....The Cardinal reserved his harshest criticisms for pro-lifers who complained to him. "At times, even in the Church, zeal can lead people to issue harsh judgments and impute the worst motives to one another. These attitudes and practices do irreparable damage to the communion of the Church," he wrote. "If any cause is motivated by judgment, anger or vindictiveness, it will be doomed to marginalization and failure."
Cardinal O’malley.. Softpedalling of abortion is conduct unbecoming a Catholic.
Maybe you should become a Unitarian.. you might feel more at home there.
This is adding insult to injury. Not only does he rationalize his evil activity, he expects apologies from true Catholics and those who value human life who take issue with his inexcusable actions.
Not so respectfully, O’Malley, you can kiss my a$$!
Militant
I think the problem is not so much the participation in the funeral (it doesn’t seem the appropriate moment to get on a soapbox), but rather the lack of any reprimand by bishops of the public activity of these abortion- and homosexual acitivity- promoting Catholic politicians while they are alive.
Where is this side of his personality when it's really needed?
How come he reveals it only for the Kennedy critics?
Like we are the real danger to the Church.........
*............scratching head...........*
“We’ve come to bury Kennedy, not to praise him!”
THIS IS WHAT’S WRONG WITH AMERICAN CATHOLICISM.
There’s too much politics in Catholicism in the USofA and maybe elsewhere.
The Bishop, Archbishop or Cardinal should have denied the Eucharist to Teddy Kennedy a LONG LONG LONG time ago. Much of what occurred in Ted’s life might have been altered if they had. Read below for a list of occurrences which should have Triggered a response from the Catholic Church.
The True Teddy Kennedy Dynasty
Courtesy of Dick Bailey... From an Email
The Last of The Kennedy Dynasty
As soon as his cancer was detected, I noticed the immediate attempt at the “canonization” of old Teddy Kennedy by the mainstream media.
They are saying what a “great American” he is. I say, let’s get a couple things clear & not twist the facts to change the real history.
1. He was caught cheating at Harvard when he attended it. He was expelled twice, once for cheating on a test, and once for paying a classmate to cheat for him.
2. While expelled, Kennedy enlisted in the Army, but mistakenly signed up for four years instead of two. Oops! The man can’t count to four! His father, Joseph P. Kennedy, former U.S. Ambassa dor to England (a step up from bootlegging liquor into the US from Canada during prohibition), pulled the necessary strings to have his enlistment shortened to two years, and to ensure that he served in Europe, not Korea , where a war was raging. No preferential treatment for him! (like he charged that President Bush received).
3. Kennedy was assigned to Paris, never advanced beyond the rank of Private, and returned to Harvard upon being discharged. Imagine a person of his “education” NEVER advancing past the rank of Private!
4. While attending law school at the University of Virginia , he was cited for reckless driving four times, including once when he was clocked driving 90 miles per hour in a residential neighborhood with his headlights off after dark.. Yet his Virginia driver’s license was never revoked. Coincidentally, he passed the bar exam in 1959. Amazing!
5. In 1964, he was seriously injured in a plane crash and hospitalized for several months. Test results done by the hospital at the time he was admitted had shown he was legally intoxicated. The results of those tests remained a “state secret” until in the 1980’s when the report was unsealed. Didn’t hear about that from the unbiased media, did we?
6. On July 19, 1969, Kennedy attended a party on Chappaquiddick Island in Massachusetts . At about 11:00 PM, he borrowed his chauffeur’s keys to his Oldsmobile limousine and offered to give a ride home to Mary Jo Kopechne, a campaign worker. Leaving the island via an unlit bridge with no guard rail, Kennedy steered the car off the bridge, flipped, and into Poucha Pond.
