"The overall tone of the funeral liturgy - from the three eulogies, to the prayers of the faithful, to the homily, to the celebrity musicians, to the guest list, and to the nationally-televised gushing color commentaries - seemed to communicate that it was more a public, political apotheosis of Senator Kennedy than a humble, insistent prayer of the Church his mother for the forgiveness of his sins and the repose of his soul," writes Fr. Landry.
"This last controversy was totally avoidable; all that was necessary was to adhere to the letter and spirit of the Catholic funeral rite."
Fr. Landry also reflects in detail on "one of the most important lessons that pastors in the United States need to draw from the history of the Church's interactions with Senator Kennedy for its future engagement of other pro-abortion Catholic politicians." The lesson is that the "education-only" strategy employed by most pastors has "failed."
"Kennedy's example was so injurious to the Church," said Fr. Landry, "because the pastors of the Church, for the most part, made the imprudent call to do little or nothing about it beyond general teaching statements that they hoped offending politicians would apply to themselves."
He added: "There were no real consequences, and as a result, Senator Kennedy, scores of other Catholic politicians, and millions of American Catholic lay people concluded that the Church's teachings in defense of human life cannot be that important if those who publicly and repeatedly act in violation of it do so with impunity."
Wooh boy.
You know what comes next, don't you?
Tuning into the Cardinal's blog in the next few weeks gushing about Rose Kennedy's quote in his pocket and making oblique references to priests who use their newspapers to divide Christ's Church as if we all don't know who he is referencing.
"With Senator Kennedy's funeral, they have now grasped that even a 100% pro-abortion voting record will not only not prevent them from having a Catholic funeral, but will not even stop them from receiving possibly one of the most publicly panegyrical Catholic funerals in U.S. history. "
2 comments:
Kudos to Fr. Landry for speaking up about this. It's high time for clergy to start standing up for the Church, and calling out scandal when they see it.
I thought the Landry brothers (Fr. Roger and Scot) had been strong supporters of Cardinal Sean-- Scot is a high-level employee of the Archdiocese, and both were high-profile organizers and boosters of the Boston Catholic Men's Conference. Could Fr. Landry's outspoken criticism of Cardinal Sean on this Kennedy debacle mean that there is a rift within the Cardinal's inner circle over this issue, and/or the Caritas disaster, etc.?
Good for Fr. Landry. We need more clerical courage like this to just speak the truth. I don't think our secular culture would be in the mess we are today had more Catholic priests defended the faith in the past 40 years. Hopefully this new generation of priests will be more orthodox. If the lukewarm ones could only realize how people are yearning for faithfulness.
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