"The Damage Done is Profound": Former Senator Santorum Speaks on the Kennedy Funeral

LifeSiteNews ^ | 9/16/09 | John-Henry Westen

[wagglebee]

ORALANDO, September 15, 2009 (LifeSiteNews.com) - In addition to his announcement that he is considering a run for President in 2012, former US Senator Rick Santorum gave his assessment of the controversy around the Ted Kennedy funeral during his speech to the Catholic Leadership Conference last week. Santorum's talk focused on rejuvenating the Catholic Church in the United States.

During his speech Santorum lamented "what the Church allowed to happen" with the Kennedy funeral, referring to it as a "deification" of Kennedy.  "The damage done" to the Church, he said, "is profound."

"We have Catholic politicians who have led this country astray, have led generations of Catholics astray," said Santorum.

He noted that there was no personal grievance between himself and Kennedy. "I knew Ted Kennedy very, very well, I got along with Teddy. Everybody got along with Teddy.  He's was a nice, affable guy," he said.

In answer to those who would protest that "the Church is all about forgiveness," Santorum said: "Yes, God blessed Teddy with a year of knowing he was going to die."

"We all prayed that that year was a productive one for him and his relationship with our Savior," he added.  "I prayed for that. I sent him a note. I told him that. I prayed for him every day."

Santorum made particular note of the Vatican letter read by former Washington Cardinal Theodore McCarrick at the internment. And while he said he understood the motivation for such a presentation, he nevertheless concluded that "there is no excuse" for it.  "It will harm us, it will hurt the rejuvenation of our Church," he said.

For the future rejuvenation of the Church, "getting it right with Catholic politicians is going to be huge," he warned. "We keep sending the message that it's okay to dissent, okay to do all the things that almost every Catholic politician in the United States does," he said.

He recalled that during the Senate debates on banning partial birth abortion, "almost a third of the votes against the bill were Catholics."

The key to it all, he said, is having "good shepherds" to lead the Church.

[Jim Noble]

I never understood why the Catholic Church didn’t stand up to the Kennedy’s positions on abortion...

The "Kennedy position" on abortion was developed by Roman Catholic clergy (Fr. Robert Drinan, Fr. Charles Curran, Fr. Joseph Fuchs, Fr. Richard McCormick, and Fr. Giles Milhaven).

These priests met with Robert and Edward Kennedy, as well as Sargent Shriver, at Hyannisport in 1964 to explain to them why it was OK for them to support abortion. Many accounts of this meeting exist.

The bottom line is that the Catholic Church tolerated its clergy FORMULATING the "Kennedy position".

"Standing up" to that position would have required some sort of rebuke or correction to the priests who designed it - and that never happened.

Draw your own conclusions.

[Coleus]

First this so-called Catholic will have to explain why he voted for title X funding which grants money to planned parenthood

I don't like him or his attitude and remember the phony ban on partial birth abortion law that he co-wrote where partial birth abortion still exists providing the navel is inside the birth-canal.

Santorum as well as Chris Smith (R-NJ)voted for HR 3010 which funds Title X and family-planning programs.  It is this bill that funds planned parenthood the enemy of the unborn and pro-life movement.  Santorum loses my vote.

 

HR 3010   House Vote here: http://clerk.house.gov/evs/2005/roll628.xml   Senate Vote Here  

http://www.senate.gov/legislative/LIS/roll_call_lists/roll_call_vote_cfm.cfm?congress=109&session=1&vote=00349  

http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/C?c109:./temp/~c109OCwwd2

Provided further, That of the funds made available under this heading, $285,963,000 shall be for the program under title X of the Public Health Service Act to provide for voluntary family planning projects:

also on this link:

http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/cpquery/?sel=DOC&&item=&r_n=hr337.109&&&sid=cp109susc7&&refer=&&&db_id=cp109&&hd_count

oh, and these so-called "republicans" increased Title X funding every year during the Bush/Hastert/Frist Administrations.  They're all  a bunch of losers in my book who spent MORE money than the democrats and INCREASED Title X appropriations.   I'll pray for a real republican who didn't fund planned parenthood, not santorum.

[Tribune7]

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[narses]

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Obama Says A Baby Is A Punishment

Obama: “If they make a mistake, I don’t want them punished with a baby.”

[NoRedTape]

"If they make Ted a saint, I’m switchin to Baptist just sayin........."

LOL. It's the END of the "Kennedy Dynasty" (actually, it ended with Bobby) and no Saints in sight (from my perspective). Teddy boy's funeral Mass should have NEVER been TV telecast with Obama and all the liberal minions there. But we already know that.

