There was something fishy about needing this health care reformation done by August. Now I know why, and so socialize health care did NOT get done under the socialist master himself. I can’t wait to see the big religious ceremonies thrown in this guy’s supposed honor.
“I can’t wait to see the big religious ceremonies thrown in this guy’s supposed honor.”
For me....thats the phoniest part of the Kennedy legacy....some Catholic Church will will praise him...even tho they stood for everything the Church is against!
That having been said, this will be a test of character and leadership for Sean Cardinal O'Malley. Kennedy's public career does not merit a celebratory funeral. Even the death of a good and pious man ought not trigger a celebratory funeral much less the death of this man.
We are all sinners. It is the heritage left us by Adam and Eve. Few have as many deaths of innocents on their record as this shameless senator. We have no idea of whether he repented his sins as his light failed and the end approached. The Jesuits taught us (around the time that this man went to the Senate) that even Hitler might have had a grace of final repentance in the nanoseconds between shooting himself and his death. None of us should presume salvation.
When Paul Castellano who headed the Gambino Mafia family in New York, was suddenly murdered outside some Manhattan steak house, John Cardinal O'Connor denied Castellano a Church funeral because it might occasion scandal. Castellano was merely a Mafia Don. He was responsible for far fewer deaths in his career than Ted Kennedy was in any given day since 1973. Castellano's victims tended to be a tad less innocent than the unborn babies that were Mr. Kennedy's victims or than Mary Jo for that matter.
I would hope that the Archdiocese of Boston give Kennedy a small, private, quiet funeral and refuse to allow that funeral to be a traditional Kennedy family circus and propaganda fest. His family should be first in line to favor such a resolution to a situation of possible or probable eternal tragedy for which Kennedy was not lovingly created by God.
Who made Ted Kennedy? God made Ted Kennedy? Why did God make Ted Kennedy? God made Ted Kennedy to know Him, love Him and serve Him in this world and to be happy with Him forever in the next. That is what Ted Kennedy was taught a a child in the Roman Catholic Church of Pope Pius XII and of Richard Cardinal Cushing, the Roman Catholic Church founded by Jesus Christ upon Simon bar Jonah as Peter and ruled by Peter's successors ever since (some of whom will, no doubt join Mr. Kennedy in his final destination for good or for ill). There is little evidence of Ted holding up his end of the bargain although final repentance may have been his final choice.
If "here" is hell or the U. S. Senate or even just a debate, in the immortal words of then Massachusetts Lieutenant Governor Eddie McCormick, Mr. Kennedy's first primary opponent: "If your name were merely Edward Moore rather than Edward Moore Kennedy, you would not even be here." Without politics, in his particular case, he might have been more likely, like his very Catholic sister Eunice Shriver, (likely but not certainly) to make heaven.
Let us remember ourselves and comport ourselves with dignity under such circumstances. He is gone and no longer a burr under our collective saddle. We owe it to our Father in Heaven to act as He would have us act in humility and not in some sort of triumph as Mr. Kennedy passes in the way of all flesh. God only knows. His will be done.