EAST PROVIDENCE, R.I. — A month of harsh words between Rep. Patrick Kennedy and a strident critic, Roman Catholic Bishop Thomas Tobin, escalated Sunday when the bishop acknowledged asking Kennedy not to receive Holy Communion because of the Democratic lawmaker’s support for abortion rights.
Tobin told The Associated Press that the son of the late Sen. Edward Kennedy, who has been in and out of treatment for substance abuse, has been acting “erratically.”
Their dispute began in October, when Kennedy criticized the nation’s Catholic bishops for threatening to oppose an overhaul of the nation’s health care system unless lawmakers included tighter abortion restrictions, which have since been added to the House version of the bill. Tobin said he felt Kennedy made an unprovoked attack on the church and demanded an apology.
“The point is, because of his obstinate . . . public support of abortion, which is clearly contrary to an essential teaching of the church of a matter of critical morality . . . he is then not properly prepared to receive Holy Communion,” Tobin said in an interview Sunday. “No one has a right to receive Holy Communion.”
The feud escalated after Kennedy told The Providence Journal in a story published Sunday that Tobin instructed him not to receive Communion. Kennedy also said the bishop had told diocesan priests not to give him Communion, an allegation that Tobin denied.
Kennedy and his spokeswoman did not return repeated calls from The Associated Press seeking comment.
Tobin said he wrote Kennedy in February 2007 and asked him not to receive Communion because of his voting record supporting abortion rights.
The bishop said his letter was prompted by a statement two months earlier from the nation’s Catholic bishops. They said that believers who knowingly and consistently break with church teachings on moral issues such as abortion should refrain from Communion, the focus of Roman Catholic worship.
