“A quiet and private Mass would have been acceptable and correct ... you cannot excuse your support through your own participation.”
There would never have been a small and quiet private Mass for the last remaining son of the Kennedy clan. The Catholic Church had to deal with the public mass that would inevitably be held. Also, one doesn’t know what Teddy repented of on his deathbed making such a Mass accceptable to be held.
I feel sorry for the position the Church has been placed in. Do you really think, considering all of the contributions to the Church throughout the years the whole Kennedy clan has made to the Church, as well as all of the sincerely believing members of the Kennedy clan that exist, that the Church would turn its back on the last remaining Kennedy son? You have to be realistic here. The Kennedy’s made the Catholic Church acceptable at a time when it wasn’t politically, at least as to being a President of the U.S. was concerned. It brought the Catholic Church into the mainstream in a primarily, at that time, Protestant country. All Catholics at the time understood this, and most still do.
The Kennedy clan also lived up to that part of the Catholic Church’s mission of helping the poorest in society, and the social causes aspect of the Church. So it was a split bag that came along with the Kennedy family in their view of Catholicism. Plus, the Kennedy’s never practiced that which they were willing to allow to others as a choice, namely the non-birthing of children. That whole family has propagated like rabbits. No abortions in their own families. The Kennedy clan, being very very Irish, also had that whole immigrant underdog mentaility, and scrapping and fighting their way to the top of the heap from the very bottom, by hook or by crook. The pugnacious part of the Irish personality.
So, from my viewpoint, the Catholic Church is dealing as best it can with the hand it was dealt here, and make of it what you will. But I wouldn’t be quite so vicious in your condemnation of the Church here. This is one day in the life of a Church that has existed from the beginning of Christianity itself, today is but a miniscule sliver in the midst of time. What did you really think the Church was going to do here, start up a big controversy of a political nature? That’s not what happens at funerals, especially at an Irish Catholic wake for the last remaining son of Camelot.
I wouldn’t get so bent out of shape about this. Be glad you are a member of a Church that has never changed its policy toward abortion, the practice of homosexuality (even though in the U.S. it let the Church get polluted by too many of them; thank goodness Pope BXVI is purging the Church of them), the belief in marriage as a sacrament, etc. that so many other supposedly Christian churches have dumped on as Christian beliefs. The Catholic Church has its faults, but in the scheme of things, it’s a good Church to be a member of. Admire its good qualities, and work to change the bad ones from within. It’s an exceptional Church with huge history and tradition, the original Christian Church. Savor that.
In the Roman Catholic Church, we worship God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Ghost, not the three stooges known as the brothers Kennedy. Each in his own way was a rank disgrace to the Church, to our nation and to the Irish. Don't drink the soup of the Kennedy Klan propaganda. Contributions? What contributions? Chappaquiddick? "In Robert Bork's America, women will die from back alley abortions!"? Babykiller extraordinaire? Darling of Naral and Planned barrenhood? Antiwar antiAmerican scum? Treasonous SOB running to advise Yuri Andropov on how to combat Ronaldus Maximus on public image in the Cold War? Betrayer of troops in the field in every war of his lifetime? Sincerely believing Catholic members of Klan Kennedy??? Name three alive today. Klan Kennedy was descended from two Irish who arrived in about 1850 during the Potato Famine. The Modern generation of Klan Kennedy have been disgracing those ancestors all their lives, and have been Castle Irish (the traitorous kind to their own) who long since drank the soup of the enemies of the Irish.
Unlike many here, I have absolutely no problem with the Kennedys voting for programs that actually provided for the material well-being of the poorest of God's children or to protect the rights of racial minorities. Those actions dp not sanitize the damage that family has done to Catholicism in this country by their every scheme and public moral debacle of the last five or six decades to make respectable and "Catholic" public defiance of the right to life, moral conservatism, the vows of marriage, the definition of marriage. They are Lucifer's patron saints of cafeteria "Catholicism."
If, as should have been the case, Teddy had been formally excommunicated by Richard Cardinal Cushing or by Humberto Cardinal Madeiros or by Bernard Cardinal Law or by Sean Cardinal O'Malley, this fiasco would never have occurred. Comrade Obama speaking from the pulpit in a Roman Catholic Church??? Giving some pagan eulogy about Teddy being a great senator??? A Catholic Church awash in apostates, heretics and antiChrist wannabes falling all over themselves in their tribute to the Hyannisport babykiller???
The Kennedy Klan never practiced WHAT??? Birth control? Abortion? I may not be able to prove that they DID these things any more than you can prove that they did not but let's not assume the best against all evidence. Silence will suffice.
The Kennedys made Catholicism respectable??? What??? I don't really care what Hieronymous Q. Snuffington thinks or thought of Catholicism. We don't need his sufferance or that of Muffy of the Junior League or Chatsworth of the polo club or Skipper down at the yacht basin. Ours is the one true Church founded and guaranteed by Jesus Christ Himself and we have no need of Castle Irish trash like the Kennedys whoring after secular respectability at the expense of dogma and the Teaching Magisterium. They "brought the Catholic Church into the mainstream in a primarily, at that time, Protestant country." You are not talking about all Protestants but only the lamestream old, dying denominations with no spines, no guts and no determination, the ones that have fallen from morality, one by one and wallow in nothing but a half vast Marxist "social gospel." We are not talking Wisconsin or Missouri Synod Lutherans, Westminster Confession Presbyterians, Evangelicals, Pentecostals and others willing (with some imperfections of dogma) to fight for the Scriptures of Our Lord, whose grudging respect on abortion, marriage and similar issues is more worth having but mainline folks without a religious bone in their bodies or religious brain cell in their heads, aliens to the actual Christian Faith. The Kennedys whored after respectability in those alien precincts and you call that "respectability."
My Irish grandmother got off the boat from Cork in Southie in 1895 when she was a twelve-year old. Trust me: You don't have a clue about "the pugnacious part of the Irish personality" nor did the Hyannisport whale nor did he scrap is way up from the bottom. His father graduated Harvard in the WW-I era, became the bootlegger of choice for his classmates, parlayed the rum-running money into Hollywood and political influence, became Ambassador to England when Teddy was pre-kindergarten, etc. Mother Rosie was the daughter of John "Honey" Fitzgerald, disgraceful in his own right but NEVER poor. The brothers Kennedy were the Irish version of Sen. Jay Rockefeller struggling to the top despite the disadvantages of his birth. Puhleeeze!
Your last and ONLY your last paragraph makes sense.
Note that I have not mentioned the usual stuff about the social life and personal victims of Jon, Bobby! or Ted. Sean Cardinal O'Malley had the authority, as ordinary of the Boston Archdiocese to ban any funeral whatsoever in any Catholic Church in his archdiocese. So let's not pretend that he somehow lacked the authority. When Obama desecrated Notre Shame, Bishop John D'Arcy of Fort Wayne-South Bend refused to show up and made no secret of his absolute disapproval. Spineless Cardinal O'Malley not only allowed this fiasco, he participated in it.