Cardinal O'Malley's: Another Funeral, Another Scandal

Raising the flag over Boston's city hall

I've seen a lot of articles about how orthodox Cardinal O'Malley is. Why can't I believe it? As a gramma of 24, two in the womb, I still can't get over the Kennedy funeral extravaganza! A man responsible for the murder of millions of little ones hailed as a Catholic hero, practically canonized in fact. And all blessed by a prince of the Church.

Really?

And now Cardinal O'Malley has done it again. From the Boston Globe - Here are his words from his eulogy homily during a memorial Mass for pro-abort, pro-sodomy Mayor Thomas Menino:

Is Cardinal O'Malley Holier than Jesus?

Cardinal O’Malley: ‘If I were founding a Church, I’d love to have women priests’

Well, what did Jesus know?

Here's the recent O'Malley interview on 60 minutes:

Two Archdioceses, Two Policies; Which One Upholds the Catholic Faith?

"One will see cardinals opposing cardinals, bishops against bishops."
                                 The Blessed Mother to Sr. Agnes Sasagawa at Akita, Japan

The battle is joined with some bishops defending the faith and others undermining it. I blogged recently about Cardinal O'Malley's policy to normalize same-sex parenting, implicitly recognizing gay marriage and families as equal to heterosexual families. It's a disaster for the faith in Catholic schools that has wideranging implications.

Another bishop came to an opposite conclusion, one more in keeping with the truth. Archbishop Chaput of Denver will NOT allow the children of same-sex parents in Denver's Catholic schools. Archbishop Chaput explained his reasons that are self-evident to any real Catholic:

Most parents who send their children to Catholic schools want an environment where the Catholic faith is fully taught and practiced.  That simply can’t be done if teachers need to worry about wounding the feelings of their students or about alienating students from their parents.

Can the problems related to admitting the children of homosexuals be stated any more clearly? And why would lesbian and gay parents want to put their children in such a situation of conflict except to demand that their lifestyle is just as good as any other? For homosexual couples this isn't about the children; it's about legitimizing their lifestyle. Read the complete article here.

I'm Speechless About Cardinal O'Malley

Cardinal O'Malley seems like a very nice man. He looks like St. Francis after all - except the pictures of St. Francis always show him thin. He wasn't as generous to "brother ass" as most brothers, priests, and bishops. But I'm truly speechless over Cardinal O'Malley's recent interview saying the Vatican needs to change canon law to give a clearer directive on denying Communion to pro-abortion politicians.

Is he serious?

Canon law 915 is very clear that those engaged in egregious, on-going scandal should be denied Communion. Does the Church really need a chapter called "specific sins that call for denial of Communion?" Does canon law have to say, "The hookers on the local street corner a block from the Cathedral may not be given Communion Sunday morning after doing tricks all night? No Communion for the local abortionist until he publicly repudiates his grizzly business, etc." Politicians like Kennedy caused far more abortions through his support for abortion than the poor frightened woman who kills her baby in a panic. But she's excommunicated and he gets a funeral fit for a king - King Herod, perhaps?

Cardinal Francis Arinze, Archbishop Raymond Burke, and the Pope himself when we called him Cardinal Ratzinger have all spoken out against giving Communion to publicly pro-abortion Catholics.

Maybe Cardinal O'Malley is waiting for a vision. Meanwhile, Catholics are waiting for bishops to defend the faith.

From Donna Bethell to Cardinal O'Malley: "The Catholic Church failed Sen. Kennedy"

Printed below is a letter from another one of those Catholics whom Cardinal O'Malley has labelled angry, vindictive, and divisive. It seems today if Catholic laity step in to defend the faith when the hierarchy won't, we must be prepared to be attacked and vilified. Fr. John Hardon once told me, when I approached him during a home school convention for advice about Les Femmes, that when those with the authority to defend the faith won't, those who don't have the authority must. Such is the situation of laity today. We see our children and grandchildren robbed of the faith by the love affair between the hierarchy and the power brokers. Many bishops have traded their silence for a seat at the table with the elite.

Thank you, Donna, for telling the cardinal the truth. It isn't faithful laity who are divisive, and if we are angry, it is the righteous anger of mothers defending their children.

Cardinal O'Malley, you have our prayers. Please be a true shepherd who defends the sheep. There are too many hirelings who are willing to abandon the little lambs to the wolves. Ted Kennedy was indeed a lion, the one described by St. Peter (1 Peter 5:8) "prowling like a roaring lion looking for someone to devour"). He was also a wolf in Catholic clothing attacking the sheep, and many have followed his example to embrace sins that cry to heaven for vengeance. How many souls will be lost because of the public scandal enabled by princes of the Church? Please, Your Eminence, stop providing the Judases cover.


