Bishop Thomas Tobin of Providence, Rhode Island has forbidden U.S. Rep. Patrick Kennedy from receiving Holy Communion in the Diocese.
"The bishop instructed me not to take Communion and said that he has instructed the diocesan priests not to give me Communion," Kennedy told the Providence Journal in an interview conducted Friday. 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.
The paper said the bishop's spokesman declined to address the question of whether he had told Kennedy not to receive Communion. But the bishop's office cast doubt on Kennedy's related assertion about instructions to state priests.
"Bishop Tobin has never addressed matters relative to public officials receiving Holy Communion with pastors of the diocese," spokesman Michael K. Guilfoyle told the paper in an e-mailed statement.
The Anglo-Catholic kudos to Bishop Tobin! I am proud that the bishops of the ACA have established a policy forbidding the administration of Holy Communion to notorious proponents of abortion. Pray that all Catholic bishops have the courage to do what Bishop Tobin has done.
Read the full story here.
Is an elected official sworn in to vote his own conscience is he charged to cast his vote to represent his consitutents?
It is also noteworthy that Bishop Tobin has pleaded with Mr. Kennedy for some years on this matter, and that Mr. Kennedy has evidently chosen consistently to spurn the pastor's counsel. This would certainly be clear cause for excommunication in any TAC church as well.
Shelby: One's civic duty, however understood, never justifies immoral acts, especially not acts so grave as (complicity in) abortion. In cases where God and Caesar — or the People — make mutually exclusive demands, then we must obey God and not men, whatever the cost.
Deacon Scott: thanks for for your answer to my question and for reminding me to "render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar's and unto God the things that are God's".