Kerry gets away with it by going to a "Catholic Church of what's happening now." We should have sent him out to Mel's Catholic Church. They have the scourges ready. :>)
Kerry Ignores Reproaches of Some Bishops
By KATHARINE Q. SEELYE - NYT
BOSTON, April 11 — Rejecting the admonitions of several national Roman Catholic leaders, Senator John Kerry received communion at Easter services today at the Paulist Center here, a kind of New Age church that describes itself as "a worship community of Christians in the Roman Catholic tradition" and that attracts people drawn to its dedication to "family religious education and social justice."
Mr. Kerry's decision to receive communion represented a challenge to several prominent Catholic bishops, who have become increasingly exasperated with politicians who are Catholic but who deviate from Catholic teaching.
Mr. Kerry, the presumed Democratic presidential nominee, supports abortion rights and stem cell research, both of which are contrary to church teaching. He and his wife, Teresa Heinz Kerry, are regular worshipers at the Paulist Center, which is near their home on Beacon Hill.
Last November, the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops organized a task force headed by Cardinal Theodore McCarrick of Washington to study how the church should treat Catholic politicians like Mr. Kerry, who say they are personally opposed to abortion, for example, but support abortion rights legislatively. There has been a long line of such politicians, including Mario Cuomo, the former governor of New York, and Geraldine Ferraro, the Democratic vice presidential candidate in 1984.
The task force has not issued any specific recommendations, but some members have discussed a range of penalties, from withholding communion to excommunication.
In a television interview today, Cardinal McCarrick indicated that depriving a Catholic of communion would be a last resort that he, for one, would be reluctant to take.
"I think there are many of us who would feel that there are certain restrictions that we might put on people" he said on the "Fox News Sunday" program. "But I think many of us would not like to use the Eucharist as part of the sanctions."
In February, the archbishop of St. Louis, Raymond Burke, warned Mr. Kerry before the Missouri primary that he would not give him communion because the senator was defying church teaching.
Archbishop Sean O'Malley of Boston has not explicitly said that Mr. Kerry may not receive communion, but he has suggested that Catholic politicians whose political views contradict Catholic teaching should voluntarily abstain, saying they "shouldn't dare come to communion."
There were no protesters at today's services, and it was not clear whether Mr. Kerry's receiving communion would bring a response from the church or affect his campaign as he seeks to become only the second Roman Catholic president of the United States, after John F. Kennedy.
"It was a wonderful service," Mr. Kerry told reporters afterward. As he emerged from the church, he received a sustained ovation. He shook hands with several people and posed for pictures, then ducked back into the vestibule to thank the priest.
Mr. Kerry heads to New Hampshire on Monday and expects to have several Democratic colleagues around the country join in a coordinated attack on President Bush's handling of the economy.
In an ongoing effort to make the economy the central issue in the presidential campaign, Mr. Kerry's campaign issued a so-called "misery index" today that purports to show that under Mr. Bush, the economic power of middle-class families has deteriorated at record levels.
The misery index is based on median family income, private-sector job growth, the rate of home ownership, the increase in the number of personal bankruptcies and the cost of college tuition, health care and gasoline cost.
The Kerry campaign has computed that the "misery index" in the last three years under Mr. Bush has been the worst in in three decades, with the biggest problems being the rise in college tuition (up 13 percent from 2002 to 2003), the loss of private-sector jobs, the rise in health premiums and the decline in family income.
Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company |
