WASHINGTON — Providence Bishop Thomas J. Tobin has forbidden Rep. Patrick J. Kennedy to receive the Roman Catholic sacrament of Holy Communion because of his advocacy of abortion rights, the Rhode Island Democrat said Friday.

“The bishop instructed me not to take Communion and said that he has instructed the diocesan priests not to give me Communion,” Kennedy said in a telephone interview.

Kennedy said the bishop had explained the penalty by telling him “that I am not a good practicing Catholic because of the positions that I’ve taken as a public official,” particularly on abortion. He declined to say when or how Bishop Tobin told him not to take the sacrament. And he declined to say whether he has obeyed the bishop’s injunction.

Bishop Tobin, through a spokesman, declined to address the question of whether he had told Kennedy not to receive Communion. But the bishop’s office moved quickly to cast doubt on Kennedy’s related assertion about instructions to the priests of Rhode Island.

“Bishop Tobin has never addressed matters relative to public officials receiving Holy Communion with pastors of the diocese,” spokesman Michael K. Guilfoyle said in an e-mailed statement.

This latest exchange between Bishop Tobin and Kennedy, the only remaining public official in the nation’s most prominent Catholic family, escalates their heated public debate over how the eight-term congressman’s work for abortion rights bears on his standing in the church.

Their dispute comes against the backdrop of the national debate about whether U.S. taxpayers should subsidize abortions in the new health-care system that President Obama and the Democrat-controlled Congress have labored for months to create.

The episode adds another volatile element to a highly emotional dispute that has complicated Mr. Obama’s pursuit of his top legislative priority.

For Catholics, the debate could scarcely be more visceral. The church holds that abortion is a taking of human life that is intrinsically evil. Exclusion from the Holy Eucharist — bread that the faithful believe to have been transformed into the body of Christ — is a rare and serious penalty to impose on any Catholic.

Over the past few weeks, Kennedy and Bishop Tobin have shown glimpses of their dealings in piecemeal fashion, revealing only a sketchy picture of the congressman’s status as a member of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Providence.

In an October interview about the opposition of the nation’s bishops to any health-care overhaul that did not include a strict ban on federal subsidies for abortion, Kennedy called into question the “pro-life” credentials of the churchmen. Health care for millions of uninsured is at stake, he said. Bishop Tobin shot back with a sharply worded statement, noting that the bishops are staunch and longtime supporters of reforming the health-care system. He said, however, that the bishops will not support a health-care bill that fails to include a ban on taxpayer subsidy of the procedure.

The exchange, via open letters and interviews, has continued, with Bishop Tobin pointedly suggesting that “obstinate” opposition to church doctrine on abortion should cause a Catholic public official to reconsider his membership in the church.

On Friday, in response to questions from a reporter, Kennedy asserted that Bishop Tobin had told him not to receive Communion. But like the bishop, Kennedy withheld key details about their discussions.

Asked how he reacted as a Catholic, Kennedy would say only that he has “personal feelings of disappointment” about the matter, but he declined to elaborate.

For his part, the bishop declined to be interviewed. Spokesman Guilfoyle said in an e-mail: “Bishop Tobin has nothing more to add to the current discussion for the time being. Any previous correspondence or conversations between the Bishop and the congressman is still considered private at this time.”

While the teachings of the church and the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops are clear on abortion, there is much disagreement on the issue of whether Catholic legislators should be penalized for action contrary to the doctrine.

“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. “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.

Because every bishop has wide latitude in his own diocese, the controversy between Kennedy and Bishop Tobin is likely to be greeted with silence from other bishops — even if most would disagree with action to deny Communion to a Catholic legislator, according to Father Reese.

“We don’t comment on the individual actions of bishops because they are authoritative in their own dioceses,” said Deirdre McQuade, of the bishops conference, when asked about the exchanges between Kennedy and Bishop Tobin.

For the policy of the bishops conference, McQuade referred to a 2006 writing on how a Catholic maintains his or her worthiness to take Communion. If a Catholic were “knowingly and obstinately to repudiate … definitive teaching on moral issues,” the document says in part, then receiving Communion “would not accord with the nature of the Eucharistic celebration, so that he or she should refrain.”

