Here is a portion of an article in the Providence Journal regarding the reported “excommunication” of Patrick Kennedy Jr. by the Roman Catholic Bishop of Providence.
“PROVIDENCE, R.I. – Roman Catholic Bishop Thomas Tobin has banned Rep. Patrick Kennedy from receiving Communion, the central sacrament of the church, in Rhode Island because of the congressman’s support for abortion rights, Kennedy said in a newspaper interview published Sunday.
The decision by the outspoken prelate, reported on The Providence Journal’s Web site, significantly escalates a bitter dispute between Tobin, an ultra orthodox bishop, and Kennedy, a son of the nation’s most famous Roman Catholic family.
“The bishop instructed me not to take Communion and said that he has instructed the diocesan priests not to give me Communion,” Kennedy told the paper in an interview conducted Friday.
Kennedy said the bishop had explained the penalty by telling him “that I am not a good practicing Catholic because of the positions that I’ve taken as a public official,” particularly on abortion.
He declined to say when or how Tobin told him not to take the sacrament. And he declined to say whether he has obeyed the bishop’s injunction.”
Fr. Peter-Michael Prebble of St. Michael Orthodox Parish in Southbridge, MA questioned whether the “altar” should be used as a sounding board or tool in political controversies. I agree with Fr. Peter’s position and posted this response on his Facebook wall.
John Korab sent me this comment: I don’t know what your feelings on this statement are, Frank, but I find it astounding. Doesn’t the Catholic church have a history of standing up for people’s rights? The Civil Rights movement and the clerical activism on behalf of the poor in Latin America stand out as two glaring examples of this.
Come to think of it, while I’m not expert… or even religious… it seems to me that the entire arc of Western civilization away from slavery and towards human rights is somehow linked to the doctrines of Christ.
In Rome, they light up the Coliseum whenever a prisoner is put to death. In Spain, judges have the right to issue warrants for the arrest of human rights abusers, like Augusto Pinochet… anywhere on the planet. Are these extraordinary practices merely an echo of the brutal history experienced by the people of those two countries?… Read More
For that matter, isn’t the Catholic church’s own campaign against abortion supposedly based on the “RIGHTS” of the unborn?
Very good thinking, John. The problem is that the defense of “rights” – according to civil law – Civil rights – has become very muddied to the point where there is a lack of awareness of the concept of natural rights. Modern American politicians have easily forgotten the realm of natural rights – which is where your last statement comes into focus… Read More. The whole abortion issue hinges on this concept. Christianity, and even some schools of Judaic thought firmly defend the “rights” of the conceived – the “conceptus”. This has now been made redundant in modern day American law.
For an Orthodox perspective, the following quote from Fr. Stanley Harakis might help to put light on the Christian teching on abortion.
“Because our humanity is a psychosomatic unity and because Orthodox Christians see all of life as a continuous and never ending development of the image and likeness toward theosis and full humanity, the achievement of particular stages of development of the conceptus is not ethically relevant to the question of abortion.
In his second canon, St. Basil specifically rules out the artificial distinction between the “formed” and “unformed” conceptus (The Rudder, pp. 789-790). Thus, any abortion is seen as an evil. Since the physical and the personal aspects of human existence are understood as essential constitutive elements of our humanity, the conceptus—unfulfilled and incomplete as it may be—may not be destroyed under normal circumstances. Eastern Orthodox ethicists reject as unworthy those counterarguments which appeal to economic and social reasons and so hold life to be less valuable than money, pride, or convenience. Armed with modern genetic information, they also reject the argument that an abortion may be justified because a woman is entitled to control her own body. That basic affirmation of self-determination is not rejected; what is rejected is the claim that the conceptus is a part of the mother’s tissue. It is not her body; it is the body and life of another human being entrusted to her for care and nurture.”