Bishop Thomas Tobin has instructed Patrick Kennedy to refrain from receiving Communion. While Kennedy says the bishop has instructed priests in the diocese not to give him the Sacrament, the chancery says the bishop has never addressed the issue with his priests. Other Catholic politicians privately instructed by their bishops have essentially thumbed their noses and continued to present themselves at the altar. Whether Kennedy will obey or flaunt the bishop's admonition, time will tell. It appears he is trying to make himself a martyr to gain sympathy from the secular world, a big mistake considering they have no vote on Judgment Day.The controversy has put another figure in the limelight as well. An article from the Providence Journal quoted Fr. Tom Reese on the controversy:
“The vast majority of bishops don’t want people denied Communion” over the abortion issue, said Thomas J. Reese, a Jesuit scholar at the Woodstock Theological Center in Washington. [The "vast majority" also covered up the priest sex abuse issue so what's your point?] “But the problem is, every time an individual bishop does it — especially if the public official has a high-profile name like Kennedy — it’s going to make headlines across the country and every bishop is going to suffer because of it,” Father Reese said. [Good bishops doing the right thing does tend to make the bad ones "suffer" -- like the bishops in Henry VIII's England who must have been very put out by Bishop John Fisher's martyrdom revealing their cowardly infidelity!]....
Scholar Reese said the bishops have debated in previous years the issue of whether they should step beyond such appeals to the individual Catholic’s conscience. The context for the debate was the 2004 presidential candidacy of Sen. John F. Kerry, a Catholic Democrat from Massachusetts who supports abortion rights. Father Reese said fewer than 20 bishops supported a policy of denying Communion to such officials.[Faithful disciples are almost always in the minority. Look at the apostles!]...
In 2004, a large majority of bishops “tried to persuade the minority not to do this — using Communion as a weapon,” Father Reese said, but the conference could not come to a consensus view on the issue. [It's not a "weapon" any more than the surgeon's scalpel. It's a medicinal treatment to call back a soul in serious danger of damnation.]
Father Reese stressed that withholding Communion is not as grave a penalty as excommunication, which separates a Catholic from all the sacraments. If a bishop denies Communion to a Catholic, he or she “is still a Catholic,” Father Reese said. Indeed, he said “it would take a canon lawyer” to say whether a Catholic denied Communion in his own diocese would be free to receive Communion elsewhere. [Excuse us, Fr. Reese, but the Canon Law already exists -- 915 which forbids Communion to those "who obstinately persist in manifest grave sin." A number of Vatican officials including Cardinal Francis Arinze, Archbishop Raymond Burke, and indeed, the pope himself when he was head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, have called for the penalty to be imposed.]
Reese's position is not surprising. The former editor of the liberal Jesuit magazine America (He resigned under Vatican pressure.) can always be counted on to put a heterodox spin on any story relating to the U.S. bishops' exercising their obligation under canon law to discipline "manifest public sinners." A fellow blogger described Fr. Reese as a "disingenuous, lying jerk" last May when Fr. Reese attacked the orthodox bishops who dared to criticize the reprehensible action of Notre Dame in honoring President Obama. While I prefer not to call names, I'd have to say that CMR has his adjectives absolutely right. Liars and disingenuous men in roman collars are the favorite commentators of the mainstream media. They can always be depended on when it comes to attacking the good bishops and holding up the wolves as models of christianit - just what the media is looking for.
Fr. Reese, you ought to notice that no one who really cares about the faith is listening to your vapid stupidity. You do, however, scandalize the many who are poorly catechized which is a millstone offense.
But Fr. Reese's behavior is worse than stupidity. Embracing the lie that allows the murder of millions of babies makes him a cooperator in a crime against humanity that has taken the lives of more innocents than all the atrocities of the 20th century combined. Like Joseph Goebbles, who cast Hitler's murders in a favorable light, Fr. Reese does the same for Barack Obama while he attacks the bishops who attempt to defend the innocent. God help you, Fr. Reese! You will answer for every innocent life murdered under the banner of Obama/Pelosi liberalism.
