(...) In the preface, you depict Jesus as a kind of human rights activist.
I think he was. The Catholic Church in our country has a strong tradition of social-justice activism. It serves the immigrant community, opposes the death penalty and is one of the largest providers of health care in this country.
Are you concerned that Catholics have been leaving the ranks of the Democratic Party for a generation now, in favor of more conservative politics?
In this election, the fact that Joe Biden is a Catholic with a working-class background is going to play an important role in bringing Catholics who might otherwise vote Republican back to the fold.
Did you ask Biden to write an essay for your new book?
I did not, gosh darn it.
You’re the seventh of Robert and Ethel Kennedy’s children?
Yes. There were so many of us, 11 in all. The time of day when there was quiet and serenity was every night when we gathered in my parents’ bedroom and knelt down together and prayed.
You were only 8 when your father was assassinated.
When I was younger, I had so many people in my family die. In my mind, heaven was as physical a place as home or school, and I knew that everyone I loved was together, enormously happy, and watching over me and awaiting my coming to this extraordinary place. In planes, I used to try to look behind the clouds to see if I saw an angel.
You supported Hillary Clinton in the Democratic primaries, which meant going up against your cousin Caroline and your uncle Ted.
It’s the first time this has ever happened in my family, but now we are all enthusiastically behind Barack Obama.
Do you think Sarah Palin was chosen to capitalize on the girl power generated by Hillary?
I think that was part of it. But I think McCain was also trying to appeal to the religious right. She is an anti-abortion, born-again Christian who believes in banning library books and that going to war in Iraq is an act of God.
I think she appeals to the hockey-mom constituency as well. Isn’t hockey more of a red-state sport than soccer?
I myself am a soccer mom, a volleyball mom and a basketball mom.
Have you thought of running for office?
I’ve thought about it on several occasions, but Cara and Mariah are 13 and Michaela is 11, and as a single mother, I think that would be just too tough on our family. Their father is a politician.
You’re referring to Andrew Cuomo, the attorney general of New York State, from whom you were very publicly divorced. Is that what led you to undertake a book on Catholicism?
I think Catholicism was a source of strength during that process and, interestingly, one of the reasons I stayed in a difficult marriage for 13 years. I believed that one should be married for life. That was my upbringing. Work on it. Make it work.
Not everything can be made to work.
I give it over to God. Thy will be done.
That sounds like a good ending for this interview.
But maybe that’s very unempowering to women. I don’t want to give the impression that you work and work and work, then you have no say and it’s all up to God. At a certain point, you have to make the decision to change your life.
Go to http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/14/magazine/14wwln-Q4-t.html?_r=1&ref=magazine&pagewanted=print&oref=slogin
Showing posts with label catholicism. Show all posts
Showing posts with label catholicism. Show all posts
Saturday, September 13, 2008
Monday, September 8, 2008
A Kennedy plumbs life as a Catholic
Catholicism ran deep at the home of Bobby and Ethel Kennedy.
Prayers before and after every meal, when a family trip was beginning, when something got lost. Bible readings after dinner. St. Christopher medals around the neck. St. Francis pictures on the wall. Virgin Mary statues in the corner. Mass schedules by the bedsides. And Mass every Sunday, until Bobby was killed in 1968; then it was daily.
"It was central to my upbringing - I mean, we woke up in the morning, and we were down on our knees, consecrating the day to Lord Jesus," recalls Kerry Kennedy, 49, the seventh of the 11 children of the Kennedy couple. "And then before bed, we'd spend about 20 minutes with the entire family saying prayers together."
But today, like many Catholics, Kennedy has a hard time reconciling her own views with some of the teachings and actions of her church; in fact, she often can't. So Kennedy decided to talk with well-known Americans about their often complicated relationships with the Catholic faith; the result is a revealing book being released tomorrow.
The book, "Being Catholic Now," offers an unusually intimate view of how much being raised Catholic shapes the identity of many prominent Americans, but also how much tension many feel with the institutional church.
(...) Bill O'Reilly, the FOX News personality, told Kennedy, "Cardinal Law is a villain. I got him removed from office in Boston. I pounded him relentlessly, because he was not doing what he should have for the protection of children in this country."
(...) Kennedy, who was born in Brighton, raised in Virginia, and now lives in New York, said she does not view her book, which includes interviews with conservatives and liberals, as an attack on the church. A human rights lawyer, Kennedy is raising her three daughters in the Catholic faith, attending Mass regularly, and teaching religious education at her parish, and she says the more she realized that other Catholics struggle with their church, the less isolated she felt.
"I was feeling conflicted because my Catholicism is so deeply important to me - it was my sense of connection to the Almighty, to humanity, to my heritage, my upbringing," she said during an interview in Hyannis Port, where she and other members of the Kennedy family have summered for decades. "And my Catholicism informed my view of the world, and the work that I do every day on social justice issues. And yet, so often when I went to church, I was confronted with words and symbols that were anathema to my values."
