[Announce] Senator Kennedy's Funeral Mass

[bwaldrop at cox.net]

I am experiencing a time of writer's block, much I am sure to the relief of my long suffering readers.  Fortunately, Fr. Emmanual Charles McCarthy isn't thus burdened, and here is his essay on the funeral of Senator Ted Kennedy.

RMW

Edward M. Kennedy’s Funeral Mass:
NATO Airstrike in Afghanistan Kills Scores of Civilians
	—TRUTHOUT (9/04/09)

This has to be said, but I wonder if there is anyone left to really listen?
	—JOHN CARMODY

Innumerable communications have come to me regarding Edward Kennedy’s Funeral Mass held recently at Our Lady of Perpetual Help Basilica in Boston. Some—all Christian peace- and-justice people—found the Mass up-lifting, inspiring, “a wonderful send-off.” Most—all Catholic political conservatives—were and are angry about the event. The angry correspondents generally fall into two categories. First, those who found it sacrilegious that Kennedy was buried with a Catholic Mass from a Catholic Church, since, beginning in 1972, he had been a vigorous supporter of legalized abortion—a position these people feel, is as contrary to the Gospel and Church teaching as one can find. The second group is made up of those who found President Obama’s participation in the Funeral Mass radically unacceptable because of his carte blanche endorsement of and implementation of pro-abortion policies and programs. 

Those of you who know my writings know that I make no moral distinction between liberal Constantinian Christianity and conservative Constantinian Christianity. I make no such moral distinction because no such distinction is found in, nor can be implied by, nor inferred from the teachings of Jesus Christ. Each is equally contrary to the explicit teachings and Way of Jesus. Violence and enmity are contrary to the will of God as communicated by the words and deeds of Jesus and the importance and/or benevolence of the cause on whose behalf they are employed does not—ever, in any way—alter Jesus’ clear rejection of them as means available to His disciples. Liberal political leg-breakers and warriors are no more following Jesus nor conforming to the will of God as He reveals it, than are conservative political leg-breakers and warriors.

As those of you who read my writings also know I have always been an equal-opportunity clarifier of the historical fact that neither Constantinian conservative Christian just warists nor Constantinian liberal Christian just warists are in the least concerned with meeting and adhering to the norms of Christian Unjust/Just War Theory, when it does not serve their political or economic interests or the interests of their sponsors and underwriters. At that point both conservative and liberal Constantinian Christians say, “Christian Just War Theory be damned. Bombs away! You can’t make an omlette without breaking some eggs. Innocent human beings must be killed in order that our interests can be served. Life is unfair.”

So, of all the vapid wastes of one’s life’s time into which the Constantinian Churches drag their people, the never-ending morality farce which features the Constantinian conservative kettles calling the Constantinian liberal pots black—and vice versa—is the most absurd, hypocritical, spiritually divisive, morally toxic, practically irrelevant and existentially nauseating. 
With this preamble—necessary for context and clarity—in place, let me address the two issues explicitly raised above by my conservative correspondents, as well as, the terrible issue implicitly and unintentionally raised by my liberal peace and justice correspondents.

Edward M. Kennedy was a Roman Catholic from the moment he was Baptized until the day  he died. He understood himself as such and the official Catholic Church recognized him as such. Any Catholic who says otherwise should be told without equivocation by his or her priest or bishop, that he or she is utterly and completely in error. (From what I am hearing, some bishops, priests and media operations that use the name Catholic are not being as unambiguously clear about this as they morally must be to be in conformity with Church teaching and canon law.) Edward Kennedy was a Catholic, case closed. Like every other Catholic, he deserved the prayers of the Catholic Community and all the assistance it could give him, as he passed into the community of the dead. There is nothing unacceptable about any of this. Indeed, it is all quite proper and right. The Church and every Catholic in the Church, regardless of their opinion of Edward Kennedy when he was on earth, must—if they are to be faithful Catholics and faithful to the Catholic Tradition—pray for their brother-in-Christ, Edward Kennedy, in the Spirit of the words of the ancient Catholic prayer for the dead:
Requiem aeternam dona eis Domine, et lux perpetua luceat eis, cum Sanctis tuis in aeternum, quia pius es. Requiescat in pace. Amen.*
As to the second point of contention and division, namely, President Obama’s participation in the Mass, the following must first be made clear. There is nothing unacceptable about Barack Obama attending a Catholic Funeral Mass, just as there is nothing unacceptable about the other former Presidents being, who also engaged for years in acts of mass murder, attending Mass. Yes, murder! (I apologize if I offend cultural sensitivities by calling murder by its true and proper name. If any one has a more accurate name for what these men did or are doing while in office, I'd be happy to hear it. I am sure none of the hundreds of thousands [minimum figure] of the innocent victims of their policies and programs would call what was done to them by any other name.)

