatican teaches on many "moral" issues.

Vatican official attacks U.S. Democrats as “party of death”

Vatican officials seldom single out political leaders who differ with the Church on issues like abortion rights or embryonic stem cell research. But now that the Vatican’s highest court is led by an American, the former St. Louis Archbishop Raymond Burke, we can expect things to get more explicit in Vatican City — at least when when it comes to U.S. politics.

Burke, who was named prefect of the Vatican’s Supreme Court of the Apostolic Signature in June, told the Italian Catholic newspaper Avvenire that the U.S. Democratic Party risked “transforming itself definitively into a party of death for its decisions on bioethical issues.” He then attacked two of the party’s most high profile Catholics — vice presidential candidate Joe Biden and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi — for misrepresenting Church teaching on abortion.

He said Biden and Pelosi, “while presenting themselves as good Catholics, have presented Church doctrine on abortion in a false and tendentious way.”...

http://blogs.reuters.com/faithworld/2008/10/01/vatican-official-attacks-us-democrats-as-party-of-death/

I suppose one accomplishment Ted Kennedy, God help him, can crow about is convincing American Catholics that one can live morally contrary to almost every moral teaching of the Catholic church, and still be a Catholic. It seems that what the Pope says, or statements from the Vatican, are just pretty much treated with, "Oh hummm...there they go again..."

There are certainly some pretty well recognized politicians these days who are following in his steps.

XtnYoda, shalomed aka chuck