Saturday, September 05, 2009

My thoughts on the Kennedy funeral

Update (9/5): My comment was approved on Cardinal Seán's blog.

I'm going to keep this short and to the point.  We owe it to Ted Kennedy to pray for his soul; it's the least we would ask anyone else to do for us.  We can hope that he repented of his support of abortion (among other things) at his last confession, but we will never know that, because of the seal of confession.

What we do know with certainty is that he did not publicly recant the positions he held on issues that were not consonant with the Catholic faith.  I dare say that it would have been utterly disastrous for the pro-choice movement if he had done so:  the "liberal lion" ending up to be a turncoat (although, in honesty, he would be a return-coat, coming back to the pro-life stance he held earlier in life).

Maybe he wanted to publicly recant, but did not get the opportunity to do so.  But what causes me sorrow is to know of the "lost opportunity" of his public repudiation of abortion.  It makes me second-guess (to my deep sorrow) whether he was truly repentant on the matter, whether he confessed it with true contrition, if he confessed it at all.  This, among other things, has resulted in a scandal surrounding the highly-publicized funeral Mass.

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