The text of the prayer, available in the publisher's online Prayer of the Faithful resource, read: "For those who have given their lives to service to their country, promoting values of peace, justice, equality, and liberty; especially, Senator Edward M. Kennedy, that he may find his eternal reward in the arms of God.... We pray...."
...."Upon reflection, the editors who adapted and wrote the prayer recognize their poor judgment," Thomas wrote in his letter to Fr. Malloy. Thomas explained that the prayer had been adapted from a standard text for "Prayers on the Inauguration of a Public Official."
Within about a day of original publication, the prayer was removed and replaced with a more generic version calling for prayers for Kennedy as a member of "all our beloved dead."
Why would a prayer praise anyone anyway? It’s a prayer, not a reference.
But, the swimmer asked the Pope personally to intercede with God. Because stealing from one group of people and giving to another us good works — how can at least one dead innocent adult and millions of dead innocent babies compare to that????
Good! They must have heard about this from someone (dare we hope...Rome, or even their own bishop?) enough to knock them back.
For folks who don’t normally go to a Catholic mass, these ghastly “prayers of the faithful” are supposed to be rather neutral prayers for the religious authorities, the civil authorities, the parish, the dead, etc. But they were taken over by weirdos because, as usual, Vatican II guidelines were very vague.
The result is that the USCCB left and the crazy lefty publishing houses (such as missalette publisher OCP) use the prayers to put in their lefty cause of the month. If I’m at mass and they use these prayers, I simply don’t say them, and I notice there are a lot of other folks who don’t either.
Another Obama-Saul Alinsky-Archdiocese of Chicago dot to connect.