Kerry Kennedy - Being Catholic Now: Prominent Americans Talk About Change in the Church and the Quest for Meaning

BEING CATHOLIC NOW

Contents

For my mother
Ethel Skakel Kennedy;

My children
Cara, Mariah, and Michaela;

My godchildren
Rory, Kat, Matt, Kyra, Kerry,
Catie, and Harrison;

and

All Gods Children

Acknowledgments

F irst and foremost, I want to thank all the Catholics who took the time to speak with me about a subject that is deeply personal and who did so with raw honesty and integrity of spirit. Thank you to my agent, David Kuhn, who suggested the idea of writing this book, and to Abigail Pogrebin, whose book Stars of David, about being Jewish, inspired this one. Read it! Gabrielle Fox and Jack Downey researched the subjects and David Timothy, Matthew Smith, and Amy Bowden transcribed the tapes at lightning speed. Thank you most especially to Emily Liebert, who suggested revisions on the manuscript, checked my work, made considerable improvements, and then did it all over again. And again. And again. To Lena Adely, for typing and tracking down releases, photographs, and so much more; to Neil MacFarquhar, who has been a dream; to Nan Richardson, Jill Brooke, Kathleen Kennedy Townsend, Father Charlie Beirne, Tessa Souter, Father Charlie Curry, and and their amazing red pens; to Timothy Shriver for reading the manuscript and offering valuable insights and wisdom about faith and the wonders of Catholicism; and to Charles Stevenson and Alex Kuczynski, who provided ten blissful days on the banks of the Salmon River where much of this was written, thank you. A very special thanks to Rick Horgan, my Random House editor, for his availability and help throughout.

This book, in many ways, has been nearly fifty years in the making, and I want to acknowledge a few of the many people who taught me the true meaning of Catholicism. My very first interview was with Father Robert Drinan. He served in Congress for a decade championing nuclear arms control, criminal justice reform, and the development of international legal norms to protect human rights, and he was the first to call for the impeachment of Richard Nixon. After he continuously defied warnings from the Vatican by voting for antipoverty legislation (bills that included funding for family planning clinics that offered abortions), Pope John Paul II asked him to resign. Father Joe Hacala ran the Campaign for Human Development, the Churchs antipoverty program. I miss him every day. Father Gerry Creedon caused so much trouble advocating on behalf of and raising funds for the poor in his northern Virginia parish that rumor had it he was exiled to the far reaches of the Dominican Republic. Father Charlie Beirne became vice president of the University of Central America in El Salvador after the military assassinated the Jesuits there, and Father Mark Hessian preached from the pulpit about tolerance for all minority groupsracial, religious, and sexual. Father Greg Boyle works with gangs at Homeboy Industries in East Los Angeles. Sister Helen Prejean of New Orleans works to abolish the death penalty, and Father Peter Klink helps Native Americans on the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota. Their colleagues in the struggle for justice include Father Tim Njoya of Kenya, Father Jerzy Popieluszko of Poland, Father Ham of South Korea, Bishop Carlos Felipe Ximenes Belo of East Timor, Archbishop Oscar Romero of El Salvador, Sister Digna Ochoa, Sister Dianna Ortiz, advocate for victims of torture, and Father John Quinn. The list goes on. I have been deeply inspired by these heroes commitment and capacity to create change against overwhelming odds. All of them found a cause for which they were willing to die, and all seemed, thereby, to have found a reason to live. Their social activism has been and is informed by their Catholic faith.

While the wider world has shown me much about the message of Jesus, the gift of faith was passed on to me primarily by the women in my life. Thank you to my sisters, Kathleen, Courtney, and Rory, and to my best friend, Mary Richardson Kennedy.

Three women have exemplified for me the Catholic mainstays of faith, hope, and charity. Thank you to Rose Kennedy for her unwavering belief, Ena Bernard for her sense of fun and optimism, and my mother, Ethel, for her boundless heart.

No one has ever seen God. Yet if we love one another, God dwells in us, and his love is brought to perfection in us (1 John 4:12). Thank you, most of all, to my daughters, Cara, Mariah, and Michaela, whose infinite love reveals a glimpse of the Almighty.

Introduction

I was in Rome on the night that I received the happy news that Random House would publish this book exploring what it means to be a Catholic. Twelve hours later I was shaking hands with Pope Benedict XVI. I had mixed feelings about meeting the Holy Father, who, as the leader of a billion Catholics worldwide, represented all I have come to love and admire about the Catholic Church. Still, there was much about the new pope that gave me pause. Part of my ambiguity could be traced to the very reason I was in Rome in the first place. I had been invited to chair a panel for the annual meeting of Nobel Peace Prize laureates. They had gathered for a conference on Africa, where an estimated thirty million people are projected to die of AIDS by the year 2020, a number that would be drastically reduced by strong preventive measures including widespread condom use. A word from the Church and millions of lives could be saved.

Before becoming pope, Cardinal Ratzinger was a staunch defender of the magisterium of the Catholic Church, which holds that the use of birth control is a mortal sin and therefore that couples who use condoms may be condemning themselves to eternal damnation. As prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, he had also silenced advocates of liberation theology, attacked those who advanced a more progressive stance on homosexuality, and declared secret the details of Church investigations into accusations made against priests of certain serious ecclesiastical crimes, including sexual abuse. When the Holy Father approached me, I asked, Your Eminence, in view of the tragedy unfolding in Africa, for the sake of the sanctity of life, would you consider changing the Churchs position on the use of condoms? I dont know if the devout Catholic to my left was more horrified or terrified, but upon hearing my plea, she leaped backward, rattling the multitude of St. Christopher medals and rosary beads shed brought along in hopes of attaining his blessing. Apparently, she feared Id be struck dead right then and there and she wanted to get as far away from me as possible, just in case the lightning bolt missed its target. Meanwhile, the pope gazed beneficently, imparting God bless you as he passed.

From that encounter I embarked on an intensive period of interviews, ultimately focusing on how thirty-seven American Catholics interpret their faith. I set out to speak with Catholics who were well known for depth and expertise on a particular issue or profession and who represented different walks of lifeactors, historians, journalists, commentators, political figures, educators, judges, cardinals, priests, nuns, union leaders, doctors, activists, comedians, businessmen, and students. They range in age from nineteen to eighty-six; they are white, Latino, and African American; they are liberal and conservative, women and men; they embody the old order and the harbingers of whats to come. They include those who love the Church and those who feel the Church wronged them. Some have left, others have come back, some work for change, and still others have devoted their lives to upholding the institution as it is. Most are lifelong Catholics, one is a midlife convert from Judaism to Catholicism, and another is a convert from Catholicism to Islam.