Orders by bishops to deny Communion to Catholic public officials are very unusual but not unprecedented. In 2003, another prominent Catholic Democrat with a mixed voting record on abortion, Rep. David Obey of Wisconsin, was admonished not to take Communion in his congressional district by Bishop Raymond Burke of LaCrosse.

Spokeswoman McQuade said the bishops conference could not give a count of how many times bishops have actually denied Communion to government officials. But a review of news accounts of the past two decades suggests that public impositions of the penalty are very uncommon. These are among the high-profile instances in contemporaneous news stories: a Sacramento bishop told Gray Davis not to take Communion when he was Democratic governor of California in 2003; in 2004, then-Gov. James McGreevey, of New Jersey, complied with the admonitions of three of the state’s bishops that he not take Communion.

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.

Early in that presidential campaign, Burke, who had become archbishop of St. Louis, told reporters that if Kerry were to approach him at a Mass in Missouri, “I would have to admonish him not to present himself for Communion.”

Last month, Pope Benedict XVI appointed Archbishop Burke to the Vatican’s Congregation of Bishops, a powerful body that helps the pontiff to select the world’s bishops. He also sits on the highest court of Catholic canon law.

According to the National Catholic Reporter, Cardinal Sean O’Malley, the archbishop of Boston, once urged Catholic officials who support abortion rights to refrain from Communion. But the newspaper said Cardinal O’Malley did not order Boston priests to deny them the sacrament. Kerry and the late Massachusetts Sen. Edward M. Kennedy ( Patrick Kennedy’s father and another supporter of abortion rights) both received Communion at Cardinal O’Malley’s installation as archbishop in 2003.

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.

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.

With reports from Journal Staff Writer Karen Lee Ziner.

jmulligan@belo-dc.com

In the United States there are three distinguishable sectors of where a good or service is provided. These three sectors include the government sector, the private for profit sector, and the independent nonprofit sector. The acts of the nonprofit sector are not new, as charity and philanthropy have been around for as long as humans have graced the Earth. However, the nonprofit sector as it exists in the United States is the newest of the three sectors as it was officially created in 1980. The nonprofit sector in America displays a unique opportunity for many businesses and associations as the freedoms of the American people shine brightly in their participation in the nonprofit sector.

The nonprofit sector has seen tremendous growth in the brief history of its existence in the United States. Since 1940, the number of registered tax-exempt nonprofits has risen from 13,000 to over 1.5 million at the turn of the century. In 2005 alone, charitable giving was documented at $60 billion. A major explanation for such tremendous growth in the nonprofit industry would have to be the tax-exemption that these organizations get from the government. Additionally, the government has passed legislation that is favorable to donating money to charity and for philanthropic use. One such legislation would be the Tax Act of 1936 which allowed corporations to deduct charitable gifts up to 5% of federal taxable income. With incentive to give and a wealthier nation prospering, the nonprofit sector has seen tremendous growth which has led to a plethora of nonprofit institutions serving a number of different causes. With such a large number of nonprofits operating today, one can only speculate as to whether this is a good or bad thing.

The current scope of the independent sector shows that nonprofit organizations tend to becoming more and more specific in their stated mission. Since so many different organizations exist within the sector, each organization can concentrate and specialize in one certain area. There seem to be less broad sweeping organizations like the Carnegie endowment for Peace which was created to establish peace on Earth. Instead, there are many much more specific programs that meet precise needs of people in a certain place, time, and location. Examples might include a nonprofit organization dedicated to promoting sexual education to teens in a certain city, or an institution providing day care for sick kids of single parents who can not afford to miss work. Today’s version of the nonprofit sector more closely resembles Aristotle’s philosophy of giving the right gift at the right time to the right person which seems commendable.

