Remembrance and redemption (or how I learned to pray for the Kennedys)

Posted by Paulette Simpson

Posted: August 30, 2009 - 4:59 pm

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The closest I ever got to a Kennedy was a few days before California’s 1968 Democratic presidential primary when Sen. Robert F. Kennedy was campaigning for the nomination. It was easy for St. Lucy girls to get excused from class to catch a glimpse of the candidate from such a famously Catholic family so I collected my girlfriends in my mother’s Ford Fairlane wagon and headed for the outdoor Pomona Mall. It happened in an instant but somehow, we managed to shake the Senator’s hand. I remember that he looked small and tired and then incredibly, after beating Hubert Humphrey and winning that June primary election, he was assassinated by Sirhan Sirhan at LA’s Ambassador Hotel.

Less than five years earlier on November 22, 1963, Monsignor Brown had shown up unexpectedly at our St. Joseph’s 7th grade classroom door. Sister Fintan, who had switched with Sister Laserian to teach science that morning, stepped outside and then came back ashen and shaken. “Kids, the President has been shot.” As instructed by the nuns, we spent the rest of the day in recitation of the Rosary.

So being old enough to remember the funerals of two of his older brothers, it seemed fitting to watch Sen. Ted Kennedy’s Saturday morning funeral Mass. But fifty plus years of passé Catholic dogma cemented in my psyche makes it hard to avoid thoughts of double standards and unspoken contradictions. For years, there’s been a class of Catholics who get a pass – a Vatican version of a “Get out of Jail Free” card. Adultery? Come on, what century is this! Need an annulment from those inconvenient marriage vows? No problem. Want to support taxpayer-funded abortion on demand and still receive Communion? Why not?

When big shot politicians of both parties get special dispensations, it makes it tough for parish priests to mount their pulpits and preach about either vice or virtue. Consequently, Catholics don’t often hear the word “sin” in sermons anymore and we’re rarely reminded exactly what it is we need to seek forgiveness for. Why talk about chastity and fidelity when you can follow the lead of the PC crowd and lecture the lowly on social justice, immigration or global warming? For those who appreciate the friendly reminders, at least the seven deadly sins (pride, envy, wrath, sloth, avarice, gluttony and lust) are often included in trivia games. Christ’s redemption might have freed some people from guilt, but not me. As for Sen. Kennedy, may he rest in peace.

It’s been noted in the media that it was just a year ago this weekend that we were glued to the tube watching a very different and for some of us, surreal, history unfold. My plans to watch the 2008 Republican convention in sweat pants on a sofa evaporated on Friday, August 29 and by Sunday I was in the air. Before catching the redeye to Minneapolis I wandered past a SeaTac newsstand. Time magazine had just published their special edition with the war hero and the hockey mom on the cover. I bought three – one for each of our Alaska-born children.

In the checkout line at Fred Meyer this past Friday I picked up a “Star” magazine with our former Governor on the cover. Her tumble from Time to a trashy tabloid is the stuff of political theater. Ted Kennedy did his time in the tabloids but found redemption in his later years and lived long enough for a second act.

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