E-mail a friendKerry Kennedy
airdate October 2, 2008
An activist and author, Kerry Kennedy travels the world advocating the preservation of basic human rights. She's led some 40+ delegations into more than 30 countries and, in '88, founded the Robert F. Kennedy Center for Human Rights, named after her father. Kennedy's books include Speak Truth to Power, which contains interviews with human rights defenders from all over the world, and Being Catholic Now—a volume of interviews in which a wide array of Catholics reflect on the current state of their church.
Human rights activist-author discusses the impact of the sexual abuse scandal on the Catholic Church. (1:26)
Full interview. (12:25)
Kerry Kennedy
Tavis: Kerry Kennedy is the founder of the Robert F. Kennedy Memorial Center for Human Rights and the chair of the Amnesty International leadership council. She's also an author whose latest book is called "Being Catholic Now: Prominent Americans Talk About Change in the Church and the Quest for Meaning." Kerry, nice to have you on the program.
Kerry Kennedy: It's great to be here, thank you.
Tavis: Let me start by asking when the last time you talked to your uncle was, how he's doing - all of our prayers, of course, are with Senator Kennedy, yeah.
Kennedy: Oh, thanks so much. Yeah, he's doing well. He had a little scare last week, but he's -
Tavis: A hospital visit, yeah.
Kennedy: Yeah, but he's much better, thank you.
Tavis: Good. The one thing that - there are a number of things, but one of the things, perhaps the primary thing that one comes away with when going through this text is that everybody, and I mean everybody, has a problem with the church. (Laughter) That's true of the Catholic church and I suspect of any church organization or denomination, but everybody has a problem, has some issues with the church. What do you make of that?
Kennedy: Well, I think - it's interesting that you raise that, because even Jesus had a problem with the church. He used to argue with the Pharisees and the scribes.
Tavis: He threw out the money-changers, yeah, yeah.
Kennedy: Exactly, and about what it means to believe in God. And he said if you have all the rules and you don't have love, it means nothing. And that's the theme that kept coming up in this book. Peggy Noonan said, "God does not want us to be intellectual slaves," and I remember when Pope Benedict came to New York, he said one of the pillars of Catholicism is the search for the truth.
So if you search for the truth, you're going to have arguments with the status quo, and sure enough, all Catholics do.
Tavis: I guess the question is whether or not, Kerry, this search for the truth, this quest for meaning is damaging to the Catholic church as an institution.
Kennedy: Well, I think in the '50s and '60s and early '70s we had the Baltimore catechism, which gave us not only all of the questions to ask but all the answers as well, which we were to memorize. And that sort of strict view of Catholicism has been looked at and been found wanting. And so I think that many, many people now are wondering what it means to be a good Catholic today.
But there are a billion Catholics worldwide, there are 60 million in the United States alone, and there are many different approaches to the church that are legitimate.
Tavis: Is there an answer to that question "What does it mean to be a good Catholic these days?" Is there a universal answer to that?
Kennedy: I don't think there is. I think that there are many different ways that people have of expressing their faith, and even the most orthodox Catholics in this book, someone like Tom Monaghan, who of course has used his billion-dollar fortune from Domino's Pizza build Ave Maria University and town in Florida and strictly adheres to the magisterium of the church, even he has problems with the way the church conducts itself.
Tavis: I guess the question is, how does one in love, to the point you raised earlier, how does one in love juxtapose this quest for meaning, wrestling with what the church ought to be about, wrestling with what it means to be a good Catholic. How do you juxtapose that with the church actually standing for something and not being so over-intellectualized, so forced to change, so forced to reform, if you wanna use that word, that it ends up not standing for anything?
Kennedy: Well I just think that we go back to the scriptures and the two commandments that Jesus left us with, which are love God and love one another. And that to the extent that the church acts consistently with those and behaves consistently, and to the extent all of us do, I think we're being good Catholics.
Tavis: Beyond the notion of love, which obviously ought to be at the center of every faith, and I think really is at the center of every faith at the best of that faith - the best of any faith ought to be and I think is, in fact, this notion of loving thy neighbor as thyself - beyond the notion of love, though, did you discover, in talking to these prominent Catholics, at least, that there is, again, a standard; that there are some rules and some regulations, there ought to be something that the church does, in fact, stand for that ought not to be open to this quest for meaning?
Kennedy: Right. Well, I think that the quest for meaning is - part of being a good Catholic is engaging in the quest for meaning, and I think there are things that hold Catholics together. I think a commitment to social justice, a sense of piety, a sense of commitment to the community. Even people who have said they left the church were willing to be interviewed for this book about being Catholic.
So this is not a church that's easy to escape. People are sort of - the old adage, "Once a Catholic, always a Catholic" rings true. But the thing that was surprising to me in conducting the interviews is that on such a seemingly heavy subject, how often I found myself laughing.
