RI Bishop Excommunicates Catholic Politician?

The news today is a bit disheartening if true, and also a bit cloudy, about the Bishop of RI and his "instruction" to Rep. Patrick Kennedy; if the report is correct, Kennedy has been told by the bishop not to receive communion in the RI diocese. The further report, from Kennedy, is that the bishop also instructed priests in the diocese not to give communion to Kennedy. I don't hear the bishop saying the word "excommunication," but that is what this amounts to, if in fact it isn't actually official.

The previous bishop of RI played with words a few years ago when he said about another Catholic, Maryanne Sorrentino, that he didn't excommunicate her but that she excommunicated herself in her work at Planned Parenthood. So we're talking about something akin to passive-aggressive excommunication. "Hey, Patrick, just make sure you don't go to communion..." says the bishop, without telling Patrick directly that he's out.

Ironically, it was Patrick's uncle Jack, who broke the anti-catholic stigma in national politics, and was elected as the first Roman Catholic to be President of the US back in 1960. At that time JFK brought forward a national discussion---theological as well as political-- about how a Roman Catholic could in fact be an effective politician at the national level, without simply being a mouthpiece of the Vatican. The best of theologians led the Church to consider the unique challenge of politicians in this democratic republic, to apply conscience and carefully nuanced political savvy in their leadership, not just to tow a single religious line that would otherwise affirm the anti-catholic fears of the day.

The US Bishops in fact have been no strangers to political nuance, at least when it comes to the powerful in society. Of course, a few--who have been marginalized in the process-- have dared to speak truth to power when it comes to war, the death penalty, social injustice, poverty, discrimination, the US 'culture of death.' There have been no threats however of excommunication of politicians who support the war in Iraq/Afghanistan, or the death penalty. Instead, the bishops (and the RI bishop included) have reserved their moral absolutes for issues that deal with what some moral theologians have pointedly called "pelvic morality": birth control, abortion, sex outside of marriage, sex inside of marriage, homosexuality (with the glaring omission of a moral absolutist approach toward pedophhilia).

Further disheartening is the way that such moralizing has led Catholic flocks to believe (or to believe that they should believe) that in ensuing elections, for example, one is morally obliged to vote against any politician who doesn't profess clearly to be anti-abortion; this in turn has led people to believe that their "moral choice" in such elections is to vote for politicians who are anti-abortion, despite their also being responsible for starting wars of aggression (or supporting such wars), responsible for implementing the death penalty, responsible for economic and social policies that marginalize and demonize the poor and the oppressed.

The US Bishops have some wonderfully nuanced statements on justice and peace (and the "seamless garment of life") for those who care to read them. But by example, rather than by their written words, they've led people to fall silently behind wars that even the Pope himself has declared an injustice; they've led people by their (in-)actions to vote against candidates whose lives reflect profound struggle for justice and equality, and to vote instead for candidates who under the "anti-abortion" banner, have perpetrated wars and injustice (state sponsored death) with impunity.

It is ironic that 40 years after John Kennedy struggled against anti-catholic prejudice to become President of the U.S., the Bishop of Rhode Island is now apparently weighing in on the matter with a judgment--however passively given--against JFK's very nephew: you can only be a Catholic politician in the US if you simply reflect without question the 'teachings' of Rome.

Meanwhile, the Bishop is also playing right on cue: as he brings the hammer down on Rep. Kennedy, he is also lining the Church up squarely behind the monied interests of the Medical Industry, adding his tacit voice against the healthcare reform that is on the table this very day--the reform for which Patrick Kennedy and others have struggled in the name of the poor and the disadvantaged.

Fortunately, there are too many adults in Rhode Island (a very "Roman Catholic State" in name at least) with well formed and active consciences who will take the Bishop's words and attitude under consideration, and then as they should, act in good conscience. (Primacy of conscience it is called.) It is too bad, in the process that the bishop in this instance may have forgotten the principle so profoundly modeled by Pope John XXIII, to lead by persuasion and example rather than by fear.