A month ago, Rep. Patrick Kennedy (D-RI), the latest and possibly the last holder of public office among America’s most famous Catholic family, stated in an interview with Catholic News Service:
I can’t understand for the life of me how the Catholic Church could be against the biggest social justice issue of our time where the very dignity of the human person is being respected by the fact that we’re caring and giving health care to the human person—that right now we have 50 million people who are uninsured. You mean to tell me the Catholic Church is going to be denying those people life saving health care? I thought they were pro-life. If the church is pro-life, then they ought to be for health care reform because it’s going to provide health care that are [sic] going to keep people alive. So this is an absolute red herring and I don’t think that it does anything but to fan the flames of dissent and discord and I don’t think it’s productive at all.”
That was the salvo that brought into the open a rather long-standing, private conflict with his bishop, Thomas J. Tobin of Providence, over whether Kennedy was a Catholic in good standing and thus eligible to receive the Eucharist. It culminated on November 12 in the open letter from Tobin, in which he took up Kennedy’s line, “The fact that I disagree with the hierarchy on some issues does not make me any less of a Catholic,” and replied: “Well, in fact, Congressman, in a way it does. Although I wouldn’t choose those particular words, when someone rejects the teachings of the Church, especially on a grave matter, a life-and-death issue like abortion, it certainly does diminish their ecclesial communion, their unity with the Church.”
Last Friday, Kennedy was quoted by the Providence Journal saying: “The bishop instructed me not to take Communion and said that he has instructed the diocesan priests not to give me Communion.”
That, according to Bishop Tobin last Sunday, is not entirely accurate. Mark Silk of Spiritual Politics deftly recounts, links to, and comments today on all the public back-and-forth, which reached its pitch yesterday.
As of this writing, Kennedy has not yet indicated he was going mum. But his office has not returned requests for comment.
November 24th, 2009 | 7:01 am
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November 24th, 2009 | 2:35 pm
I think one of the reasons why bishops don’t come out and publicly discipline public figures over their very public opposition to Church teachings is because the bishops don’t want to be publicly humiliated by the public disobedience of public figures. In theory, a bishop has all kinds of churchly powers that he is afraid to use — for many different reasons. Bishop Tobin said he hadn’t told his own clergy not to give Kennedy communion because it would not be kept secret. Maybe also because he knows he would be publicly disobeyed by his own priests. And then what does he do? Fire the priests? There is a shortage of them, don’t you know. Here in Manhattan there are at least three outrageously gay parishes. One of them has a pastor who tells people who work for him that he is gay. And one church is notorious for telling same sex attracted penitents who want to be chaste to relax and get a boyfriend. Is it possible that the archbishop doesn’t know what’s going on? In my opinion it is a major scandal that bishops choose to ignore these outrages because they want to protect their own public images and can’t face the problems related to getting rid of faithless priests.
November 25th, 2009 | 1:33 am
St Joseph, pray for our unity.
November 25th, 2009 | 5:51 am
To Bob Moran: Please post the names of the parishes to which you refer. This will allow concerned Catholics to insist on a response from the Archbishop. Concerned Catholics must have support in defending the Church, if ever, now.
November 25th, 2009 | 3:52 pm
For the record, Joseph Patrick Kennedy II, the oldest son of Bobby Kennedy, is a member of the U.S. House of Representatives, representing a district in Massachusetts. I know what you said is technically consistent with that, but it gave the impression that Patrick was the only one still holding office, and that’s not true.
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