US Representative Patrick Kennedy, son of the late senator Edward Kennedy, was told of the move by Roman Catholic Bishop Thomas Tobin, according to The Providence Journal newspaper in the US state of Rhode Island.<\/font><\/p>\n Kennedy represents a district in Rhode Island in the US Congress.<\/font><\/p>\n "The bishop instructed me not to take communion and said that he has instructed the diocesan priests not to give me communion," the paper quotes Kennedy as saying in a telephone interview.<\/font><\/p>\n Kennedy said the bishop had explained the penalty by telling him that he was not a good practicing Catholic because of the positions that he had taken as a public official, particularly on abortion, the report said<\/strong>\u2026<\/font><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n Inserted from <Alternet<\/a>><\/p>\n Pat Kennedy was not elected to Congress to represent the wishes of the Catholic Church. His job as a legislator is to determine what the voters in his district want and vote to carry out their wishes. For him to allow the dogma of his church to override his sworn duty as a Representative, he would be violating the Constitution. Now I have nothing against Catholics. Liberation Theology is a Catholic idea. However, our Constitution separates religious and secular activities through the establishment clause in the First Amendment. By punishing Kennedy, Bishop Tobin and, through his representation, the Catholic Church is violating the Constitution and should be given a choice. They must either end their political interference with the Constitutional duty of their parishioners, or lose their tax exempt status.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" JFK\u2019s nephew has supported a woman\u2019s right to choose, a position shared by the majority of the voters in his district. This is what he gets for it. \u2026"Patrick Kennedy, pictured in May 2009, [different photo here] a US lawmaker and the nephew of ex-president John F. Kennedy, has been barred from receiving communion at […]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,47],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-295","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics","category-religion","category-5-id","category-47-id","post-seq-1","post-parity-odd","meta-position-corners","fix"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/295","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=295"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/295\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=295"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=295"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=295"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"patkennedy\"](\"http:\/\/s217.photobucket.com\/albums\/cc83\/TomCat1948or2\/Blog%202009\/PatrickKennedyBarredfromCommunion_1A19\/patkennedy.jpg\" "\\"patkennedy\\"")
<\/a> \u2026"Patrick Kennedy, pictured in May 2009, [different photo here] a US lawmaker and the nephew of ex-president John F. Kennedy, has been barred from receiving communion at his Catholic church due to his support for abortion rights, a newspaper reported Sunday."<\/font><\/p>\n