Posted on 08/29/2009 4:55:37 AM PDT by NYer
We must, as a matter of precept, pray for the salvation of heretical Catholics like Senator Edward Kennedy, but we do not have to praise him let alone extol him with the full honors of a public Catholic funeral and all the adulation that attends such an event. There was very little about Ted Kennedy’s life that deserves admiration from a spiritual or moral point of view. He was probably the worst example of a Catholic statesman that one can think of. When all is said and done, he has distorted the concept of what it means to be a Catholic in public life more than anyone else in leadership today.
Obviously we don’t know the state of Senator Edward Kennedy’s soul upon death. We don’t pretend to. We are told by the family that he had the opportunity to confess his sins before a priest, and his priest has said publicly he was "at peace" when he died. For that we are grateful. But it is one thing to confess one’s sins and for these matters to be kept, rightfully, private. It is another thing entirely for one who so consistently and publicly advocated for the destruction of unborn human beings to depart the stage without a public repudiation of these views, a public confession, as it were.
It is up to God to judge Senator Kennedy’s soul. We, as rational persons, must judge his actions, and his actions were not at all in line with one who values and carefully applies Church teaching on weighty matters. Ted Kennedy’s positions on a variety of issues have been a grave scandal for decades, and to honor this "catholic" champion of the culture of death with a Catholic funeral is unjust to those who have actually paid the price of fidelity. We now find out that President Obama will eulogize the Senator at his funeral, an indignity which, following on the heels of the Notre Dame fiasco, leaves faithful Catholics feeling sullied, desecrated and dehumanized by men who seem to look for opportunities to slap the Church in the face and do so with impunity simply because they have positions of power.
It is not enough for Kennedy to have been a "great guy behind the scenes" as we have seen him referred to even by his political opponents. It is also not praiseworthy to put a Catholic rhetorical veneer on his leftist politics that did nothing to advance true justice as the Church sees it or to advance the peace of Christ in this world. Every indication of Senator Kennedy’s career, every public appearance, every sound bite showed an acerbic, divisive and partisan political hack for whom party politics were much more infallible than Church doctrines. Whatever one’s political affiliation, if one is only "Catholic" to the extent that his faith rhymes with his party line, then his Catholicism is a fraud.
As the Scriptures remind us, there is a time for everything under the sun. This, now, is the time for honesty about our Faith and about those who are called to express it in the public forum. If we do not remind ourselves of the necessity of public confession for public sins such as Senator Kennedy was guilty of, then we are negligent in our embrace of the Faith and we are part of the problem. As Pope Benedict has reminded us recently, charity without truth can easily become mere sentimentality, and we must not fall into that error. A Catholic show of charity for the family must not eclipse the truth that is required of all with eyes to see and ears to hear.
Senator Kennedy needs to be sent to the afterlife with a private, family-only funeral and the prayers of the Church for the salvation of his immortal soul. He will not be missed by the unborn who he betrayed time and time again, nor by the rest of us who are laboring to undo the scandalous example of Catholicism that he gave to three generations of Americans.
Well said, Fr. Euteneuer!
Well said, Fr. Euteneuer!
This applies to every Catholic who lives that way and every individual of ANY religion who completely misrepresents morality.
Bet it wouldn’t take much to get the Fr. to tell you what he really thinks!
to honor this “catholic” champion of the culture of death with a Catholic funeral is unjust to those who have actually paid the price of fidelity
We shall see who says the funeral mass.
Finally somebody tells it like it is
McCain should be made to read this article 100 times a day
If the Catholic Church would discipline those that defy their teachings they would not be in this position to begin with. Read Matthew 18 - God gives us Scripture for His purpose.
This is the BEST article I’ve seen on Kennedy’s passing.
“leaves faithful Catholics feeling sullied, desecrated and dehumanized by men who seem to look for opportunities to slap the Church in the face and do so with impunity simply because they have positions of power.”
________________________________________
The big question is: why do so many “faithful Catholics” support and vote for the party of death every election?
After his canonization at Notre Dame I thought it might be his holiness Barrack Hussien, prince of darkness.
As so often happens, it is a lower level, lacking-in-any-major-power figure who quietly speaks the truth, while the ‘leaders’ of the Church fall in line to be part of the glitz and glamour of world[ly] ‘leaders’.
Excellent summation of the current sad state of affairs of the Caholic Church ‘leadership’.
McCain should be made to read this article...etc..
= = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = =
This article should be read at EVERY Mass for the next month.
Followed by an edict from the Pope that Catholics will either start living the life or be excommunicated.
I personally don’t care a whit about T Kennedy or what he ‘feels’ but to have all these pols and so called Catholics worship this slug is disheartening.
And the Church can’t seem to figure out why people are turning against them.
Between these type of actions and the non action against the rogue priests makes people of my ilk (Raised Catholic in 40-50’s) turn their back on the church, who just seems to be piling on and force feeding more of this ‘progressive’ garbage on the (ex) faithful.
“The floor of hell is paved with the skulls of bishops.” - St. Athanasius
Fr. Euteneuer speaks so eloquently to exactly what I feel in my heart. Thank God a man of his stature and faith exists in this world. It gives me hope.
WELL SAID.
Also read A Tale of Two Kennedys by Bishop deSouza.
Couldn’t agree more
ping
Here is another article by Fr.
Just Say No to Judicial Affirmative Action
President Obama thinks he has thrown the pro-life movement a curve ball by nominating a politically-correct relatively unknown minor judge as a candidate for the Supreme Court. Putting the name of Sonia Sotomayor forward for this office is really the equivalent of an affirmative action plan for the highest court of our land, and it is just not what we need for our judicial system. As a Hispanic female judge, she apparently has the credentials suited to Obama’s highly politicized view of the Constitution, but Sotomayor is far from the most qualified person for the office. More importantly, she is not unambiguously pro-life.
What is becoming clear in the vetting process of this woman is that Sotomayor has served a decades-long career avoiding the whole issue of baby-killing, and now her advocates want us to believe that she will be a friend to the pro-life movement. Actually, she will never help to overturn our nation’s terrible abortion law because she can’t. She does not manifest either the personal character or the track record that tells us she will fight for babies. Even if she should be sympathetic to the cause of life - which is not at all clear to anyone who examines her record - she has never displayed that unique brand of moral courage that it will take to re-establish the right to life of the most innocent of God’s children. Now is not the time for compromise in the judiciary. We’ve had that for 36 years. It is the time for pure leadership for life. Sotomayor doesn’t have it, doesn’t give it and apparently just doesn’t get it.
Apart from her reverse-discriminatory view that a “Latina female” would be more adequate to judge certain cases than a “white male,” relevant to the question of credentials is that 60% of the cases in which she wrote the majority opinion for the 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals have been reversed by the Supreme Court. This is an abysmal track record for someone being considered for the top judicial forum in the land. Furthermore, her positions are highly emotional, not hard-headed and rational, and have led to a trivializing of the law, not a strengthening of it.
A pretty safe pro-life rule of thumb for all future Supreme Court nominees should be that we require them to have a proven pro-life track record both in their decisions and in practice. Their commitment has to be visible and tangible. Otherwise we have to oppose them in no uncertain terms. Unborn children were the only real casualties of the so-called “safe” Republican nominees like Sandra Day O’Connor and David Souter, and of course there has been little or no movement in the direction of protecting life despite their being put forward by pro-life presidents. There is all the more reason to fear the candidates put forward by a radical extremist pro-abortion President.
We can never forget that we are literally at war, and in wartime, there can be no gray areas of action and no hesitation. We may not be able to stop the nomination of another pro-abort for the Supreme Court, but we cannot pretend that we will settle for anything less than a justice who is committed to overturning Roe and to putting legal walls around the babies once again. For that matter, a good pro-life justice will fight for legal protection for all of us against an increasingly-aggressive culture of death that wants to usurp more and more legal power to endorse its dirty agenda.
We must urge our Senators to stand up and say a forceful NO to this political appointee to the nation’s high court - we need a Supreme Court Justice who will fight to rectify three and a half decades of injustice toward innocent children in this country, not a politically-convenient appointee who wants to make history. We elected a history-making President and look what it has led to. You’d think we would have learned.
Sincerely,
Rev. Thomas J. Euteneuer,
President, Human Life International
I disagreed with Kennedy's politics as does Fr. Enteneur's opinion, but Fr. Enterneur also knows this:
We have no idea if Senator Kennedy had a deathbed re-conversion. We cannot judge.
Beginning Catholic: The Anointing of the Sick: Comfort and Healing [Ecumenical]
Very well said. Aligned with marxists, there is no group more anti life, more anti God in the world. By their acts you will know them.
Me too.
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