7. He swam to shore and walked back to the party passing several houses and a fire station. Two friends then returned with him to the scene of the accident. According to their later testimony, they told him what he already knew - that he was required by law to immediately report the accident to the authorities. Instead Kennedy made his way to his hotel, called his lawyer, and went to sleep. Kennedy called the police the next morning and by then the wreck had already been discovered. Before dying Kopechne had scratched at the upholstered floor above her head in the upside-down car. The Kennedy family began “calling in favors”, ensuring that any inquiry would be contained. Her corpse was whisked out-of-state to her family before an autopsy could be conducted. Further details are uncertain, but after the accident Kennedy says he repeatedly dove under the water trying to rescue Kopechne and he didn’t call police because he was in a state of shock. It is widely assumed Kennedy was drunk, and he held off calling police in hopes that his family could fix the problem overnight. Since the accident Kennedy’s “political enemies” have referred to him as the distinguished Senator from Chappaquiddick. He pleaded guilty to leaving the scene of an accident, and was given a SUSPENDED SENTENCE OF TWO MONTHS. Kopechne’s family received a small payout from the Kennedy’s insurance policy and never sued. There was later an effort to have her body exhumed and autopsied, but her family successfully fought against this in court, and Kennedy’s family paid their attorney’s bills.... a “token of friendship”?
8. Kennedy has held his Senate seat for more than forty years, but considering his longevity, his accomplishments seem scant. He authored or argued for legislation that ensured a variety of civil rights, increased the minimum wage in 1981, made access to health care easier for the indigent, funded Meals on Wheels for fixed-income seniors, and is widely held as the “standard-bearer for liberalism”. In his very first Senate roll he was the floor manager for the bill that turned U.S. immigration policy upside down and opened the floodgate for immigrants from third world countries.
9. Since that time, he has been the prime instigator and author of every expansion of an increase in immigration up to and including the latest attempt to grant amnesty to illegal aliens. Not to mention the pious grilling he gave the last two Supreme Court nominees, as if he was the standard bearer for the nation in matters of ³what¹s right². What a pompous ass!
10. He is known around Washington as a public drunk, loud, boisterous, and very disrespectful to ladies. JERK is a better description than “great American”. “A blonde in every pond” is his motto.
Let’s not allow the spin doctors to make this jerk a hero! How quickly the American public forgets what his real legacy is.
A LOT of the younger people don’t have a clue about all of this, and us older ones tend to forget things that happened so many years ago. Although I HAVEN’T!
LOOK AT THE TEN VERY PUBLIC TIMES IN TEDDY’S LIFE WHEN THE CATHOLIC CHURCH SHOULD HAVE TAKEN HIM ASIDE FOR SOME FORMATION OF HIS CONSCIENCE. But NO. Politics and Money . . . The American Catholic Church is NOT the Church I joined in 1992.
“The road to hell is paved with the skulls of bishops.”
-St. John Chrysostom
Judie Brown makes an excellent point that I didn’t consider: given that Kennedy was a very public supporter of intrinsic evil, and given the necessity of repentance before absolution of that sin, why didn’t the Cardinal take the opportunity of making it publicly clear that Kennedy retracted his support of abortion? It’s not as if he would be revealing someone’s sins that weren’t already known to all of America. What, he didn’t want to embarass abortion-lovers by stating that Kennedy had a change of heart?
O’Malley like so many of our illustrious and courageous bishops misses the point. It is IRRELEVANT to Kenndedy’s funeral whether or not he was repentent before his death and confessed his sins. That is a PRIVATE affair. What disqualifies him from a PUBLIC funeral is the fact that Kennedy was a prominent (in some people’s eyes) PUBLIC figure and because he was a PUBLIC figure, his being a so-called Catholic and advancing PUBLIC support for abortion (a heinous sin in the Catholic Church) caused a PUBLIC scandal and a scandal within the Church itself. It was these PUBLIC positions on abortion that REQUIRED Kennedy to make a PUBLIC declaration of disavowing his PUBLIC position before he would warrant a PUBLIC funeral. Please, someone get this message to O’Malley before he plans the funerals for Biden and Pelosi.
IOW—Money talks, and Crap gets a Catholic funeral.