Washington D.C., Jul 14, 2009 / 03:54 am
Former Maryland Lt. Gov. Kathleen Kennedy Townsend’s recent Newsweek editorial claiming President Barack Obama represents U.S. Catholics better than Pope Benedict XVI has been attacked by one Catholic critic as “bogus and embarrassing.”
Townsend, the eldest child of Robert F. Kennedy, in a July 9 Newsweek column claimed that the Catholic hierarchy ignores women’s equality and “gays’ cry for justice” because they cannot admit they are wrong.
She endorsed dissent from Pope Paul VI’s 1968 encyclical “Humanae Vitae,” which upheld traditional Christian teaching on the immorality of contraception. She then promoted President Obama and attacked Church authority.
“American Catholics do not want to be told by the Vatican how to think,” she said, citing opinion polls on homosexuality and condom use.