{"id":3678,"date":"2009-11-22T19:25:05","date_gmt":"2009-11-22T23:25:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/?p=3678"},"modified":"2009-11-22T21:11:31","modified_gmt":"2009-11-23T01:11:31","slug":"3678","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/2009\/11\/22\/3678\/","title":{"rendered":"Pawn takes Bishop…"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Kennedy Barred From Communion by Bishop<\/a><\/strong>
New York Times<\/strong>
By IAN URBINA
November 22, 2009<\/div>\n

\"PatrickWidening a growing rift, Rep. Patrick J. Kennedy<\/font><\/strong>, a Rhode Island Democrat, said on Sunday that the Roman Catholic bishop of Providence had instructed him to refrain from receiving communion because of the congressman’s stance on abortion. Rep. Kennedy said that Bishop Thomas J. Tobin<\/font><\/strong> “instructed me not to take communion and said that he has instructed the diocesan priests not to give me communion,” according to The Providence Journal, which first reported the article.<\/p>\n

But Michael K Guilfoyle a spokesman for the diocese, said Sunday that the Bishop has “never addressed matters relative to public officials receiving Holy Communion with pastors of the Diocese of Providence.” The Bishop added that his instructions to Rep. Kennedy came more than two years ago in a letter on February 21, 2007, he sent to the congressman privately and pastorally.<\/p>\n

\"Bishop“In light of the Church’s clear teaching, and your consistent actions,”<\/font><\/strong> the letter said, “I believe it is inappropriate for you to be receiving Holy Communion and I now ask respectfully that you refrain from doing so.”<\/font><\/strong> The Bishop added that he was surprised that Rep. Kennedy had chosen to reopen the public discussion of the faith just two weeks after he told reporters he would no longer discuss these matters publicly.<\/p>\n

The allegation by Rep. Kennedy, a Democrat in his eighth term, is the most recent escalation in a bitter and unusually personal dispute between the men that began after the lawmaker criticized the nation’s Catholic bishops for threatening to oppose an overhaul of the health care system unless it tightened restrictions on publicly financed abortion<\/font><\/strong>…<\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n
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Kennedy:Barred from Communion<\/a>
The Providence Journal <\/strong>
By John E. Mulligan
November 22, 2009<\/div>\n

… According to the National Catholic Reporter, Cardinal Sean O’Malley, the archbishop of Boston, once urged Catholic officials who support abortion rights to refrain from Communion. But the newspaper said Cardinal O’Malley did not order Boston priests to deny them the sacrament. Kerry and the late Massachusetts Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (Patrick Kennedy’s father and another supporter of abortion rights) both received Communion at Cardinal O’Malley’s installation as archbishop in 2003. In 2004, a large majority of bishops “tried to persuade the minority not to do this — using Communion as a weapon,” Father Reese said, but the conference could not come to a consensus view on the issue.<\/p>\n

Orders by bishops to deny Communion to Catholic public officials are very unusual but not unprecedented. In 2003, another prominent Catholic Democrat with a mixed voting record on abortion, Rep. David Obey of Wisconsin, was admonished not to take Communion in his congressional district by Bishop Raymond Burke of LaCrosse. Spokeswoman McQuade said the bishops conference could not give a count of how many times bishops have actually denied Communion to government officials. But a review of news accounts of the past two decades suggests that public impositions of the penalty are very uncommon. These are among the high-profile instances in contemporaneous news stories: a Sacramento bishop told Gray Davis not to take Communion when he was Democratic governor of California in 2003; in 2004, then-Gov. James McGreevey, of New Jersey, complied with the admonitions of three of the state’s bishops that he not take Communion…<\/p>\n

Father Reese stressed that withholding Communion is not as grave a penalty as excommunication, which separates a Catholic from all the sacraments. If a bishop denies Communion to a Catholic, he or she “is still a Catholic,” Father Reese said. Indeed, he said “it would take a canon lawyer” to say whether a Catholic denied Communion in his own diocese would be free to receive Communion elsewhere…<\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n
There are so many things about this kind of story that I’ll never understand. I don’t understand anything about the Catholic Church’s stand on birth control or abortion in the first place. I don’t recall anything biblical, or in the teachings of the religion that would lead them to make this belief a centerpiece for church membership. I’m not clear why withholding communion would be involved. If they’re opposed to abortion as "killing," I don’t understand why they aren’t marching against Wars? I can’t imagine opposing all health care because it didn’t have "tightened restrictions on publicly financed abortion<\/font><\/strong>." But most of all, it’s hard to imagine sending an uninvited letter "pastorally<\/font><\/strong>" – an obvious attempt to coerce a lawmaker on religious grounds.<\/div>\n

There make be a back story that explains all of this. Kennedy is an on-again off-again recovering alcoholic\/drug addict and has had several high profile brushes with the law. Maybe Bishop Tobin is reacting to those stories. But perhaps Bishop Tobin is just another self-righteous religious leader who has an inflated view of his position in the church, and is bent on spreading Catholic Morality outside of his pulpit.<\/p>\n

Population control is the<\/u> top issue for the U.S. [and most other countries in the world]. It’s hard to imagine that Bishop Tobin can believe that caring for the people of the earth [and the earth itself] by limiting our numbers is grounds for expelling anyone from the Church. Is his loyalty to the God he believes created us, or to the idiosyncratic beliefs of the men of the Catholic Church? <\/p>\n

Speaking out is up to Tobin. Denying Communion to a Congressman because of his position is another matter. It’s not against the law, but it’s mighty bad form. It actually sounded to me like the Bishop is having a personal problem of some kind and taking it out on Kennedy. So, what the hell, I wrote him:<\/div>\n
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I just read Kennedy Barred From Communion by Bishop<\/a><\/strong> in the New York Times<\/strong>. Then I went to your web site<\/a><\/strong> and read:<\/font><\/div>\n