There have been many reactions to the funeral of Senator Edward Kennedy (may he rest in peace) and this one quoted at the excellent "The Deacon's Bench"blog is representative: "Liturgical comfort food".
Given Senator Kennedy's support for abortion, there is a real question over whether there should have been a high-profile Catholic funeral at all. As Robert Kumpel points out at St John's Valdosta, if the Archdiocese of Boston can honour a pro-abortion politician and allow a pro-abortion president to eulogise him then they perhaps owe an apology to the Mafia.
Even leaving that question aside, as a "model" funeral that many people will take as an example of how to give someone a proper send-off, it leaves much to be desired. The question of praying for the dead can be tricky in today's "feel good" society but that is no reason just to leave it off all together. Someone might have pointed out that the one thing we can really do for Teddy now, the thing that will really help him out, is to pray for his soul. Rather than thinking of what will make us feel good, how about thinking about what will make him feel good right now?
This question really does get to the heart of our faith. Do we actually believe in the four last things? Do we believe that there is a purgatory? It makes a massive difference to the way that we celebrate funerals. Come to that, it makes a massive difference to you, me, and Senator Kennedy. The high-profile comfort food funeral is an opportunity for all of us to examine our conscience on what we have done to the Church's care of the dead.
Thanks to Chris Gillibrand at Cathcon for this pertinent video. The key moment is at 1'28". A courtier strikes the door of the Church to gain entry. When he says that it is the Empress Zita etc. he is denied entry. He asks again, saying that it is Zita, a poor sinner - she is then granted entry to the Capuchin Church.
Most importantly of all though - of your charity - say a prayer for the repose of the soul of Senator Kennedy.
13 comments:
Without commenting on the whether he deserved a Catholic funeral: the send off for Ted is far more elaborate than what the American Catholic bishops allowed in 1963 for JFK, when they insisted to poor Jackie that only a low mass could be celebrated as they did not want the Catholic church to be publically identified with pomp and ceremonial triumphalism.
Even as far as 1963, the rot was setting in.
Ted Kennedy has gone, as we will all go eventually. Requiescat in pace. Jesu mercy, Mary pray.
I was pleasantly surprised by the funeral. I'd expected the Mission Church to be something like the Paulist Center attended by John Kerry. But it wasn't at all.
He will of course have been absolved in full as part of the Last Rites, and the Requiem Mass is precisely an act of intercession for a departed sinner
The clear majority of Catholics in America has in any case given up waiting for the Republicans to deliver the goods on abortion, and gone home to the Democratic Party anyway. If the white Evangelicals ever did the same, the GOP would be finished.
So, in filling his seat, the Democratic Party has the opportunity to send to the Senate, not only an uncompromising supporter of the Kennedy Bill (as the healthcare bill could reasonably now be renamed), but also a figure capable of reaching out to those who, on the same day as they elected both President Obama and a Democratic Congress, made it clear at those same polls that, in Florida and California, they wanted back the country where marriage only ever meant one man and one woman.
That, in Colorado, they wanted back the country that did not permit legal discrimination against working-class white men.
That, in Missouri and Ohio, they wanted to preserve the country where gambling was not deregulated.
And that, from coast to coast, they wanted that country as stalwarts of, especially, the black and Catholic churches.
That opportunity was missed in black and Catholic Illinois and New York, and in Delaware. Let it not also be missed in Catholic Massachusetts.
Not that the new Senator actually has to be either black or a Catholic. But he or she does need to be, in addition to a fully-signed up supporter of Kennedy's economic populism in general (although see http://www.thefirstpost.co.uk/52795,news,alexander-cockburn-ted-kennedy-was-a-hollow-champion-us-politics-chappaquiddick-senator-president) and of the Kennedy Bill in particular, a fully-signed up believer (as is President Obama) that marriage is only ever the union of one man and one woman, opponent of discrimination against working-class white men, opponent of deregulated gambling, believer in the public role of the churches, and supporter of Bob Casey's Pregnant Women Support Act (effectively endorsed by the President at Notre Dame).