Tavis: Laughing at people like Dan Ackroyd? (Laughter)
Kennedy: Well, Dan Ackroyd tells many, many funny stories in there, and of course Nancy Pelosi, who said that her mother always wanted her to be a nun. And I said, "Well, did you want to be a nun?" And she said, "No, I wanted to be a priest. The nuns were nice, but the priests held the power." (Laughter)
And so many others - I remember Susan Sarandon tells this wonderful story about being seven years old and her aunt gave her glow-in-the-dark rosary beads which she didn't know where glow-in-the-dark. And she went to bed that night and turned off the lights and got under her covers to say the rosary, and they started to glow and she thought "Oh my god, I'm going to see a vision."
Tavis: Beyond the value, of course, of being able to sell a book, which I do not disregard since I'm an author myself, so beyond the value of being able to sell the book, what is the value of us reading what prominent Americans have to say about this church as opposed to everyday Americans?
Kennedy: Well, I think that this is a way to think about our faith. One of the people I interviewed who's not a prominent American is Kiki Kennedy, and she's married to my cousin, Ted Kennedy Jr. She grew up in a Jewish family and she teaches psychiatry at Yale Medical School. And at the age of 45, in the middle of the pedophile scandal, she converted to Catholicism.
And she said, "I just always took my faith for granted, and I found at a certain point in my life that I wanted my faith to be more meaningful to me, so I took the time to explore it and to work harder on it." And I think if you read this book that I hope people will walk away with a deeper sense of their own faith.
Tavis: That raises two questions for me - one, since she's a relative, I know you've had these conversations - share with me a bit if you can about her thoughts about her transformation during the middle to your point, of a pedophile scandal, and is there a universal sense of what these persons in this text have to say about the church vis-à-vis that scandal?
Kennedy: Yeah, well, there are several people I interviewed who had been touched by this, so to speak, and Gabriel Byrne, of course, the great actor, spoke with such eloquence and so movingly about being accosted by a priest when he was in the seminary, and what an impact that has had on his capacity for trust and his belief.
And he also talked about writing an open letter to the priest as a sense of reconciliation and understanding for this priest in "The Irish Times," the front page of the Irish newspaper, and this is in the early 1980s. And he said, "No one said a word." And he said it was so terrible, because he felt like he had been in the front of the class and taken off all his clothes, and all the kids just turned around and walked away, and so it was very touching.
Also, Frank McCourt, who's a great writer, talks about being attacked as a child, and Anne Burke I interviewed, who led the - was hired by the bishops to look into the pedophile scandal, and the thing about her essay which is so interesting is that she has nothing good to say about the bishops in general, and she's very, very critical. But she also talks about that experience as deepening her faith.
Tavis: So your relative Kiki comes to the Catholic church in the midst of this scandal. Is it your sense, having put this text together, is it your sense that that - when I say that, I mean the scandal - is the scandal the greater challenge to the church long-term? Or are these other issues that we're trying to find meaning and commonality about a greater challenge to the church?
Kennedy: Well, I think the church certainly - what came out of that scandal is that the church has been a very closed system, and that as an institution they need to implement basic rules of conduct, of transparency and of a more sort of - I don't want to say democratic, but a more open set of policies about how people are treated, and how they relate to the rest of the community. I think that's clear.
But the greater issues is what is our relationship with God, and what's our relationship with the community, and are we going to let our arguments with the church and our anger or disappointment with the institutional church get in the way of our relationship with the almighty? And I think coming out of this book the answer is we've got to fight for faith. Faith really is a gift, and we need to work on it.
Tavis: You interviewed, as you've mentioned a number of times in this conversation, a number of women. Talk to me about what you learned about, from their perspective, at least, about the church and sexism - the role of women.
Kennedy: Well, there is a lot of problems with that and a lot of frustration, I think, of women across the board - nuns - and not only women; nuns, priests, others. But I think that what I found in talking to a lot of the women in particular was they talked about raising their kids, and raising their kids in a faith where their kids are questioning that faith, and the challenges of doing that.
Some of it was very insightful. Peggy Noonan, again. Anna Quinlan tells a wonderful story about when her son was 16 she said, "My son was 16 when he first announced that he was an Atheist, and my husband and I looked at each other and said, 'Right on schedule.'" (Laughter) And she talks about this as being sort of a tradition in the Catholic church of objecting to go to mass, and she said, "I remember when I was a kid and I'd say, 'I don't wanna go to mass,' and my father would say, 'Get in the car.'" So I think that that's something we can all relate to.
Tavis: Let me close by asking a personal question, because you are raising children yourself. Your reason for staying in the Catholic Church and being so dedicated to it?
Kennedy: Well, this faith, I really do believe is a gift, and it has been my rock and has helped me get through so many difficult periods of my life, and I want to make sure my kids have that, and I really want to make sure that they have the sense of love and love that we can all share, and the sense of social justice - that we need to be involved in our community and make the world a more just and peaceful place, and that they have something to go back to, in times of trouble and in times of joy, to give them direction.
Tavis: Of course, she is the daughter of the late, great Bobby Kennedy. Her name, Kerry Kennedy. Her new book, "Being Catholic Now: Prominent Americans Talk About Change in the Church and the Quest for Meaning." Kerry Kennedy, nice to have you on the program.
Kennedy: Thank you, great to be here.
Tavis: All the best to you. Glad to have you.
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