No real Christian could have voted for Obama.

........and no sense to switch away from the Catholic Church. Ever. Jesus (God)founded it.........jus' saying......

[NoRedTape]

BOBBY JINDAL/ SARAH PALIN

2012

 

[Drango]

Sarah Palin/Joe Wilson 2012

[Salvation]

I had a gift card that someone gave to me last year from Borders and laughed out loud and remarked to the clerk on the Kennedy books they had there.

40 percent off.

“Why would anyone want to buy this book?” about Kennedy’s book.

BTW, I got 30 percent off on my book. Borders must be having a hard time right now! LOL!

If I remember, they supported Planned Parenthood. Hmmmm.

[pankot]

Every true Christian knows they will die...someday. Hence the Bible’s warning to “stay awake”, i.e. be prepared, for it might be tomorrow. Death-bed conversions are playing roulette with one’s soul.

[pankot]

Answer: Money.

[Bellflower]

Ultimately the fault lies with the Pope. He surely knows what is going on and is ultimately responsible for every aspect of what goes on in the Catholic Church.

According to the First Vatican Council The Catholic Church established that:

If anyone thus speaks, that the Roman Pontiff has only the office of inspection or direction, but not the full and supreme power of jurisdiction over the universal Church, not only in things which pertain to faith and morals, but also in those which pertain to the discipline and government of the Church spread over the whole world; or, that he possesses only the more important parts, but not the whole plenitude of this supreme power; or that this power of his is not ordinary and immediate, or over the churches altogether and individually, and over the pastors and the faithful altogether and individually: let him be anathema.

[wardaddy]

Everybody got along with Teddy. He's was a nice, affable guy,"

That was what they always told my dad in DC back in business days when dad would bitch about Teddy's driving.

[Bellflower]

Rick Santorum has permanently compromised himself on what he himself says is the preeminent issue of life.

Unless he publicly acknowledges his past sins and renounces his past behavior. If he truly repents publicly I think he can be given the opportunity to show that he truly means it.

[Northern Yankee]

Everybody got along with Teddy. He's was a nice, affable guy,"

Your dad was right.

Everybody got along with Teddy? I think Mary Jo would have something to say about that. Nice guys don't leave women drowning in ponds.

[BlackElk]

ms_a: Good for you. You are precisely correct. You will get flack for it. I've got your back.

[jersey117]

I like Santorum also. He does stand by his principles and he is young and “sellable”. I can look past his mistake of supporting Spector. Spector had been entrenched in that Senate seat for years and was senior over him. I can understand it. I think if he were to run again he would run on the conservative principles he always stood by when he was in office.

[BlackElk]

cpforlife.org: I do not mean the following to be a general criticism of you or your many fine contributions on FR. I also note from your tag line that you are probably my brother Knight of Columbus and that counts for a lot with me. Of course, the late Teddy was once and maybe at death a Fourth Knight while being neither Catholic nor patriotic.

Nonetheless, I respectfully respond to your #18 by saying that whatever the argument that Mark Crutcher may be making on this is a losing argument. I cannot condone any more than you do Rick Santorum's support for Arlen Specter over Toomey for the GOP Senate nomination but that is hardly the whole story. What follows is some of the rest of the story:

1. The perfect is the enemy of the good. We should eagerly hope for perfection without expecting it. The last Guy Who was perfect was crucified for his efforts and that was a looooong time ago. We don't expect to see His like again until the end when He returns in triumph. Rick Santorum never pretended to be perfect. Neither do I and I'll bet you don't either.

2. Toomey claimed to be pro-life when he ran in 2004 but he was elected to Congress as a pro-abort. He then claimed to have changed his mind on abortion after the birth of his first child. I'll take that but he conveniently announced this for the first time during the GOP Senate primary.

3. While Arlen Specter is no pro-lifer (and never clamed to be) and is not even vaguely acceptable as a candidate as a Republican or as a Demonrat (his original party and and the one far more congenial to his voting record), Santorum's support (as a fellow Pennsylvania Senator and a ranking GOP Senate caucus leader) for Specter was not justified but it was the only mistake on his generally and powerfully pro-life record.

4. Crutcher cannot accurately say that Specter "has always been viciously hostile toward anything the pro-life movement does..." Does the name Clarence Thomas ring a bell for Mr. Crutcher??? Arlen Specter was given the job of utterly demolishing Anita Hill and her lies about Thomas. Few here are aware of Specter's capabilities as a trial lawyer and cross-examiner. He left her bullet-ridden corpse in the gutter that she have emerged from. Maybe a probable 35-40 year tenure of Clarence Thomas holding the old Thurgood Marshall seat doesn't mean much to Mark Crutcher but I dissent from his view and note that the conversion of that seat on the life issues (and many others) was one of our most crucial victories in my lifetime.

