Ted Kennedy, Catholicism, and Civil Religion

Ted Kennedy, Catholicism, and Civil Religion

By Ernesto Castañeda

Given the hard work, charisma, and influence of U.S. Senator Edward Kennedy, his passing was rightly considered an event of public and national significance. The coverage of the funeral mass for Ted Kennedy on Saturday August 29^th, 2009 at the Boston Basilica of Our Lady of Perpetual Help is an interesting case study of the role of religion in the political life of the United States of America. Here I make some brief observations about the role of religion, politics, and pluralism in modern America.

Ted Kennedy was driven from the Kennedy Library, his casket covered by the American flag that waved over the U.S. Senate during its last session. Kennedy arrived to the Basilica as a public man, a man of state guarded by the American armed forces, but once inside the Church, he was turned into a private man and his casket was covered by a white blanket with a cross, marking him as a Catholic. In between these moments his casket lied naked - holding a human body inside.

Cardinal Sean O'Malley, Father Donald Monan, S.J. (former president of Boston College, who celebrated the Mass), Father Mark Hession (who offered the homily) and members of the Massachusetts Catholic Church welcomed Kennedy’s casket in the Basilica’s hallway. This was a strong signaling of the moral and political strength of the Catholic Church and its hold on earthly issues. It was hard to do away with memories from old monarchical Europe, Anglican Britain (or even current Iran) - all contexts where Church and State have close relations. It also occurred to me how difficult it would have been for such an event to take place in this day and age in a strongly secular country such as France.

The priest mentioned both private and public aspects of his life and commented on how his Christian duty to help the poor and the hungry gave him strength and purpose to pass legislation to help the have-nots. Nothing could be closer to the real social teachings of all three major monotheistic organized religions (Christian, Jewish, and Muslim).

In the sermon the priest emphasized the obligations and expectations of all Christians (not only Catholics) to help the disposed and also named the role that Hebrew prophets played in connecting faith, personal character and public duty to aid the needy. The connection between this and the strong emphasis and practice to help the poor and to give charity in Islam was not mentioned, and was thus a lost opportunity to continue building bridges between these three major religions based on deep historical commonalities.

The live coverage of the two hour mass was indeed a great moment of Catholic rite and faith on display, one that could have also been, for some, a moment for proselytizing. I wonder if the public nature of this event will gain the Catholic Church any new devotees, or bring back some wandering members. This may have been an emotive moment that highlighted Catholic religious practice as distinct from the one that is associated with the inquisition or child abuse. This was also a good moment to break down some of the symbolic boundaries between Catholics and non-Catholics; and for Protestants, Evangelists, religious and social conservatives to realize the historical roots of their religion and how much in common their beliefs may have with the teachings of the Catholic Church. And if this were to happen this would also ease governance by Democrats and strengthen Obama’s vision of a civil religion of American- one that stresses service and the desire to work to make the United States a better place where citizens from diverse backgrounds and faiths work together to advance the common good in a way that appeals to both secular and religious members of the polity (For more on the phenomenon of Barack Obama and civil religion see Philip Gorki’s Class, nation and covenant ).

In terms of boundary-work, an interesting question I was entertaining since the beginning of the ceremony was whether only Catholics who had performed the first communion would (be allowed to) participate in the Eucharistic part of the celebration, the communion; this issue would concern Presidents Obama, Clinton, Bush and Carter - all of them Christian yet not Catholic. But the television cameras on all of the channels were broadcasting the same angle; they did not broadcast the Eucharistic service, effectively guarding the privacy of those who participated in communion and those who did not. The pretext, conscious or not, was to focus on the great performance of Placido Domingo; this view happened to afford the public at home a partial view of family members who received communion. But members of the White House and the Congress where given de facto privacy at that moment to receive communion and act in non-presidential or congressional ways, including their acts of kneeling, or not, as each one decided individually, without the pressure to perform in front of the cameras, how he or she would navigate this moment. What is the meaning of taking communion while not a practicing Catholic? Yet would it be somehow construed as disrespectful to not take communion at the solemn funeral of such a distinguished friend and colleague, regardless of one’s religious affiliation? But the way the cameras dealt with it was a great success for an accommodating secularism, maintaining faith as a private issue, while celebrating Kennedy in a religious way.

President Obama underlined the humanity and yes mortality of Ted Kennedy and all the ones present, and thus the commonalities of all beyond faith. Doing this Obama took the high road and made the eulogy really about Ted Kennedy the man and did not turn it into a political event or an event to advance his view of civil religion. But he did not need to do that then, it would have been redundant. A great example of civic religion was the life of Ted Kennedy and the religions undertones behind his lifelong legislative agenda. The best example of the marriage of Christian faith and civil religion was how the Cardinal, Priests and congregants respectfully and joyously sang “America the Beautiful” at the end of the service with the same vigor and tone as the religious hymns that had been sang earlier. As Ted Kennedy was brought back to the public street again, he left his Catholic habit behind and his coffin was covered once again with the American flag.

My final questions are whether Catholicism has now finally made it into the mainstream after a full length funeral mass was broadcasted live on a Saturday morning by NBC, MSNBC, CNN, and Fox, among others? Or was this just another exception made for the Kennedy family - were the funeral masses for Ted’s two other brothers who devoted their lives to public service just as public? Was this a sign of the entrance of Catholicism into the WASP consensus? Or was this only the confirmation of a previous acceptance of Irish-American Catholicism? Sociologists of religion claim that Italian-American versions may have also been accepted in the mainstream, as Judaism has been. Such a wide acceptance of Catholic politicians and their religious practice as we saw in the ceremony in honor of Edward Kennedy would have unthinkable 60 years ago. But who is left outside the religious American mainstream now? Islam? And how about the Latin American brand of Catholicism en Español?

Pictures taken from Cardinal O' Malley's blog!