Catholic lawmaker defends RI’s Kennedy against bishop who asked him to avoid Communion

Lawmaker defends RI Rep Kennedy in Communion flap

PROVIDENCE, R.I. — A Pennsylvania lawmaker defended Rep. Patrick Kennedy on Monday against a bishop who has acknowledged asking the Rhode Island congressman not to receive Holy Communion because of his support for abortion rights.

“We don’t legislate at the orders of the Vatican, we legislate what is in our conscience and what we think is good for our country,” said Rep. Patrick Murphy, a Democrat and Catholic who, like Kennedy, supports abortion rights. Murphy spoke at Harvard University in Cambridge, Mass., where he received a John F. Kennedy New Frontier Award from the late president’s daughter, Caroline Kennedy.

Patrick Kennedy is the nephew of John F. Kennedy, the first Roman Catholic elected president. He and Roman Catholic Bishop Thomas Tobin of Providence, who oversees the most heavily Catholic state in the country, have clashed for weeks over health care reform and publicly financed abortion.

Last month, Kennedy ignited a sharp exchange with Tobin when he criticized the nation’s Catholic bishops for threatening to oppose a massive overhaul to the health care system unless it included tighter restrictions on abortion. Tobin asked for an apology and publicly questioned Kennedy’s faith.

Their exchange escalated when Kennedy told The Providence Journal in an interview published Sunday that Tobin instructed him not to receive Communion, a central focus of Roman Catholic worship. Kennedy said Tobin had also told his priests not to give him the sacrament.

Tobin acknowledged Sunday that he wrote to Kennedy in February 2007 asking the Democratic lawmaker not to receive Communion because of his abortion rights stance. But Tobin said he never banned Kennedy from receiving the sacrament and never instructed his priests not to give it to the lawmaker.

Kennedy and his spokeswoman did not return messages seeking comment on his remarks for a second day.

Murphy said he was a saddened by the controversy.

“It’s been disheartening for millions of (Catholics) across the country to see one of our own be banished,” Murphy said. “I’m reaching out to Patrick Kennedy and also to my local priests and bishops to make sure they know that we agree on 99 percent of the issues.”

Murphy said he had not talked personally with Kennedy, but had sent him an e-mail and left a message with his office offering his support and prayers.

In his 2008 book, “Taking the Hill,” Murphy wrote that a local parish priest refused to bless his marriage in 2006 to his wife, Jenni, during his first campaign for Congress because of his stance on abortion rights.

“That hurt me deeply,” Murphy said.

Only a few U.S. bishops have said they would deny Communion to a Catholic lawmaker who supports policies that violate church teaching. A larger number of prelates have publicly asked a Catholic politician to voluntarily abstain from the sacrament.

Archbishop Joseph Naumann of the Archdiocese of Kansas City in Kansas has repeatedly said that former Kansas Gov. Kathleen Sebelius, a Catholic Democrat who supports abortion rights, should stop taking Communion until she changes her stance. Sebelius is the secretary of Health and Human Services.

Former Democratic New York Gov. Mario Cuomo wrestled with the same issue Kennedy faces. In 1984, Cuomo, a Catholic who supported abortion rights and was at the time a potential presidential candidate, gave a speech at the University of Notre Dame explaining that Catholic lawmakers shouldn’t be pressured by church leaders to work for anti-abortion legislation.

Cuomo told The Associated Press on Sunday it’s dangerous for the church to pressure politicians because of the potential for unintended consequences.

Associated Press Writer Bob Salsberg in Cambridge, Mass., contributed to this report.