---

Irish Priest Blasts Self-Righteous "Holier-than-Thous" on Kennedy Funeral

By Hilary White

DUBLIN, October 8, 2009 (LifeSiteNews.com) - The Catholic faithful from around the world who protested against the lavish public funeral of the late, notoriously pro-abortion Senator Edward Kennedy were self-righteous "holier-than-thous" who lacked compassion, writes Fr. Gerard Moloney in an editorial of the October issue of the notably liberal Reality magazine.

Moloney, a member of the Redemptorist religious order and editor of Reality, said that when it was announced that the funeral was to be held in a Redemptorist church in Boston, the order started receiving numerous calls and emails from Catholics protesting the funeral.

The messages, said Fr. Moloney, "were not only angry - they were hate-filled; they dripped with righteous indignation."

"Not only did they not agree with Ted Kennedy's politics or like him as a man, they didn't want him to have a Catholic funeral. They didn't think he was entitled to it."

Moloney's statements run contrary to one of the Church's most senior prelates, who recently said specifically that funeral rites should not be given to pro-abortion politicians. Archbishop Raymond Burke, head of the Vatican's Apostolic Signatura, the highest tribunal in the Catholic Church and the last word on matters of canon law, said recently, "neither Holy Communion nor funeral rites should be administered to" politicians who support abortion or same-sex "marriage."

"To deny these is not a judgment of the soul, but a recognition of the scandal and its effects," explained Burke. Burke said that when a politician is associated "with greatly sinful acts about fundamental questions like abortion and marriage, his repentance must also be public."

Moloney singled out US canon lawyer Edward Peters, a notable defender of the Catholic Church's teaching on life and family issues who had criticized the manner in which Kennedy's funeral was conducted, calling his tone, "So sanctimonious, so judgemental, so self-righteous. Not much charity or compassion there. No sense of the possibility of redemption."

However, most Catholic critics who deplored the Kennedy funeral, including Peters, agreed that Kennedy needed and merited the spiritual assistance of a Catholic funeral. Their objections were instead aimed at the over-the-top style of the event, which they said gave grave public scandal.

Most who objected specifically stated that, because of his longstanding public opposition to Catholic teaching in key areas of moral law, Kennedy's funeral ought to have been a private affair for close friends and family, to pray for the repose of the senator's soul. What took place, at the Basilica of Our Lady of Perpetual Help, they said - a heavily politicised public spectacle, featuring former presidents and celebrity music stars, and broadcast live on television - was contrary to the spiritual purpose of a Catholic funeral, and more resembled an unofficial canonisation.

Indeed, Peters, the especial target of Moloney's ire, wrote on his blog on August 27, that it is likely that Kennedy showed sufficient "signs of repentance" to justify his receiving Catholic funeral rites.

Peters wrote, "Most of Teddy Kennedy's politics, and most of whatever parts of his personal life I knew through the media, angered and sometimes even disgusted me. But my opinions about Teddy's legacy are not at issue in assessing his right to a Catholic funeral under canon law."

According to the Catholic Church's Code of Canon Law, Peters wrote, "notorious pro-aborts seem to be 'manifest sinners who cannot be granted ecclesiastical funerals without public scandal of the faithful'." But Peters said that he gave Kennedy the benefit of the doubt, saying, "Unless, that is, 'they gave some sign of repentance before death'. And there is at least some evidence that Ted Kennedy did just that."

"Folks, my reading of the canonical tradition behind Canon 1184 says that those actions suffice as 'some signs of repentance', making Ted Kennedy eligible for a Catholic funeral. Of course I wish that Teddy's repentance, if that is what it was, had been more explicit, for the scandal the man left was enormous and demanded great atonement in this life (or more dreadfully in the next)."

Another vocal opponent of the lavish public Kennedy funeral was Human Life International's Fr. Thomas Euteneuer, who wrote that while it is a "matter of precept" that Catholics are obliged to pray for the souls of public sinners like Kennedy, "we do not have to praise him let alone extol him with the full honors of a public Catholic funeral and all the adulation that attends such an event."

Fr. Euteneuer, however, said that although Kennedy was reported to have confessed his sins to a priest before death, the very public nature of his opposition to the Catholic faith required a public recantation before such a public display as his funeral could be justified.

"It is up to God to judge Senator Kennedy's soul. We, as rational persons, must judge his actions, and his actions were not at all in line with one who values and carefully applies Church teaching on weighty matters."

The Kennedy family's ties with Ireland are strong, however, and the senator is still lauded on the far left as a champion of the poor. Kennedy was recently praised by an Irish bishop at a church in county Wexford. Bishop Denis Brennan of the Ferns diocese gave a memorial Mass for Kennedy at which he said the late Senator's life "can be seen as the story of how one man used his God-given talents for the common good, and in the process, made a huge difference to many people's lives."

Bishop Brennan repeated the claim made in the American media of Kennedy "accomplishing more for the poor and dispossessed than any other Senator, ever."

See LifeSiteNews.com's Kennedy Funeral Scandal feature page

See sample Reality magazine article, The Church I'd Like to See 

 Back to Top

---

MORE NEWS: LifeSiteNews.com Home Page  Last 10 Days   Archives   Special Reports

Copyright © LifeSiteNews.com. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-No Derivatives License. You may republish this article or portions of it without request provided the content is not altered and it is clearly attributed to "LifeSiteNews.com". Any website publishing of complete or large portions of original LifeSiteNews articles MUST additionally include a live link to www.LifeSiteNews.com. The link is not required for excerpts. Republishing of articles on LifeSiteNews.com from other sources as noted is subject to the conditions of those sources.