This morning, as I waited for the barista to brew my morning latte, I browsed the shelves of coffee mugs. One was emblazoned with my favorite Abe Lincoln quote.

"Folks who have no vices have very few virtues."

It made me think of Ted Kennedy.

With all the funerals we've had lately, there's a lot of talk about how legacy is generated in the media. In the days following the death of an American political icon, should we focus on Kennedy's achievements, his flaws, or a mix of both?

Undoubtedly, Kennedy's personal life will be remembered as another licentious chapter in the Kennedy family soap opera. The debauchery and womanizing of his youth (actually, up until the late 1980s) is on par with the rest of the Kennedy family scandals. But if the history books can look beyond the booze and the women, they might see a less stereotypical Kennedy.

Kennedy's political legacy will be as a bridge builder. His Republican colleagues voted him the most bipartisan Democrat in a recent survey.

"How in God's name could you explain the fact that people who had no ideological agreement with him walked away always feeling better for it, always feeling more respected?" Vice President Biden said on Good Morning America.

He was also a bridge builder as a Catholic, reaching out to conservative evangelicals and pro-choicers alike. Kennedy stood up to his political and religious critics, best exemplified by his speech at Jerry Falwell's Liberty Baptist College.  "They seem to think that it's easier for a camel to pass through the eye of the needle than for a Kennedy to come to [this] campus," he said.

It's that fiery part-Catholic, part-troublemaker vibe that always resounded with me. As a young, liberal, American Catholic, I've been inspired by Ted Kennedy. When other Catholic Democrats tried to explain their liberal legislation with theological arguments, they floundered. (Read: Nancy Pelosi and Joe Biden on abortion.)

Rather than try to massage away the tension between liberalism and Catholicism, Kennedy embraced it. In many respects, he lived his faith like many modern American Catholics—focused on the ideals of social justice and fighting poverty.

When Kennedy passed away, America magazine's Michael Sean Winters pointed out, "The first thing about Kennedy's death is that it is personal if you are a politically engaged Catholic." When it came to Kennedy's ideological differences, he simply wrote, "Kennedy was wrong on abortion." It seems that even the Catholics at the nation's premier Jesuit publication could agree to disagree with him.

One of the best blogs remembering Kennedy was Rabbi Brad Hirschfield's piece for Beliefnet. "Deuteronomy 16:20 teaches, 'Justice, justice shall you pursue'. While we all may not agree about his vision of a just society or how it was to be attained, these words are ones that Ted Kennedy lived by."

From Jerry Falwell and John McCain to rabbis and Jesuits, the overarching theme of this week's coverage has been the death of an imperfect man. Joe Biden said that Kennedy "made a lie out of [his mistakes] by the way he lived the rest of his life."

Like the rest of his family, Kennedy's unique blend of vice and virtue will captivate generations of Americans to come.