FAther, a prayer won't help a person in hell. If he's in purgatory, then that means he'll eventually get to heaven. That being the case, given all the evil he'd done in his lifetime, then let his release into heaven be after he's sweated it out. I think he deserves more tha five minutes standing in the corner with a piece of gum on his nose.
That man did more damage to the catholic church in the US than anyone else I can think of. To go soft and mushy now is to forget history. I can't do that.
VERY enlightening video. I certainly do pray for the Senator's soul.
Just about the only positive I can see out of the whole sorry business is the enormous crowd I saw yesterday at the 12:30pm Mass at the Basilica of Our Lady of Perpetual Help. I sometimes go to Mass there, and I never saw so many in attendance until yesterday.
The Redemptorists who run the place are actually okay---I would rate them the third-most orthodox religious community in Boston (after the Oblates of the Virgin Mary and the Franciscans of the Primitive Observance).
The Mass said on Sundays is one of the better Novus Ordos in the Archdiocese (much better than Saturday's funeral Mass there, incidentally), and they have confessions every day and other devotions throughout the week.
I hope those who showed up yesterday because of the Kennedy funeral stick around.
Dear Father Finigan
"Senator Kennedy RIP"
Every Sunday morning Ron the old man (he is in his mid 80's) from the flat downstairs in my houseblock, puts the 'News of the World' through my letterbox when he has finished reading it. I then pass it on to the Club room at Bexley Athletic Club with my comments.
Yesterday the NOTW columnist Carole Malone slated Senator Edward Kennedy' and she gave us the 'hard facts' about the Chappaquiddick incident i.e Senator Kennedy was drunk and he had picked up Mary Jo Kopechne for sex.
I wasn't there but my research reveals that Mary Jo Kopechne was on her way to a successful professional career. She lived in the Georgetown neighborhood with three other women. She was a devout Roman Catholic with a demure, serious, "convent school" demeanor, rarely drank much, and had no reputation for extramarital activities with men.
Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation has great power and influence, and here in South East London they are the owners of the Convoys Wharf site in Deptford a hugely significant London Thames Gateway development site.
Senator Kennedy and his family were/are powerful enough to defend themselves against libellous attacks, but I think the family and friends of Mary Jo Kopechne should be supported by Barack Obama's administration in the contemporary fight to clear her name.
Mary Jo Kopechne RIP
Our Lady of the Rosary pray for us!
perhaps owe an apology to the Mafia.
if not the Mafia, they certainly owe apologies to Fr. Jenkins of Notre Dame.
David, the democrat party isn't home to ANY decent catholic.
And DAvid, if you think that a man who voted to let children who'd survived an abortion die in a closet is deserving of getting his filthy fingers on health care in the US no wonder the state of Catholicism is in sorry shape.
Demohacks first, regardless of their support for moral evil. NO actual practising Catholic should vote for a democrat.
Vesper, you're delusional. Ted Kennedy left that girl for dead in his car. He was not taking her to "the ferry." The ferry was 180 degrees in the other direction. He was driving on roads he knew from childhood. Unbeknownst to him the ferryman had waited up past the normal time of shut down.
After Kennedy drove off that bridge and left her for dead, he had to pass a house quite close to the bridge. The lights were on and people were home. His first instinct was to get off that island. Not to save Mary Jo. He could have called the firestation (which was across the road from where the party was being held.) There was an excellent chance she'd have lived. She died, not from drowning, but suffocation. She'd found an airpocket in the flooring of the car. Poucha pond was relatively shallow. The car had turned over, her head was in an airspace where one's feet normally are. When they pulled her body out, the diver noted there was very little water expelled from her lungs.
Dear old Teddykins was calling lawyers all night trying to cover his butt. SEVENTEEN phone calls from the Kennedy "compound" and the senator's motel room to get to legal beagles to help save Teddy's career. Not ONE to police authorities to save the girl. HE was initially going to make his cousin Joey Gargan say the he was driving the car. Gargan refused to take the rap.
