Call it yet another indicator of fissures in the Church hierarchy. Or, if you prefer, the pastoral vs. the hit-’em-over-the-head approach.
Last week, Pope Francis demoted conservative Cardinal Raymond Burke, who’d led a hardball crusade to deny Communion to abortions rights politicians. Burke had specifically singled out then-Massachusetts senator John Kerry.
But also last week, the Archdiocese of Boston — led by Francis’ close ally Sean O’Malley — requested a TV blackout during Communion at the televised funeral Mass for Boston Mayor Tom Menino. O’Malley and dozens of abortion rights Catholic politicians attended, including now-Secretary of State John Kerry. And Kerry received the sacrament — though you had to be there to see it.
“(A funeral) is not the time to have a battle over Communion at the foot of the altar,” said Archdiocesan spokesman Terrence Donilon, adding that rolling cameras could intrude during a particularly sacred moment in the Mass. Funerals “should be about burying the dead, not about anything else.”
It was reported last week that Menino’s family had requested cameras not film the Communion line. But Donilon said he made that request, as he had before the 2009 televised funeral of US Sen. Ted Kennedy.
Asked by former Boston Globe reporter Michael Paulson the year before whether politicians and anyone else supporting abortion rights should receive, O’Malley, a staunch abortion opponent, said the Church’s teaching on worthiness for Communion is clearly detailed in the Catholic catechism. “But until there’s a decision of the Church to formally excommunicate people, I don’t think we’re going to be denying Communion to the people,” he said.
O’Malley, by the way, was roundly denounced by conservatives just for participating in Kennedy’s funeral since the senator, too, supported abortion rights.
“In the strongest terms I disagree with that position,” O’Malley wrote in his blog at the time. Citing the millions of needy people helped by policies Kennedy pushed, and “the thousands of people who lined the roads as the late Senator’s motorcade travelled from Cape Cod to Boston and the throngs that crowded the Kennedy Library for two days during the lying in repose, I believe (they) were there to pay tribute to these many accomplishments rather than as an endorsement of the Senator’s voting record on abortion.
“Even in the Church, zeal can lead people to issue harsh judgments and impute the worst motives to one another,” wrote O’Malley. “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.”
To which I can only add — amen.