Dear Cardinal O'Malley,

I can hardly think of a more disingenuous description of Senator Edward Kennedy's position than "he did not publically [sic] support Catholic teaching and advocacy on behalf of the unborn." Sen. Kennedy was an active opponent of Catholic teaching on the unborn and other matters, such as same-sex "marriage." He worked tirelessly to preserve legal abortion, earning 100% ratings from NARAL and Planned Parenthood. He voted repeatedly and unfailingly for public funding of abortion and against any restrictions, including a ban on barbarous partial birth abortion. He worked against the Church in supporting legalization of same-sex "marriage," particularly in Massachusetts, and voted to fund embryonic stem cell research. Yet he had no trouble finding Catholic priests, like Frs. Drinan and Monan, to give him aid and cover, while he never had a bishop who was willing to instruct him in the true teaching of the Church and, for the good of his soul, call him to public account for his public sins.

Indeed, the Catholic Church failed Sen. Kennedy during his life and you, Cardinal O'Malley, failed him, his family, and the Church in his death. Do you really believe that the only way you could minister to the Kennedy family was to allow and even preside over that spectacle of a political canonization? You put the credit of the Catholic Church at the service of lies and the legacy of a public apostate who spent nearly 40 years of his political life in open, active hostility to Catholic doctrine on an essential matter, not an issue of prudential judgment. No amount of "aid to the poor" can balance that fact.

Please do not tell me that we must not judge. I am not judging Sen. Kennedy or you on the basis of internal conscience. I am stating objective facts.

God help you, Cardinal O'Malley, God have mercy on Senator Kennedy, and God help the Catholic Church in America.

Donna Bethell

Two good posts from Catholic Culture on the Kennedy Funeral Scandal

The Kennedy Funeral: Boston's Latest Scandal

Scandal Spelled Out

An Open Letter to Cardinal Sean O'Malley

Cardinal O'Malley posted a blog entry September 2nd "explaining" his involvement in the Kennedy funeral. It begs the question. People were not so much concerned about his presence, but about a public showcase funeral being allowed for a man who "obstinately persist[ed] in manifest grave sin" (Canon 915) who never publicly repented. With help from a prince of the Church, Ted Kennedy was allowed to scandalize to the end.

Sadly, Cardinal O'Malley shifted the argument to an ad hominem attack on those who criticized the event.

At times, even in the Church, zeal can lead people to issue harsh judgments and impute the worst motives to one another. These attitudes and practices do irreparable damage to the communion of the Church. If any cause is motivated by judgment, anger or vindictiveness, it will be doomed to marginalization and failure. Jesus’ words to us were that we must love one another as He loves us. Jesus loves us while we are still in sin. He loves each of us first, and He loves us to the end. Our ability to change people’s hearts and help them to grasp the dignity of each and every life, from the first moment of conception to the last moment of natural death, is directly related to our ability to increase love and unity in the Church, for our proclamation of the Truth is hindered when we are divided and fighting with each other.

And so, once again, a highly-placed cleric blames, not those who murder the innocent, work for the destruction of marriage, and endorse sodomy but those who demur when the hierarchy act as enablers. We are the ones presumed to be motivated by "anger and vindictiveness." We are the ones doing "irreparable damage" to whom the cardinal "impute[s] the worst motives." Sadly, the cardinal's language is the same used by "pro-choicers" who cannot address the argument so they engage in ad hominem attacks.

I am grieved by Cardinal O'Malley's harsh judgment on the real defenders of life. I pray for Sen. Kennedy who was allowed to go to his grave without uttering one word of public repentance for being a champion of the culture of death. In the end the clergy surrounding him apparently acted, not like John the Baptist calling for reform of life, but like the pharisees tickling his ears. I hope he sincerely repented of his mortal sins of publicly advancing the murder of the innocent, sodomy, and the destruction of marriage. Above all I hope he repented for his frequent sacrilegious reception of Communion. There is little evidence that he did, but only God knows the state of his soul in his final moments.

I left a slightly different version of the comment below on the Cardinal's blog. Whether the moderator allows it is still in question. I publish it here as an open letter to the cardinal:

Your Eminence,

You set up a strawman on your blog post about the Kennedy funeral. Pro-lifers did not oppose a Catholic funeral for Sen. Kennedy. We hope that he repented. But public sins require public repentance and, sadly, that did not happen. The funeral should have been a private, family affair not what amounted to a public canonization leading others to believe that his actions were not gravely sinful and a serious scandal. It's ironic that Eunice Kennedy Shriver, a fine example of a pro-life Catholic, chose a humble private funeral. Her humility puts in greater contrast the unseemly spectacle at the cathedral honoring a champion of child-killing.

