In a story that has national implications as the presidential election season moves into high gear, state Sen. Bernard Kenny (D-33rd Dist.), who is the senate majority leader, has become the highest profile New Jersey politician to leave a Catholic church over a recent aggressive stance by some of the church’s leadership.
Kenny lives in Hoboken and represents Hoboken, Union City, West New York, Guttenberg, Weehawken, and parts of Jersey City.
Kenny’s decision stems from statements from the Vatican and a small but growing number of conservative U.S. bishops who have said they would deny the Eucharist – the receiving of bread and wine during a Catholic Mass, which Catholics believe are the body and blood of Christ – to elected officials because of their position over controversial social issues. These issues include abortion, embryonic stem-cell research, gay marriage and other issues that they say run counter to church doctrine.
Kenny was raised Catholic, was an altar boy, and has been an active member of Sts. Peter and Paul Church for all of his 57 years. He said last week that he based his decision on a perceived fundamental shift in the church’s attitude toward the role that religion should play in secular politics.
“Going to church and receiving communion is a personal act of faith,” said Kenny. “I don’t think it is good judgment to turn it into a political statement.”
He said that he started to see a noticeable change about two years ago, but the issue has come to the forefront in recent weeks.
The first seismic event occurred April 23 in Vatican City where Cardinal Francis Arinze said a Catholic politician who unambiguously supports abortion “is not fit” to receive the Eucharist. When asked if Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry, who supports abortion rights, should receive communion, Arinze said, “If the person should not receive it, then it should not be given. Objectively, the answer is there.”
Since then, in New Jersey, three local bishops have said that politicians who support abortion rights should not take communion, and two mentioned Gov. James E. McGreevey, who is pro-choice, by name. During his last campaign, McGreevey was endorsed by the National Organization for Women and the Planned Parenthood Action Fund, the political arm of the Planned Parenthood Federation of America, largely because of his stance on abortion.
McGreevey responded that he would not change his position but would voluntarily refrain from taking communion in public.
With the governor’s election only a year off, many analysts believe this will become a campaign issue. On one hand, they say, New Jersey is a diverse urban state with a wide array of different ethnic groups, but on the other, more than half of the state’s voters are Catholic, and as is the case in Hoboken, a large portion of office-holders are Catholic.
For Kenny, the breaking point came after a May 5 statement by Reverend John J. Myers, the Archbishop of Newark. Myers stated: “[The fact] that some Catholics, who claim to believe what the Church believes, are willing to allow others to continue directly to kill the innocent, is a grave scandal. The situation is much, much worse when these same leaders receive the Eucharist when they are not objectively in communion with Christ and His Church. Their objective dishonesty serves to compound the scandal.”
The archbishop added that with abortion, “there can be no legitimate diversity of opinion.”
A spokesman for the Archdiocese of Newark declined to comment on Kenny’s decision last week.
Following that statement, Kenny approached Msgr. Frank Del Prete of Sts. Peter and Paul Church and asked whether he would be denied communion because of his support for abortion rights and stem-cell research. Del Prete said that he would be given communion one last time, but would then be asked not to return.
Kenny said that he has been put in unacceptable no-win dilemma in which the act of taking the Eucharist could justifiably infer that he was following the directives of the church on policy issues.
“If I take communion, that’s a political statement, but even if I refrain and don’t take communion, that’s just as loud of a statement,” said Kenny.
From the Kennedy school
There hasn’t been this much controversy over the Vatican’s perceived intervention in American politics since President John F. Kennedy, the country’s first Roman Catholic president, was elected nearly half a century ago. During the 1960 campaign, Kennedy and Catholic leaders assured a skeptical public that the church would not influence his decisions as politician and president.
“I believe in an America where the separation of church and state is absolute,” said Kennedy in an oft-quoted Sept. 12, 1960, address to the Greater Houston Ministerial Association. “I believe in an America that is officially neither Catholic, Protestant, nor Jewish, where no public official either requests or accepts instructions on public policy from the Pope, the National Council of Churches, or any other ecclesiastical source.”
Kenny referenced that speech and said that Kennedy set the precedent for how Catholic elected officials should act in the public arena. He added that the separation of church and state is a necessity for a fully functioning democracy.
“If the leaders of every faith dictated the behavior of their elected officials, you would have a fractured democracy,” said Kenny. “We would be governed by a theocracy, which is contrary to the founding principles of the republic.”
Kenny said that he was elected to represent all people of all religions in New Jersey, not just Catholics. The majority of New Jersey voters hold liberal views on issues like abortion, stem-cell research and gay rights. The most recent Quinnipiac University poll shows that just over 70 percent of voters in the state believe that abortion should be legal “in most or all cases.”
Kenny added that eventually he will select another church, but not right away.
“My inclination is to let some time pass,” said Kenny. “Eventually I will find a place to worship where I’m not making a political statement.”
A polarized issue
Religion, specifically the role that religion should or should not play in politics, has always roused deeply felt emotions. Hoboken Councilman Tony Soares said last week that the senator’s decision was “very brave” and that he supports Kenny “100 percent” in his decision. Soares is one of the state’s most vocal supporters of the possibilities of stem-cell research. Soares is a dwarf and suffers from conditions that could be addressed by stem cell research.
“As legislators, we have taken a sworn oath to represent all people and all views,” said Soares. He added that the separation of church and state is a vital part of democracy.
Soares also said that a religious organization pushing a social agenda on elected officials can become a slippery slope. Now, abortion is the litmus test, but soon sodomy, capital punishment, war, or gay marriage could be the threshold for whether or not a politician is worthy of communion.
Judie Brown, president of the American Life League, a Catholic anti-abortion group based in Manhattan, said her organization believes that all priests and lay Eucharistic ministers who hand out communion are obligated to refuse communion to any federal, state or local official who is known to disagree with church teachings on abortion, contraception, stem cell research, euthanasia or in vitro fertilization.
“When a pro-abortion public figure presents himself for Holy Communion, everyone in the church knows that he is an advocate of a crime against God that should prohibit him from receiving the body and blood of Christ,” said Brown in a recent statement. “There is no judgment involved. There is instead a public record that is not hidden, and in fact is often flaunted in the face of the church.”