Another Kennedy Making the Headlines

I was looking at my Xmas Wish List last night and I came across one of the items I listed: Ted Kennedy's autobiography True Compass: A Memoir. I really hope I get this book, as I have always been an admirer of the Kennedy clan. This morning, as I was reading through The New York Times, I came across the headline "The Catholics vs. the Kennedys." Immediately, I began to read the article. Long story short, the article focuses on a bishop in Providence, Rhode Island banning Representative Patrick Kennedy (Teddy's son) from receiving communion after Kennedy criticized the bishop for opposing health care reform unless it rolled back existing abortion rights.
Right away, I am reminded of how Patrick's late uncle, JFK, was forced to defend his Catholic faith before a roomful of skeptical Protestant ministers in Texas before his election in '60. I googled the speech he gave and this is what JFK said: "I believe in an America that is officially neither Catholic, Protestant nor Jewish, where no public official either requests or accepts instructions on public policy from the Pope, the National Council of Churches of any other ecclesiastical source; where no religious body seeks to impose its will directly or indirectly upon the general population or the public actions of its officials." It is no small irony, then that Rep. Kennedy, now the only member of Congress from America's most prominent Catholic family, had his faith questioned by the Bishop Tobin for his pro-choice position on abortion, an issue that has recently become a hot topic during a time when legislators are trying to pass a health care bill.
Let's take a brief visit to the past, something the bishop obviously has not done. It was Roger Williams, the founder of Rhode Island, who first defined the separation of church and state (in his words...the "wall of separation" between "the garden of the church" and "the wilderness" of the state). Granted, Williams' concern was for the protection of the church from encroachment by the state. But this separation also protects the state from religious extremism.
Rep. Kennedy is not the only politician who has been criticized for his pro-choice stance. Senator John Kerry was ambushed by a number of U.S. cardinals and bishops over abortion. As a result, Kerry became the third Catholic to win the Democratic nomination but the first to lose the Catholic vote.
I suppose the bishop is within his right to ban Kennedy from receiving communion. And I suppose the Church is within their rights to enter the political arena and preach that no health care is better than health care that pays for abortions. However, I also believe that if the Eucharist is everything that the Church says it is, then no one has the right in withholding it from anybody. You say in your prayer before communion that you are not worthy to receive the body of Christ. How then are you ever worthy to decide who else should receive? Judging by his actions, the bishop thinks that Catholic politicians should take their direction from the Vatican, not the voters. More and more, there seems to be more political sermons delivered from the pulpit. Need I remind the Church that this politicking from the pulpit threatens the Church's nonprofit status? The Church has plenty of assets to tax.
Dora is always referring to this "Catholic guilt." And others have simply labeled it as a sort of shame the Church has long used as a cudgel of control against its own people. I'm glad to see Rep. Kennedy not allowing them to use it against him. He knows the value of this separation of church and state. This separation is rooted even in scripture. Jesus was challenged on whether paying taxes conflicted at all with his stance on doing right in the eyes of God. He said, "Give to Caesar what is Caesar's, and to God what is God's. (book of Luke)
And most importantly, with respect to the Eucharist: it is never a cleric's place to assert that a man (or anyone else) is barred from a relationship with God.
I'm not a theologian or a Catholic scholar, but I know enough to know that the Bible says nothing about "abortion" but plenty about hypocrisy, pride, greed, and arrogance and the Church has been wrong on occasion throughtout history.