Jackie wanted to die: book

New York Daily News ^ | 9/05/03 | PAUL D. COLFORD

[kattracks]

Jacqueline Kennedy was so racked with loss after her husband's assassination in 1963 that she spoke repeatedly of suicide to her confessor, a new book about the Kennedys' Irish-Catholic heritage reveals.

"It is so hard to bear," she told the Rev. Richard McSorley months after her husband's death. "I feel as though I am going out of my mind at times. Wouldn't God understand if I just wanted to be with him?"

Later, after she seemed to rebound, she sank further into gloom and again spoke of suicide as a way out, saying, "I was glad that Marilyn Monroe got out of her misery."

McSorley, a Jesuit who taught at Georgetown University in Washington and died last year, was interviewed by author Thomas Maier for "The Kennedys: America's Emerald Kings."

According to Maier, who also reviewed McSorley's diary of his talks with Jackie and letters from her, she described how lonely she was and feared how much worse it would be, as she put it, "when the children go away to school."

As Maier writes, "McSorley gently chastised her for worrying about the future. ... 'It's the devil's work,' he said. 'Today's problem is just to live through today, and to do the best you can today.'"

Still, Jackie asked him, "Will you pray that I die?"

Maier writes, "McSorley looked Jackie in the eyes. He felt compelled to dissuade her from thoughts of suicide, but he would not try to stop her from wishing for death itself."

But the priest, who initially met with Jackie at the Virginia estate of his friends Robert and Ethel Kennedy, rejected the widow's belief that her two youngsters would be better off in Ethel's care.

"I'm no good to them," Jackie told him. "I'm so bleeding inside."

Faith first

Maier's account of how the priest helped Jackie through her grief is excerpted in the October issue of Redbook, on sale next week.

Basic Books, which announced a first printing of 150,000 copies, will release Maier's 704-page volume next month.

At one point, Jackie spoke of suicide and then asked McSorley if he thought she would ever see her husband again.

Maier explains that while "for Catholics, committing suicide meant God's eternal damnation," McSorley gingerly reminded Jackie, in the priest's words, that "the resurrection of the body is part of our faith."

It was Robert Kennedy, "concerned about her mental health," who decided Jackie should see McSorley for counseling "under the guise of giving her tennis lessons," Maier writes.

The author adds, "Catholics of their generation, regardless of social strata, were far more inclined to seek out priests rather than psychiatrists to solve their problems." Jackie's grief was worsened by the death of a newborn son in the summer before her husband's slaying.

She also expressed guilt to McSorley at not being able to shield her husband during the shooting in Dallas and said, "I could have made his life so much happier, especially for the last few weeks. I could have tried harder. ..."

In a rave review this week, Publishers Weekly said Maier's book "goes to the heart of the Kennedys' spiritual and tribal identity in order to define and explain a range of subplots within the family saga."

Maier, an investigative reporter with Newsday who has written biographies of publisher Si Newhouse and baby doctor Benjamin Spock, was unavailable for comment yesterday.

POW & peace activist

McSorley had been a Jesuit for 70 years when he died at age 88.

While a young Jesuit teacher in the Philippines, he was captured by the Japanese days after the bombing of Pearl Harbor and imprisoned for more than three years.

He became a peace activist at Georgetown.

During the Vietnam War, McSorley crossed paths in London with a young Bill Clinton, a Georgetown graduate who was then a Rhodes scholar at Oxford.

The priest opened a prayer service for peace that Clinton helped convene in 1969 and joined the future President in a protest march on the U.S. Embassy.

Clinton tagged along when McSorley went to visit peace organizations in Oslo. The priest's subsequent published account of their afternoon together was mined by political foes when Clinton ran for President in 1992.

Originally published on September 4, 2003

[SunkenCiv]

She was a gold-digger, just as her mother was. The "Nemesis" title is probably a little out there, but may be mostly okay.

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George W. Bush will win reelection by a margin of at least ten per cent.

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