OPINION:
I recently read Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s ruminations on the death of his mother, in which he described her devotion to the Roman Catholic Church as “blind.” He didn’t mean it in a good way.
Whatever one thinks about the Kennedy family — and we all should probably care more about our own families and less about celebrities — you have to recognize Ethel Kennedy as an exemplary American who was devoted to the Catholic Church. She was a mother, grandmother and great-grandmother of some six dozen souls who kept her family together through trauma that has destroyed others.
For the most part, her children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren have been productive members of society despite the family’s wealth and fame. Even her odd and self-destructive son Robert has found usefulness late in life. You have to think that Ethel had something to do with that.
She deserved much better than the send-off her beloved Catholic Church gave her last week, which included three eulogies.
President Biden offered the last one, and it was the rambling, egocentric nonsense that one might have expected. The most egregious part of it was that a man who advertises his Roman Catholic bona fides and carries around a rosary managed to bumble through an entire eulogy in St. Matthew’s Cathedral without mentioning God, heaven, hell, Ethel Kennedy’s devotion to the Catholic Church or anything that was material to the moment (and to every moment, for that matter).
Back in the days of faith, the church prohibited eulogies precisely because it understood them as opportunities for propaganda rather than illumination. No one’s life is ever fully examined in a eulogy.
For example, earlier this month, my high school newsletter noted that an alumnus — let’s call him John — had died. The obituary, as expected, described John as a warm, friendly person. I certainly hope that is how he turned out, but back when he was a senior, all 6 feet and 200 pounds of him would routinely terrorize and beat the freshmen. I remember John as an angry young man with no self-control who made life miserable for those around him.
Why didn’t that make it into the obituary? Maybe he learned to live without anger. Maybe he regretted it. But maybe he didn’t. Eulogies and obituaries are mostly the lies and omissions that those still living want to believe about the dead.
This even creeps into fabrications about professional life. Last week, the former CEO of a formerly powerful trade association in Washington died. The usual statements from the usual suspects talked about how brilliant and kind and whatever he was. Not a single one mentioned that he drove the trade association into the ditch, taking it from among the leading influence operations in town to one of the least relevant in a handful of years.
If you can’t tell the truth about something as trivial as someone’s professional failings, what can you tell the truth about? If you are unwilling to acknowledge people’s flaws, you minimize the significance of someone like Ethel Kennedy.
If you can’t work up the nerve to be completely honest about the entire book of accounts, remaining silent is a perfectly acceptable answer. Anything else is a disservice to the living.
• Michael McKenna is a contributing editor to The Washington Times. He does not want a eulogy at his funeral.
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