5. Orrin Hatch came to Connecticut in 1988 to scold those of us who were busily removing Lowell P. Weicker, Jr., from the US Senate. Goldwater (a reprehensible excuse for a human being but admired by "fiscal conservatives") showed up to do likewise and so did other conservative senators. Personally, I despise Lowell Weicker as much or more than I despise Comrade Obonzo. Crutcher probably would not urge anyone to vote for a Goldwater (whose first wife was on Planned Barrenhood's National Board of Directors for 35 years until her death). GHWB's mother (W's grandmother) served about as long on the PP Board and was furious with her son and grandson for abandoning her baby-killing principles. I happen to think that Dubya was sincere and GHWB turned because in the old formula: Paris is worth a Mass. None of these guys is perfect any more than we are (OK, OK, Weicker is perfectly evil but that is not the perfection we are talking about). I have little doubt that Crutcher would not treat Hatch, however, as he treated Santorum.

6. Did Specter vote for Chief Justice Roberts and/or Justice Alito? To tell the truth, I have forgotten but I would be really surprised if he opposed both.

7. Apparently, former Congressman Toomey has been consistently, although somewhat quietly, pro-life since his 2004 campaign. That is good and we should make room for the converted but let's not pretend he was always pro-life. He was not.

8. Crutcher was writing on primary day, 2004, at what was presumably the high point in his frustrated anger over yet another pro-abort vs. pro-abort senatorial contest. People who want to be taken seriously in matters political need to reign in their emotions and go on to fight another day.

9. Well, the Crutchers and other perfectionists got their way and Santorum was defeated by that two-faced liar Casey. We sure taught US a lesson. Was that some sort of pro-life progress??? BTW, Casey was one of only seven Demonrat Senators (along with Leahy, Sanders, Durbin, Burris, Whitehouse and one other). DeWine was defeated in Ohio by Sharrod Brown, more real pro-life progress, huh? Again, we sure taught US a lesson.

10. Rick Santorum, as a US Senator, said he was pro-life and, as a Senator, he voted pro-life. He should not have campaigned for or voted for Specter in the primary. That deviation does not erase many years of Santorum's consistent pro-life voting record of decades in the House and Senate and in private life.

11. It may not mean much to Crutcher (who I believe is not Catholic but Santorum's public smackdown of the US Conference of Catholic Bishops at a Catholic Church Mid-Atlantic conference of Catholic laity for pleading for Congressional funding for a witch's brew of pro-abort "progressive" groups, kicking the leftist hierarchs as their numbers were seriously eroding and as Rome was systematically replacing those dying and retiring with substantially more conservative bishops, was a more important effort with more important results than most anything else that public officials do.

12. Mark Crutcher would do well to return to his area of competence which is instigating and assisting malpractice suits against the medical babykillers and leave matters political to those far more competent in that area than he.

[wardaddy]

I didn't want to get into a long explanation about all that which I've told before here.

Back in the 70s and 80s my dad had a sizable contracting business worldwide (we subbed from Brown and Root and Floor and MK and Bechtel..folks like that) which had a fair number of government funded jobs from pipelines (we specialized in river crossings) to feasibility studies to water and sewer plants and had to go meet with folks there and Lott, Cochran, Stennis, Whitten, and Sonny Montgomery were some of his contacts. We were from Mississippi where everybody knows everybody.

And they would all say how everybody like Teddy and thought he was trying to live up to his brother's ideals and that Kopechne was likely pregnant.

that sorta thing

[militant2]

“Ultimately the fault lies with the Pope.”

Amen! He and his recent predecessors have seen, and have done nothing but blather on. Just like our “representatives” in congress. This is not acceptable. When they start excommunicating Catholic politicians for supporting pro-death candidates and policies, I will listen and follow. Until then, they're no better than the rest.

Militant

[Albion Wilde]

I never understood why the Catholic Church didn’t stand up to the Kennedy’s positions on abortion...

Because Teddy's older brother had been their opening wedge that cut into the Protestant establishment that had prevailed throughout the entire prior history of the U.S. Once the bishops hitched their star to the Kennedy wagon, objectivity went out the window. It's the same reaction blacks have had to their first (sorta) black president -- it really hasn't mattered to them what he has done, hasn't done, or what he stands for.

Superficial loyalty based on ethnicity is both politically naive and unChristian, and it makes me sad for how far the standards of education have fallen in both the public school civics classes and in religious understanding.