The senator and the pope
Over at Time Magazine, Jeff Israely has an interesting examination of the Kennedy family’s changing relationship with the Catholic Church. Israely describes Sen. Edward M. Kennedy as the nation’s most prominent Roman Catholic politician these last four decades – a man who received his first communion from Pope Pius XII, whose mother once expressed hope that he would enter the priesthood, whose first marriage was celebrated by Cardinal Francis Spellman of New York.
But then, there’s that business about abandoning his early opposition to abortion to become one of the Senate’s most powerful advocates for legal access to the procedure that the church condemns.
During his meeting last month with Pope Benedict XVI, President Barack Obama handed the pontiff a sealed letter from Kennedy — the White House says nobody, not even Obama, knows what it contained — and asked him to pray for the Massachusetts director.
Israely notes the silence from Benedict following Kennedy’s death, and catalogs areas of conflict between Kennedy and the church.
His first marriage, to former model Virginia Joan Bennett, ended in divorce in 1982, with the marriage annulled by the Roman Rota more than a decade later. And there are the infamous episodes in his life that showed a man not quite in control of his demons. But ultimately, beyond his personal travails, Kennedy's relationship with the Church hierarchy was destined for conflict because of politics. The Senator became both the face and the engine of the liberal wing of the Democratic Party that has long led the battle for abortion rights, stem-cell research and gay marriage, all of which Catholic doctrine strictly forbids.
"He is a complicated figure," the Rev. James Martin, an editor with the Jesuit magazine America, tells Israely. "Catholics on the right are critical because of his stance on abortion. Catholics on the left celebrate his achievements on immigration, fighting poverty and other legislation that is a virtual mirror of the Church's social teaching.”
“Back at headquarters,” Israely writes, “there is little room for nuance.”
"Here in Rome, Ted Kennedy is nobody,” a Vatican official of U.S. nationality tells him. "If he had influence in the past, it was only with the Archdiocese of Boston, and that eventually disappeared too."
Comments
No Christian should speak of another person as a nobody. Shame on the Vatican official who said, "Here in Rome, Ted Kennedy is nobody."
Posted by: John Roberts | August 28, 2009 10:01 PM
So the implication is that to mean anything in the Catholic religion you have to be somebody? Isn't that exactly opposite to the teachings of jesus?
Posted by: Kurt Johnson | August 29, 2009 9:34 AM
Disagree with the poster who took issue with the Vatican official who stated quite correctly that in Rome, Senator Kennedy is nobody. What is so reprehensible about the truth? If the Senator from Massachusetts did not agree with the tenets of his religion, he should have done the honorable thing and left the Church. But he was not an honorable man.
Posted by: Marie | August 29, 2009 10:04 AM
Does anyone recall the pope paying tribute to Congressman Henry Hyde, a Catholic and pro-life leader, who died in 2007?
My point is that Israely is ignoring protocol. Kennedy and Hyde were not head of states and shouldn't expect to receive public tributes from the pope.
It would be impossible to keep up with every Catholic politician or official in the world who passes away.
Posted by: DAC | August 29, 2009 2:15 PM
Gee, Marie, let me see if I understand your position. Is it that Senator Kennedy is nobody because he did not agree with the tenets of his religion? Are all others who do not agree with the tenets of the Roman Catholic church nobodies too? Wow! That's a whole lot of non-persons! Whatever happened to loving the sinner but not the sin?
Posted by: John Roberts | August 29, 2009 3:43 PM
Anybody becomes a somebody when the Catholic church confers on him the title of nobody, for the Catholic church, that needs a brain transplant, owner and spawner of bachelor boys, running around in their various precincts, committing pedophilia while putting out pompous fiats for everyone else to follow--this self same Catholic church is blind to its own follies when it judges anyone as a nobody. It needs the sharp end of a pin thrust in its inflated sanctimony.
Posted by: Anonymous | August 30, 2009 2:47 AM
Anonymous I don't think the opinion of a Vatican official of U.S. nationality should be taken as the official position of the Vatican. I'll admit some ignorance and ask what does the Vatican do for other Catholic Legislators that have passed away?
Posted by: ravensfan | August 31, 2009 11:48 AM