People may often wonder why a nonprofit sector is even needed when a country has a private sector as well as an active strong government like the United States has. The existence of the nonprofit sector in the United States proves that there are needs that are not met by the government or the private sector. In the United States, the government provides the services and goods that are most demanded and needed by its citizens. Essentially, the government covers the needs of the majority. The minority comes together collectively in the independent nonprofit sector to provide for themselves or for those that they see are in need. This seems to be a polar opposite of the Machiavellian principle that government, and government alone, should provide what is good for its people.

Recent trends in the economics and politics of the United States show a growing alliance between government and the nonprofit sector. In today’s economy where people specialize on specific business practices, everyone becomes reliant on one another. The government has the duty of providing large scale programs to people, but does not always have the means itself to do it by itself. Therefore, the government often relies on outside contract workers. Contract work for the government comes from both the private and independent sector. However, the nonprofit sector has seen a dramatic upswing in the alliances they have with government in the past few years. This is a trend that is sure to continue in the future as nonprofit institutions continue to get more and more specific.

Providing goods and services to people in need is not the only reason that the independent nonprofit sector exists. At least that is the case according to Robert Putnam who has done extensive research on the existence and decline of social capital in the United States over the last half century. As De Tocqueville suggested early on in his studies of the United States, the freedom of association is critical to the success of the United States as an independent nation. Putnam and others agree and feel that the nonprofit sector is a place that allows American to become civically engaged and to create social capital among one another. This civic engagement and increased social capital is thought to make stronger networks, build stronger communities, and provide people much needed interaction with their neighbors.

In short, the nonprofit sector in the United States has grown tremendously since the benevolent and charitable acts of the first settlers. Charities, philanthropy, and monetary donations all have led to the development of the nonprofit sector as it exists today. Today’s nonprofit sector is highly specific in terms of what is provided and each institution is focused on its designated mission. This has led to the existence of a tremendous number of nonprofit institutions that are networking to combine with the government and other agencies. By networking together, nonprofits, government, and other agencies will continue to work together in the future to provide what the individual sectors cannot provide alone. With more nonprofits being created each day, the sector will continue to grow and become more specific to meet the needs of the minority which are not met by broad sweeping government and private sector ventures.

November 22, 2009 | AP

FILE - In this Aug. 28, 2009 file photo, Joe Kennedy speaks at the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library in Boston. The late Sen. Edward Kennedy will be a tough act to follow, even for the Kennedys. Kennedy’s brain-cancer death, coupled with the decision by family members not to seek the seat he held for nearly five decades, has prompted plenty of speculation that the family’s long-running political dynasty is over. (AP Photo/Charles Dharapak, file)

The hypocrisy of THE CATHOLIC CHURCH! Refusing comminion to Patrick Kennedy because he believes in abortion. How about the Catholic priests that drive a nice car, life in a nice rectory, drink out of a gold chalice, and yet people living around them are homeless and starving to death? Should they receive communion? How about the thousands of nuns and priests that are gay and living with other gay nuns and priests? Should they receive communion? How about the thousands of priests who have rapped and molested children? Should they receive communion? How about the Bishops and Cardinals who knew about these perverts and kept transferring them to another parish without telling anyone about what they did, so they could continue to molest other children in the new parish? Should they receive communion? Cardinals like Cardinal Maloney in Los Angeles. Should he receive communion? Receive communion? They should all be put in prison for aiding criminals! How about the Pope and all the Cardinals in Rome who live in beatiful villas, drive expensive cars, eat steak and lobster, and have millions and millions of dollars in the Vatican Bank, while people all around the world are homeless and starving to death! Should they receive communion? How about Pope Pius X11 who helped Hitler eliminate the Italian Jews? Should he have received communion? If the Jesus Christ I know from the Bible came back, he’d go straight to Rome and have the Pope sell all the Churches and schools in the world, for The Catholic Church are the biggest land owners in the world, and take all the millions of dollars from the Vatican Bank and FEED THE HUNGRY, CLOTHE THE NAKED, SHELTER THE HOMELESS, VISIT THE SICK AND BURY THE DEAD(words of Jesus). The Catholic Church could end homelessness and starvation in the world, all by themselves! Then maybe they would all deserve Comminion.
Dan D.

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