Posted on 11/11/2018 2:18:47 PM PST by ebb tide
I don't think so. The priest can, and should, always make the public repentance of a notorious sinner's grave, manifest sins a requirement before a valid absolution is given.
N.B. I'm no canon lawyer. Just a neo-pelagian, sour-pussed, rosary counter.
I don’t know the details.
What details?
Details of sickness?
He was diagnosed with an inoperable brain tumor in May 2008. He died in August 2009.
I recall that Sean O'Malley professed himself to be blinky-eyed, blindsided and astonished that any American Catholic could have any objection to his exhibitionistic funeral obsequies. As if O'Malley's brain had been in ambien-oblivion for, oh, 30 or 40 years.
But I know neither Ted Kennedy's life nor his death in detail. I certainly don't know what his confessor would know.
That's my point. For notorius public sinners, a catholic should know of repentance from the sinner himself, not the confessor.
Yet neither Kennedy nor his confessor provided evidence of such repentance. And Massachusett's catholics are still voting to murder their own babies and those of others; no thanks to Ted Kennedy, nor his confessor, nor Sean O'Malley nor Obama.
Nor Ed Peters.
They can have a memorial Mass. No body (in any form) is present.
Family may attend. It is more like a Daily Mass with a few references to the deceased.
How do we know if Kennedy did or did not repent.
It is not for us to know, thus we cannot judge.
P.S. I find it ridiculous that Peters criticized the funeral Mass of Whitey Bugler and defended a bishop’s refusal of John Gotti’s funeral Mass, yet supported Kennedy’s funeral Mass. We know no more of the first two’s “interior dispositions” than we do of Kennedy’s.
Kennedy was responsible for countless more deaths than the two mobsters combined. None of them made public reparation, but only one of them influenced millions to vote for the murder of babies.
How do we know Bugler and Gotti did not repent?
What’s the special privilege that Kennedy was given?
Who is Peters to judge?
Mark Leibovich of the New York Times notes that, among things, “The Rev. Mark Hession, the priest at the Kennedys’ parish on the Cape, made regular visits to the Kennedy home this summer and held a private family Mass in the living room every Sunday. Even in his final days, Mr. Kennedy led the family in prayer after the death of his sister Eunice . . . [and when] the senator’s condition took a turn Tuesday night a priest, the Rev. Patrick Tarrant of Our Lady of Victory Church in Centerville, was called to his bedside.”
No public repentance whatsoever.
What Catholic prelate has come out and said Kennedy had repented of his votes for abortion before his death?
The important repentance is with God.
God knows the answer. We don’t.
After all, "It is not for us to know, thus we cannot judge".
So we should give everyone requiem Masses?
Why not give everyone Holy Communion?
So the Sacrament of Confession, and ensuing absolution from a priest is not that necessary?
That doesn't sound very Catholic.
Neither does Sean O'Malley or Ed Peters.
Of course the Confession and absolution would have been included when the priest visited him for the last time.
But as I said, God knows. We don’t. The Seal of Confession — remember?
I didn’t say that the memorial Mass was a Requiem Mass. It’s just a simple Daily Mass.
You didn’t say anything about daily Masses. Both Bugler and Kennedy received Requiem Masses in the archdiocese of Sean O’Malley’s Boston.
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