Liberal Christian murderers for liberal causes are on exactly the same moral plane as conservative Christian murderers for conservative causes. Both are in radical dis-conformity with the will of God as taught by Jesus, as well as, the will of God as enunciated in Catholic just war moral theory. Murder—the intentional unjustified destruction of a human being—regardless of who does it or why, whether it is done to a human being in utero or extra-utero, is always and under all circumstances an intrinsically grave evil—never permitted to anyone, anywhere, at any time according to Catholic moral theology.

So to reiterate a point by analogy for emphasis—while the Catholic dictator, torturer and killer of the innocent, Augusto Pinochet, is entitled to a Catholic Mass from which to be buried—he is not entitled to a pulpit during a Mass in a Catholic Church. His presence in the pulpit, since he is a public man with a public record of public choices that are murder by the standards of Catholic morality would carry with it the grave possibility of minimizing the moral gravity of the act of murder—actually mass murder—thereby leading others into this heinous defiance of the will of God as revealed by Jesus and by Catholic Natural Law morality. To justify an evil, or to seemly justify an evil, is to promote that evil. 

The Church only buries sinners. It prays and intercedes for the salvation of all its deceased sinners, regardless of the sins they may have committed. Again, this is the proper and right thing for the Church to do. But, this does not make it proper and right for the Church to give a pulpit during a Mass to those who are currently engaged in the evil of murder in utero and/or extra-utero. Such is a non-necessary moral and liturgical choice. Civility does not require misnaming moral reality. Civility does not require calling murder by anything other name than its correct name. Fidelity to truth, the sine qua non for an authentic human and Christian existence, does require that murder be called by it right name. A Christian is not permitted to mis-label a moral reality in order to meet cultural standards of civility, that is, out of fear of offending those who are murdering innocent people.

Consider the following, which may seem off the point for the moment: I personally know a married couple, both life-long Catholics who, only a few years ago, were denied permission to bury their little girl, their only child, with a Catholic Funeral Mass from a Catholic Church, because the family did not want to dispose of the ashes of her cremated body in the way the institutional Church demanded they must. Their priest and bishop were unbending on the matter. No Funeral Mass (Mass of the Resurrection) in a Church, if the ashes were not to be disposed of in accordance with the institutional Church's standards. The funeral service took place at a funeral home.

Contrast that situation with this: The President of the United States, who is directly responsible for and in charge of policies, programs and agencies that are daily unjustly killing innocent human beings in Iraq, in Afghanistan, in Palestine, in Pakistan, and in the womb, is he welcomed with open arms into the sanctuary during a Funeral Mass in order to orate on the life of a politically powerful and wealthy Catholic.

The disposition of ashes after cremation is sufficient reason to deny parents a Mass at which to bury their child, but a place in the sanctuary at a Funeral Mass for a President and Military Commander in Chief, who is knowingly and daily sending innocent people to their deaths, presents no problem. For the political and economic elite the rules are interpreted to accommodate—accommodate to the point of easily communicating false witness or scandal, regarding the seriousness of the intentional unjustified taking of human life, that is, murder. For others, strict adherence to the letter and spirit regarding disposal of cremation ashes is demanded—for fear, as the couple was told, that “disrespect toward the human body might otherwise be communicated.”

The deciding factor between the two Catholic families here was not personal animosity toward the little girl’s parents nor any fear of the Church giving false witness to other Christians or to the world. It was the motivation to accommodate that comes from the desire to put the power and the glory of Catholic Constantinianism on display for the world to see. It was a ready-made win-win situation for the Church and the State, as well as, for those in the Church and the State who are Christians and who blatantly dismiss and ignore both the teaching of the nonviolent Jesus, as well as, the Catholic Unjust/Just Violence standards in relation to homicide, violence, enmity, wealth, and dominative power.

