2009 Archive: Ted Kennedy Funeral
NEWS RELEASE
SATURDAY, AUGUST 29, 2009
CONTACT: C. J. DOYLE
(781) 251-9739
SCANDAL AT MISSION CHURCH IN BOSTON
Photo: America magazine
The Catholic Action League of Massachusetts today decried
the scandal which occurred this morning at Boston’s most historic Catholic
shrine — the Minor Basilica of Our Lady of Perpetual Help, known as Mission
Church — where a Mass of Christian Burial was used to “celebrate the life” of
one of America’s most notorious opponents of Catholic morality, the late Senator
Edward M. Kennedy. Senator Kennedy fought for more than three decades to keep
the killing of pre-born children legal and unrestricted in the United States.
Surgical abortion has claimed more than fifty-one million
human lives since 1973. The Catholic religion defines abortion as an “abominable
crime.”
President Barack Obama delivered the eulogy, in which he
alluded to Kennedy’s support for gay rights. One of the Prayers of the Faithful
was a petition to end divisions “between gays and straights”.
Ecclesial participants included Rev. Raymond Collins,
Rector of the Basilica; Rev. Mark Hession, Kennedy’s parish priest from Our Lady
of Victories Church in Centerville on Cape Cod; Rev. J. Donald Monan, Chancellor
of Boston College; and Sean Cardinal O’Malley, Archbishop of Boston, who thanked
President Obama for his words and his presence. Both the homilist, Fr. Hession,
and Cardinal O’Malley suggested that the late senator had found eternal
salvation.
The Catholic Action League called the event “a tragic
example of the Church’s willingness to surrender to the culture, and serve
Caesar rather than Christ.”
Catholic Action League Executive Director C. J. Doyle
stated: “Senator Kennedy supported legal abortion, partial-birth abortion, the
public funding of Medicaid abortions, embryonic stem cell research, birth
control, federal family planning programs, and so-called emergency
contraception. He defended Roe v. Wade, endorsed the proposed Freedom of Choice
Act (FOCA), and opposed both the Human Life Amendment and the Hyde Amendment.
Kennedy maintained a 100% rating from both NARAL and Planned Parenthood. In
1993, he received the Kenneth Edelin Award from Planned Parenthood, and in 2000
received the Champions of Choice Award from NARAL Pro-Choice Massachusetts at
the hands of the same Dr. Kenneth Edelin, the infamous abortionist.
During his 1994 reelection campaign, Kennedy said, “I wear
as a badge of honor my opposition to the anti-choicers.” His successful
obstruction of the nomination of Judge Robert Bork to the U.S. Supreme Court in
1987 effectively prevented the overturning of Roe v. Wade. Beyond his
specific positions on human life issues, Senator Kennedy, along with the late
Congressman Robert Drinan, provided the cover and the example for two
generations of Catholic politicians to defect from Church teaching on the
sanctity of innocent human life.
“No rational person can reasonably be expected to take
seriously Catholic opposition to abortion when a champion of the Culture of
Death, who repeatedly betrayed the Faith of his baptism, is lauded and extolled
by priests and prelates in a Marian basilica. This morning's spectacle is
evidence of the corruption which pervades the Catholic Church in the United
States. The right to life will never be recognized by secular society if it is
not first vindicated and consistently upheld within the institutions of the
Church itself.”
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