"The Church is always her best at a funeral," a priest once said to me, and those true words echoed in my memory as I watched the funeral of Sen. Ted Kennedy. The Catholic funeral Mass is so beautiful, not least because it is so familiar, not really different from other Masses. In the face of grief, we crave the familiar, we do not want to improvise, we want strong anchors and traditions are strong anchors.
But, the beauty of the funeral Mass also consists in the fact that the world can only look back upon a man’s life and the Church, and only the Church, attests to the future destiny of the deceased with Christ. Eulogies are fine, and at the wake the night before the funeral, the stories about Sen. Kennedy were hilarious and inspiring and heartfelt and wonderful, but they all looked backward. For the world, death is a wall. For the Church, death is a door.
Kennedy’s funeral Mass, however, had some very specific beauty. The slightly kitschy Victorian art of the Basilica of Our Lady of Perpetual Help was beautiful, attesting to the truth that a faith that does not produce kitsch is a dead faith. Ditto the Victorian organ in the balcony with a diapason chorus that was as rich as chocolate cake. The cello piece at the Offertory was hauntingly ethereal and while I prefer the Massanet "Ave Maria" to the Schubert, the mezzo who sang the Schubert version sang it as gloriously as I have ever heard it sung. The collected crutches at the altar of Our Lady must move even those who have never prayed the "Hail Mary." All this beauty matters. It was Luther, not Trent, that denied the possibility of a Christian aesthetic. Once to teach his students about the nature of sin, Don Luigi Giussani took a bouquet of flowers from the desk alongside his lectern, threw them on the floor and stomped on them. "THAT," he said, "is sin. The destruction of the beautiful."
But, there was one other aspect of the Senator’s funeral that was especially important. In the comments of his two sons, and in the homily by their parish priest, the Kennedy family gave a beautiful, and timely, witness to the Church’s teaching about the dignity of the dying. One son said he had learned more from his father in this past year of illness and decline than in all the previous years. Everyone attested to the love and care shown by Kennedy’s wife Vicki for her ailing husband. In his brief remarks at the conclusion of the funeral, Cardinal O’Malley specifically mentioned how that love attested to the dignity of human life in all its frailty.
In the past month, with all the lies and nonsense about death panels and pulling the plug on grandma, it has been a bit difficult to combat the lies but also bear witness to the Church’s legitimate concern and worry about end-of-life issues, about the way the phrase "quality of life" can become chilling and eugenic, about not only the dignity of the dying, but their unique capacity to teach the rest of us about the depths of human love. Only those who love suffer, and only those who suffer discover the deepest face of love.
Saturday, the Kennedy family witnessed to these great teachings of our faith about the dignity of the aged and the dying in a way that no words of mine could achieve. The late Senator and his family, whose lives are so public, shared their faith with the nation. That is no small gift.
And I do have to say that I thought the Intercessions were a bit much with all the quotes from his speechs that were made into petitions (esp the ''gay vs straight'' bit) - and they only highlighted his inconsistency when it came to abortion because they didn't even mention it (an inconsistency that Ross Douthat points out in his wonderful Times column this am re: Eunice Shriver's pro-life commitment). I mean if they're privately against abortion, as he said he was, why couldn't they pray for the unborn at his funeral, esp at a Catholic mass in a Catholic church? I think its time for Catholic Liberals to start calling the bluff of Catholic Democrats with this whole ''private conscience/public duty'' bit. Being Catholic has to mean a lot more than being able to have a letter hand delivered to the Pope by the President of the US. And no, I'm not a right-winger who thinks he should have been denied a Catholic funeral.
As to the funeral Mass itself - I was quite moved. We Catholics do funerals well. The songs and the eulogies did what they were designed to do, make the loved ones cry. I doubt many of my fellow posters actually watched the funeral (so I am not sure why they are posting), however I doubt the emotional health of anyone who saw Teddy Jr.'s sharing on being helped up the icy hill by his father and did not shed a tear or five.
Teddy Kennedy was a fellow human being, a brother Catholic and an acquaintence of mine. He treated all people decently, from Presidents to Republican interns (like me). If everyone on the other side of the aisle in all manner of public life did as well as he did in this matter, the debate would be much less caustic. As it is, many on that side haven't even demostrated that they know the teaching that you do not speak ill of the dead. Shame.
Kennedy's funeral didn't pass on this score.
And those intercessions...MSW, can you just apply the "What if a GOP pol had done this" to everything you say about Democrats? What if a Catholic GOP pol who, say, had been a rabid proponent of the death penalty died and his grandkids were enlisted to read the intercessions with a political tinge, and..
..you would be throwing FITS.
As Josh said, we get it. You love Democrats. Check.
To the three right-wingers making the above postings, would you please pipe down? We may disagree with whichever actions Kennedy did in his lifetime, not just limited to his stand on abortion, but also his treatment of women and some possible legal misdeeds he committed (remember Chappaquiddick and William Kennedy Smith's affair). Having said so, he has clearly repented from his actions in the last 2 decades of his life, as could be seen from the letter he wrote to the Holy Father, and I assume he has received sacrament of confession as well as Extreme Unction just before he passed on, so he died in good grace and in communion with the Church.
My grandma often said that we should not dwell on the possible sins and misdeeds of a person who already dies and has confessed his sins, so I hope to those of you who still like to trash Mr. Kennedy, remember what Jesus himself said about trashing other people: let him who is without sin cast the first stone (John 8:7). And remember also the parable of the sheeps and the goats (Matt. 25:31-46): it is those who has done works such as feed the hungry and cloth the naked who will receive the Kingdom of Heaven, not those who like to thrash other people but does ABSOLUTELY NOTHING to help his fellow mankind. Finally, remember also the Parable of the Pharisee and the Sinner. My question: who is the sinner and who is the Pharisee here?
It seems that Ted could never really confront the horrors legalized abortion has wrought on this country, and this country's women. It's amazing the lengths the human mind will go to gloss over a guilty conscience.
Again, I am not a Kennedy hater; like someone else said, the coverage actually did change my opinion of him from being a sleazy politician to a man of decency, immense generosity and faith. I make no judgment whatsoever about the state of the man's faith or soul (''Judge not, lest by that same standard ye be judged''). BUT that doesn't change the fact that he was not following the Church's teaching with respect to abortion; to the extent he wanted to show himself a devout Catholic, that is squarely inconsistent. Whether we agree or not, the Church teaches quite clearly that legalized abortion is a moral and political tragedy of a fundamental nature, i.e. it threatens the entire social order, a moral social order that Eunice Shriver saw as entirely consistent (again, I commend Ross Douthat's column). Nor does it sweep away the inconsistency that anytime Bush used the word God he was denounced by Liberals for ripping down the wall between Church and state, but it seems ok for prominent Liberals to wrap themselves in the language of faith when it suits them. You can't have your cake and eat it too. My Catholic faith makes my support for free market capitalism very uncomfortable for me; I think its only fair to hold Catholic Liberals to that same standard. But to wrap yourself in the faith and say look at all I did for the vulnerable, and totally ignore a major issue for society that the Church is outspoken on is simply inconsistent. And to say that doesn't, at least in my opinion, make one a foaming right-wing hater NOR require a full out effort to portray Kennedy as the second coming to counter that.
What are the "jurisdictional grounds" upon which Roe was decided?