For those who had ears to hear, there were present in that Basilica on the day of Edward Kennedy’s Funeral Mass, terrifying silent screams. Innocent human beings in agony screeching, “STOP”—from the womb, from Afghanistan, from Iraq, from Palestine, from Pakistan. How could one fail to hear the screams of those presently being murdered by the government in collusion with religion, when at the very Consecration of the Mass, according to Catholic theology, the Innocent Victim of political and religious murder—who ontologically and empathically identifies Himself with “the least” (Mt 25:31-46)—is both re-presented and present? Unless of course, there were something present that was  considered more important present, to which one should be attentive.

That the American political elites, and their bagmen and their hangers-on in the Church could not hear these anguished and desperate silent screams, is no surprise. Their minds have long since been Novocained to the pain they have caused to other human beings during their ascent up the political ladder. That the well-paid, well-coiffured and well-dressed talking heads of corporate mass media could not hear anything is a given. A good salary easily pays for blinders, earmuffs and gag. But, that a Cardinal and the Catholic priests in that Basilica did not hear the silent screams, the cries emanating from the Victim and victims of governmental murder—and instead literally bestow a pulpit to the latest in the line of Presidential puppets for the powers-behind-the-throne who brought about these screams by designing and orchestrating the indiscriminate destruction of the “the least,”—is a sign-certain of a Church that has lost sight of its mission because it has lost its attentiveness to the truth of God made present in the Victim of murder, Jesus Christ. 

But, hear, they could not. The important reality, evidently, was that the President of the United States spoke at a Mass in our Church and came through with a boffo performance—a performance which simultaneously drowned out or at least muffled the human screams he is now responsible for creating. During the President’s entire eulogy one could hear a pin drop in that Church, but no one could hear even the distant echo of a scream from Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Palestine or the womb.

The Mass is the Mass. It is the center and summit of Catholic worship and life! It is not and never should be permitted to become a PR tool to be choreographed for political purposes or secular hagiography. Edward Kennedy’s Funeral Mass is far from the first instance of this abuse of the Divine Liturgy. But, the Kennedy family bears no responsibility for it occurring here. They have a right to have a Catholic member of their family buried with a Mass, but they possess no canonical authority to determine the content of that Mass. The serious error of judgment made here lies exclusively at the doorstep of the Cardinal Archbishop of Boston, not the Kennedy family.

The Kennedy family, like the little girl’s family previously mentioned, could do no more than what the institutional Church of Boston and its leadership permitted. That the Cardinal permitted Barack Obama into the sanctuary and onto the pulpit to formally participate in that Mass was a momentous mistake. Seemingly, from the Cardinal’s blog, his defense is that he was being civil. But, civility in no way necessitates permission to participate in a Catholic Mass. A Catholic Mass is not a Catholic university, where people with discordant views must be invited to speak by the very nature and purpose of the institution. To say it again, the Mass is the Mass. But, I am certain that most of Sean O’ Malley’s Constantinian United States’ episcopal colleagues would have made the same decision as he, under comparable circumstances. 

Sean O’ Malley’s, as Bishop of the Diocese of Boston, was not in error in permitting a deceased Catholic, Edward M. Kennedy, to be buried with a Catholic Mass from a Catholic Church. His endangering and scandal-laden spiritual, moral, liturgical and pastoral oversight was in permitting the living Barack Obama to ascend to the pulpit within a Catholic Funeral Mass in a Catholic Church, while knowing full well that he is publicly, unrepentantly and explicitly engaged in the large scale extra-utero and in utero unjustified destruction of innocent human beings—the infinitely loved and valued sons and daughters of the Father of all—in Iraq, in Afghanistan, in Pakistan, in Palestine and in the womb.

One can only await, with well-grounded apprehension, the Constantinian Catholic Liturgical fiasco that will be put on display before the world when Catholics Newt Gingrich and Antonin Scalia join the community of the dead. Maybe George W. Bush, the Christian “pro-life” destroyer of hundreds of thousands of innocent human beings, could be invited to have a formal roll in their respective Funeral Masses by delivering their eulogies?

EMMANUEL CHARLES MCCARTHY