Posted on 08/31/2009 6:03:38 AM PDT by GreatOne
"I have always tried to be a faithful Catholic, Your Holiness," Ted Kennedy wrote to Pope Benedict XVI, in a letter dramatically read by Theodore Cardinal McCarrick at the senator's burial, "and though I have fallen short through human failings, I have never failed to believe and respect the fundamental teachings."
But it's not Senator Abortion's 11th hour effort to transform himself into Senator Catholic that has the media up in arms. "Why couldn't the pope have replied in his own name?" Sam Donaldson incredulously asked on This Week with George Stephanopoulos. "I was disappointed." Time magazine found it noteworthy that a shepherd with a flock of more than 1 billion would respond in "silence" to the senator from Massachusetts's missive.
From receiving communion at Mary Jo Kopechne's funeral, to procuring an annulment for a marriage of 25 years that had produced three grown children, to revelations during the William Kennedy Smith rape trial that the senator had woke his son and nephew on Good Friday to instigate the ill-fated carousing in Palm Beach's bars, Ted Kennedy hasn't exactly acted as a model Catholic. Many of Kennedy's political antagonists are outraged, not that the Church was silent, but that it so loudly honored a man who fought to undermine church teaching.
"No rational person can reasonably be expected to take seriously Catholic opposition to abortion when a champion of the Culture of Death, who repeatedly betrayed the Faith of his baptism, is lauded and extolled by priests and prelates in a Marian basilica," C.J. Doyle, executive director of the Catholic Action League of Massachusetts, explained on Saturday. "This morning's spectacle is evidence of the corruption which pervades the Catholic Church in the United States."
(Excerpt) Read more at spectator.org ...
The other way to make a difference is when the plate gets passed at church.
Maybe the American people didn’t watch the coverage of EMK’s passing because it was too heartbreaking for them to bear. They still believe in “Camelot” and as EMK called it “the dream”.
As long as the Priest and the bishop are freely giving you communion, you are a Catholic.
Maybe if the priests had done their job and cut this guy off from Communion, maybe then he might have had to make a decision of whether or not he was going to continue to undermine the Church. I suspect that in Ted Kennedy's mind the fact that the Church was still giving him communion was a tacit endorsement of his anti-Catholic political positions.
Character is what you do when nobody is looking. When Ted thought no one was looking, he swam away. And that included God.
The first sentence in Kennedy’s letter is an obvious and willful lie.
Describes Ted perfectly to me.
Yes.
Err...I don’t think so. There are relatively few people now who even remember the “Camelot” stuff (promoted by the press during a brief part of Kennedy’s brief term), let alone people who grow teary-eyed about it. Teddy had nothing to do with it, anyway.
He also sent the Pope a letter which seemed to be a confession of sorts, and to reinforce his Catholic bona fides, in order to obtain the church's intercession upon his death.
Now I'm no fan of Teddy. Far from it.
Ted was very public about his support for abortion, homo rights.
However, the church cautions that we cannot know what's in a person's heart and soul.
He may have struggled with his actions, and could have suffered terrible pangs of conscience.....and horrific visions of hellfires.
His excessive alcohol consumption might be indicative of that.
We just do not know.
Yes, a suicide be buried in consecrated ground......b/c no one knows what compelled the person to commit suicide.
You are right...
Thats right. None of us protestants are against homosexuality or abortion.
I would admonish those Massachussetts’ Catholics who fawn at the feet of the faithless Kennedys:
“You have found your religion.....I have found God”.
sod
I do too - the Church REALLY has some ‘splainin’ to do - one wonders (uhoh, here come the flames...)if Tiller the Baby Killer would have gotten a pass from his priest if the Father was liberal enough...just wondering....
That may be true, but he should have been excommunicated, as well as other pro-abortion politicians like Nancy Pelosi, and it shouldn’t have been such a public display honoring “the man”. As a Catholic, he knew what he was doing all his life was wrong and against his Church, but he chose to live his life the way he did anyway. You can’t just say you’re going to thumb your nose at the Church, but make reparations when you’re near death, and all will be forgiven. It would have been nice if he had thought about going to hell earlier in his life. Now, only God knows what was in his heart when he died, but the Chruch didn’t have to go all out whole-hog the way it did on Saturday. I think it made a mockery of Catholic teachings.
I never heard of that. I was told that when I married a divorced Presbyterian that I was no longer a Catholic and ineligible for Communion. If I wasn't married in their Church, I became an adulteress in their eyes I guess.
Besides, if they are giving you Communion knowing full well you promote abortion (like Kennedy, Pelosi, etc.), aren't they are helping to damn your soul and will be held accountable before God for your blood?
I haven’t given a dime in the collection plate since the Chruch’s sex scandals were revealed several years ago.
Agreed.
The Roman Catholic Church as well as several of our good Protestant Churches have been infiltrated by Humanist, Liberation Theology adhering leftists.
These individuals need to be removed and encouraged to join the Unitarian church were they rightly belong.
One question I have. Why was this letter even made public? If this was written to the Pope, did the Pope give it to the Cardinal to be publicized? Something doesn’t seem right here.
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