I find your condemnation and, dare I say, "judgment" of those who objected to the extravaganza puzzling. Is our intellect not called the "seat of judgment?" Did John the Baptist not "judge" the actions of those who paid lip service to faith while their actions showed them to be "whitewashed sepulchres filled with dead mens bones?"

Kennedy died as he lived, looking for human respect and accolades. He got them with your enabling assistance. Implied approval of homosexuality and the health care plan were incuded in the prayers of the faithful. Add that to the scandal and politicization of what was supposed to be a liturgical event but was actually thinly-disguised political theater.

Your excuses simply don't fly, Your Eminence. The faithful are looking for shepherds who love and defend the faith. The glittering public funeral for the lion of the culture of death was one more scandal damaging belief in the doctrines the Church teaches. Abortion is no big deal after all. Kennedy championed it to the end and not one word of caution was said at the funeral. The babies once again were sacrificed on the altar of human respect with your apparent approval.

The funeral was a scandal, Your Eminence, and your lovely words cannot make it less so.

The Pope and the Senator -- is there more to the story?

In another move to sanctify Senator Ted Kennedy, excerpts from the Senator's letter to Pope Benedict and a reply from the Vatican were read graveside in Arlington Cemetery by Cardinal Theodore McCarrick, a Kennedy family friend. Friend indeed, After the 2007 Red Mass in D.C. McCarrick motioned to Kennedy and the two recessed together down the aisle, the liberal senator and the liberal cardinal, dare I say both cafeteria Catholics? Pro-abortion Catholic politicians were always welcomed to receive Communion sacrilegiously in Washington, D.C. under Cardinal McCarrick as they are still under his successor, Archbishop Donald Wuerl. Some things never change.

Will Boston Archdiocese Participate in Abortion?

Archdiocese reviewing Catholic network's alleged role in providing abortions

Catholic Hospitals and the Ethics of Doubletalk

Senator Sam Brownback is taking a lot of heat lately for endorsing pro-abortion Kathleen Sebelius to be HHS head. Human Life International president, Fr. Tom Euteneuer, recently called him a "turncoat" for his actions. But there's a figure closer to home who wears a miter and carries a crosier and whose betrayal is much more serious, Cardinal Sean O'Malley, Archbishop of Boston.

On March 6th the Cardinal approved a decision by Caritas Christi Health Care, the agency managing Catholic hospitals in his archdiocese, to bid for a contract that offers low-income citizens of Massachusetts health-care insurance. The hefty government contract requires that all services mandated by state law be provided including contraception and abortion. Caritas will partner with Centene Corporation, a third party, to do the dirty work. According to Phil Lawler of Catholic World News "if the contract is approved, there would be no hospital in the Boston area that was not involved, directly or indirectly, with the abortion business...this wretched situation would occur not because the government forced Caritas Christi into a morally untenable position, but because the Catholic health-care agency deliberately sought to be involved."

Like the pharisees who scrupulously followed the ritual laws, Caritas, supported by the bishop, engages in ethical doubletalk claiming they will be true to Catholic principles even as they rationalize how to get around them. They will pass the bloody abortion duty to their secular partner to maintain the charade of uninvolvement. (Why does this remind me of an accessory in murder who drives the getaway car?) Cardinal O'Malley's statement says, "Caritas Christi Health Care has assured me that it will not be engaged in any procedures nor draw any benefits from any relationship which violate the Church's moral teaching as found in the Ethical and Religious Directives." No doubt they will srupulously follow the letter of the law including the ritual washing of hands as the innocent are sacrificed.

One has to question, however, why Caritas wants the contract if there is no "benefit" to them. One can only conclude that they will, despite their words, "benefit" from the relationship with the abortion provider. The partnership enables Caritas to take the government money while maintaining that they are innocent of involvement in child-killing. It's a travesty and pro-lifers in Boston aren't buying it. Catholic hospitals in this country are neck deep in the culture of death. This is just one more example of it.

Cardinal O'Malley's support for the Caritas betrayal is unconscionable. As Lawler says, "the Boston archdiocese...[should] deliver an emphatic message that the Catholic Church does not want, and will not seek, any connection, however remote, with the culture of death."

Congress may have its turncoats, but they do less damage than those who hold episcopal office. Please pray for Cardinal O'Malley and all the bishops of the United States.

Cardinal O’Malley releases statement

Boston cardinal backs Catholic agency's bid for contract involving abortion coverage