No, the bishop asked him to excommnicate himself—self-excommunicate. That’s to avoid giving the politician ammunition to turn around and make an issue out of the bishop’s action while at the same time making the point that the politician has removed himself from good standing in the Church.
Sooner or later formal excommnication will be unavoidable, but when it happens, it will actually be turned back against the excommunicating bishops and, in the short run, the bishops will be the losers. In the long run, they’ll have no choice. But they are trying for the present to finesse it. They are right to be aware of the blowback that will happen. But foolish to think the politicians aren’t smart enough to know that self-excommunicating themselves has something in it or the bishop and nothing in it for politician.
Which is why sooner or later, the bishops will have to non-self-excommunicate, formally excommnunicate.
But Bishop Tobin did at least help to get Patches Kennedy to self-de-elect himself. That’s a gain.
That happened because Congressman Kennedy made a public issue of it.
If a Bishop tells you publicly not to receive communion, you are ex-communicated, in my opinion.
The Governor of Rhode Island supported the Bishop on this issue.
And later, Kennedy announced his retirement.
So it did not backfire on Bishop Tobin -- so far.
Excerpt from LifeNewsSite.com article:
The subject of excommunication gained national attention late last year when Bishop Thomas Tobin of Rhode Island publicly acknowledged that he had asked Rep. Patrick Kennedy to refrain from receiving communion. Though Tobin never excommunicated Kennedy, the incident was enough to respark debate over the practice.