You can't "libel" someone with a true statement. As for Mary Jo...a police officer on the island had pulled up behind Kennedy's car, which had been parked. Unbeknownst to the officer, it was Kennedy's car. He saw it was a couple on the grass, and left. (this was some time before the accident) There were few cars on the island, and it's unlikely that there would have been TWO oldsmobiles on the island that had the same characteristics.
Mary Jo was found to have on no underpants, and there were grasstains on the back of her shirt. Draw your own conclusions. And a LOT of alcohol had been consumed.
Dear Father Finigan
gemoftheocean calls me delusional for seeking the truth about a fatal incident at which I wasn't present (I was just a poor London child at the time).
If it was delusional of me to presume that young Mary Jo is/was innocent until proven guilty then I plead guilty as charged.
Perhaps there is a Democrat out there somewhere in the ether who can challenge this Republican 'police officer on the island had pulled up behind Kennedy's car evidence' (police lies and hearsay?) presented to us by gemoftheocean as the truth.
If not, I hope there is room for some compassion and forgiveness for two young people who paid a very heavy price for a night of illicit passion.
As a qualified professional I am familiar with the civil law regarding slander and libel. As an individual with a lead case against neo-Fascist entry-ism into London's Sporting/Planning Arena I am also familiar with black propaganda and police lies, and on Feb 28th 2007 I defeated both Sir Ian Blair, who was then Commissioner of Police of the Metropolis, and the Independent Police Complaints Commission at an RCJ Judicial Review before the Honourable Mr Justice Goldring.
The on-going cover up in relation to my individual FOOTBALL AGAINST RACISM IN EUROPE case goes back to 1991. which precedes the unresolved murder of the black teenager Stephen Lawrence who was butchered here on 'Deep South' London's streets in 1993.
Our Lady of the Rosary pray for us in BNP leader Nick Griffin MEP's EU/GLA/LDA/ODA NEO-NAZI DEVELOPMENT TIMES Amen
Vesper, european soccer, and blacks in the UK have ZIP to do with the facts of what happened in July Chappaquiddick, 1969, as regards Mary Jo Kopechne and Ted. Who is impugning MJK of ANYTHING? The facts remain that there was no underware found with her body, which was otherwise dressed. Where you are getting the claim that the policeman who observed a car, matching the descprtion of the oldsmobile in quesiton was a "republican" I have no idea.
It is indisputable there were houses very near to where the car went off the bridge, and it is indisputable that there was very little water expelled from Mary Jo's lungs, and it is indisputable re: the amount of phone calls made by the senator or from his minions on his behalf BEFORE the police knew of the accident.
It is also indisputable that the bridge is 180degrees in the other direction from the ferry.
What's questionable is why you are carrying water for Ted. A man with a history of womanizing. A man with a history of expecting *other* people to clean up after him.
Dear Father Finigan
gemoftheocean concludes her latest post with "What's questionable is why you are carrying water for Ted. A man with a history of womanizing. A man with a history of expecting *other* people to clean up after him."
Well in answer to that I would firstly like to establish that I am a poor English Catholic, and I am not an occult 'New Age of Aquarius' water carrier for anybody.
When Regan and Thatcher were at the peak of their powers I was appointed as a Chartered Quantity/Project Surveyor for the U.K's Emergency Communication Centre at Reigate by Sidcup Chartered Surveyors Playle & Partners. At that time I was an opponent of Regan and Thatcher's STAR WARS propaganda policies, and my first interview with Thatcher's Home Office went something like this: Home Office said "whatever you do, don't tell tell the Irish about this project", to which I responded "who do you think will be building it?".
Also as a site agent, and as a representitive of Deptford's New King Street developments I worked with Tom Costelloe and his band of merry men from Ireland on the Baltic Quay project in Thatcher's LDDC Bermondsey. On one memorable night in Bermondsey's Old Red Lion the British publican "naughty Nick" put a gun in my face for daring to sponsor the ladies darts team with Irish money. The tear of blood that appeared at that very instant as I brushed a piece of grit from my tear duct still makes me be believe in miracles to this day as I remember the colour fading from Nick's face before he put the gun back under the bar.
"Ted Kennedy a sinner may you too be allowed to enter RIP"
Our Lady of Rosary pray for us!
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