A Kennedy Plumbs Life as a Catholic - and Revives My Childhood Memories

Robert F. Kennedy's daughter, Kerry Kennedy (pictured at left), has a new book out in which she strives to reconcile her Catholic faith with the teachings of the Roman Catholic Church. Growing up, I strongly identified with the Kennedys both because of our shared Catholic faith and also because on my mother's side of the family there were some parallels of Irish Catholic immigrants who had done well, albeit on a much more down to earth financial level. My mother's father was a wealthy doctor and in the area where he lived after moving to New York after nearly two decades in Central America as a hospital administrator and surgeon, he was a big deal in terms of respect and influence. In the area where the family summer compound on Brantingham Lake was located - only 17 miles from Lowville where he was the head of the regional hospital and also county coroner - he was very prominent and his family name carried clout for long after he died when I was 11 in 1963. As teenagers, for my oldest sisters and me being his grandchildren opened doors and let us get away with all kinds of things.

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Like Kerry Kennedy, growing up being Catholic was for me a central part of my identity. Indeed, we were raissed to believe that we would die before we disavowed are Catholicsm. On Sundays during the summer we all - including aunts and cousins and assorted guests staying at the lake compound - attended mass in the small Catholic Church in the nearby town as a family enmass. Thus, between finally admitting to myself that I was gay and the sex abuse scandal which blew wide open in 2002, and disclosed the moral bankruptcy of the Church hierarchy from the Pope on down, I was faced with a huge identity crisis. Unlike Kerry Kennedy, confronted with the Church's horrific attitude towards gay and clear proof that the hierarchy had knowingly closed it eyes and/or covered up vile cases of the sexual abuse of children, I chose to leave the Church. As a matter of conscience I simply could not remain a part of an institution with such a corrupt and - in my opinion - evil leadership. Fortunately, I have found a home in the ELCA, but I still think of what the Roman Catholic Church could be if the hierarchy could be purged of the sanctimonious hypocrites who now lead the Church. I know that I am one of many "recovering Catholics" who have been harmed not so much by Catholiscm per se, but rather by a group of self-centered, fallible men who are all consumed by power and wealth. Here are some highlights from the Boston Globe about Kerry Kennedy's book:

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HYANNIS PORT - Catholicism ran deep at the home of Bobby and Ethel Kennedy. "It was central to my upbringing - 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.

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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.

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"Don't even let me go into Cardinal [Bernard F.] Law and that he has been rewarded with a princely title in Rome," House Speaker Nancy Pelosi told Kennedy, referring to the former archbishop of Boston, who resigned over the sex abuse scandal and now oversees a prominent basilica in Rome. "It is just appalling. I cannot deal with that, so I don't."

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And Anne Burke, an Illinois Supreme Court justice who was appointed by the American bishops to a board overseeing the church's response to the clergy abuse scandal, was clearly infuriated by her up-close view of the church's upper management. "It's the culture of the administration of the Catholic Church in the United States that permitted a climate of cover-up to go on for the past 50 years; it's the same culture and it's still out there today," Burke said. "Things have hit rock bottom in the Catholic Church, and it's going to get worse."

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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.

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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."

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"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."