Tobin was incensed when Kennedy told reporters that he had been banned from taking communion. He said Kennedy had “started this fight.” Because the Church has no transparency and everything icky–like pedophile priests or barring believers from communion–is a secret.

It’s difficult to imagine how, with all the actual issues the Church should be dealing with—not the least of which would be caring for parishioners who are out of work and losing their homes due to the recession—that Patrick Kennedy’s adherence to the law–because Roe v. Wade  is the law–would be paramount vis a vis his Catholicism.

More than half of Americans support Roe v. Wade. One in four Americans is a Catholic. So there are, by extrapolation, millions of American Catholics who support Roe v. Wade. Is the Church going to begin grilling parishioners at the communion rail and then walk past them with the transubstantiated Host, snubbing them before God?

One of the basic tenets of Catholicism is that each of us considers whether or not she/he is in a state of grace before receiving communion. During the Mass, we say an act of contrition, we state that we are not worthy to receive the Body and Blood of Christ and we ask for God’s mercy to heal our souls. Written into the sacrament of the Eucharist itself is the intention to allow confirmed members of the Church to repent their sins and receive God’s love as evoked through communion.

I can honestly say I have never once thought in the 36 years since the law was passed that my support of Roe v. Wade should keep me from the communion rail. I have, however, agonized over feelings of anger towards others–especially the hierarchy of the Church itself–and wondered if those should keep me from receiving communion.

What do pedophile priests think when they go to take communion? Do they think that perhaps they have, in committing myriad mortal sins, violated their pact with God and thus should refrain from partaking of the sacrament? Or do they just go blithely to the communion rail or worse, consecrate the sacrament themselves?

Tobin, like other politicized members of the Church hierarchy, has drawn a line in the ecclessiastical sand. He has said that the Church has a hand in what the State decides. But there is a separation of Church and State in America and he is violating that most sacred tenet of the Constitution.

When the Church has cleaned house of pedophiles and child-molesters, then perhaps it can take on lawmakers who are upholding the law. But at present, it would seem that the Church has a lot of  internal work to do before it decides who should and should not receive communion. I would like to know Tobin’s feelings about pedophile priests and whether he has personally banned them from receiving communion or if he has forgiven their sins.

Perhaps pedophile priests feel no shame nor sin attaches to their actions and thus feel they can march to the communion rail without self-recrimination. But for those of us in the pews of a Sunday, the thing that has most strained our relationship with our Church is the insinuation of the Church into secular affairs.

Jesus said, let him who is without sin cast the first stone. Tobin must feel he’s above reproach. Yet I doubt that in all of Rhode Island there isn’t one pedophile priest receiving communion or that Patrick Kennedy is the only Catholic in the state who supports Roe v. Wade.  Tobin and other members of the Church hierarchy have a lot of forgiveness to beg from those abused by the Church itself before they start withholding the evocation of God’s love from members of his flock.—VAB