(...) Many of those Kennedy interviewed praised the Catholic church for imbuing them with a sense of spirituality and community and concern for justice. But Kennedy found multiple recurrent themes among many of the people she interviewed - concern about the role of women in the church, concern about the handling of the abuse scandal, opposition to the church's teaching on birth control, and even frequent unhappy references to the way the specter of hell was used to discipline them when they were children.
(...) Kennedy said she is at odds with the church hierarchy over many issues - abortion rights and women's ordination among them. Her views do not make her extraordinary; polls suggest that an overwhelming majority of American Catholics support women's ordination and that American Catholics reflect the general public's split over abortion.
Kennedy is divorced from Andrew Cuomo, but said her divorce has not been an issue for her in Catholicism because she has not remarried; however, she said, she considers the debate over whether politicians who support abortion rights, such as her uncle Senator Edward M. Kennedy, should be allowed to receive Communion "a terrible mistake" by "a few wayward bishops."
But Kennedy also said that in her travels around the world as a human rights advocate, she concluded that in "virtually every country I've gone to, the Catholic church is on the cutting edge of social change."
"I was witnessing the mighty spirit, and the tremendous capacity of this institution which was so much a part of my history, and my family, and my sense of spirituality, and my vision of social justice . . . and then coming back and hearing bishops who were protecting their turf instead of protecting children and playing Three-card Monte with the pedophile priests and blaming it on people who are gay," she said. "So it was important to me to resolve that."
Prayers before and after every meal, when a family trip was beginning, when something got lost. Bible readings after dinner. St. Christopher medals around the neck. St. Francis pictures on the wall. Virgin Mary statues in the corner. Mass schedules by the bedsides. And Mass every Sunday, until Bobby was killed in 1968; then it was daily.
"It was central to my upbringing - I mean, we woke up in the morning, and we were down on our knees, consecrating the day to Lord Jesus," recalls Kerry Kennedy, 49, the seventh of the 11 children of the Kennedy couple. "And then before bed, we'd spend about 20 minutes with the entire family saying prayers together."
But today, like many Catholics, Kennedy has a hard time reconciling her own views with some of the teachings and actions of her church; in fact, she often can't. So Kennedy decided to talk with well-known Americans about their often complicated relationships with the Catholic faith; the result is a revealing book being released tomorrow.
The book, "Being Catholic Now," offers an unusually intimate view of how much being raised Catholic shapes the identity of many prominent Americans, but also how much tension many feel with the institutional church.
(...) Bill O'Reilly, the FOX News personality, told Kennedy, "Cardinal Law is a villain. I got him removed from office in Boston. I pounded him relentlessly, because he was not doing what he should have for the protection of children in this country."
(...) Kennedy, who was born in Brighton, raised in Virginia, and now lives in New York, said she does not view her book, which includes interviews with conservatives and liberals, as an attack on the church. A human rights lawyer, Kennedy is raising her three daughters in the Catholic faith, attending Mass regularly, and teaching religious education at her parish, and she says the more she realized that other Catholics struggle with their church, the less isolated she felt.
"I was feeling conflicted because my Catholicism is so deeply important to me - it was my sense of connection to the Almighty, to humanity, to my heritage, my upbringing," she said during an interview in Hyannis Port, where she and other members of the Kennedy family have summered for decades. "And my Catholicism informed my view of the world, and the work that I do every day on social justice issues. And yet, so often when I went to church, I was confronted with words and symbols that were anathema to my values."
(...) Many of those Kennedy interviewed praised the Catholic church for imbuing them with a sense of spirituality and community and concern for justice. But Kennedy found multiple recurrent themes among many of the people she interviewed - concern about the role of women in the church, concern about the handling of the abuse scandal, opposition to the church's teaching on birth control, and even frequent unhappy references to the way the specter of hell was used to discipline them when they were children.
(...) Kennedy said she is at odds with the church hierarchy over many issues - abortion rights and women's ordination among them. Her views do not make her extraordinary; polls suggest that an overwhelming majority of American Catholics support women's ordination and that American Catholics reflect the general public's split over abortion.
Kennedy is divorced from Andrew Cuomo, but said her divorce has not been an issue for her in Catholicism because she has not remarried; however, she said, she considers the debate over whether politicians who support abortion rights, such as her uncle Senator Edward M. Kennedy, should be allowed to receive Communion "a terrible mistake" by "a few wayward bishops."
But Kennedy also said that in her travels around the world as a human rights advocate, she concluded that in "virtually every country I've gone to, the Catholic church is on the cutting edge of social change."
"I was witnessing the mighty spirit, and the tremendous capacity of this institution which was so much a part of my history, and my family, and my sense of spirituality, and my vision of social justice . . . and then coming back and hearing bishops who were protecting their turf instead of protecting children and playing Three-card Monte with the pedophile priests and blaming it on people who are gay," she said. "So it was important to me to resolve that."
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