Mary Richardson Kennedy funeral: Divided families bid RFK Jr.’s wife fairwell three days after her suicide
By Henrick Karoliszyn, Joanna Molloy AND Larry Mcshane
NEW YORK DAILY NEWS
May 19, 2012
Link to original
Didn’t feel like posting the article (wasn’t very interesting), but for those who don’t know, the woman – a mother of 4 minor children - committed suicide. Seems like the same ol’ deal with the Kennedys and northeastern episcopate.
The great ancient Catholic liturgical chant “Amazing Grace,” was featured.
The circumstances surrounding her marriage to Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., are equally controversial. Did the Catholic Church (or rather a priest) “bless” his second and adulterous civil shot-gun wedding to her?
The press in reporting the apparent suicide of RFK Jr.’s second (and soon-to-be former) wife, Mary Richardson includes the details of their April 1994 wedding on an ecological research boat on the Hudson River, where he then worked for an environmental organization. He had divorced his first wife, Emily Black (with whom he had two children) two months before in the Dominican Republic. As most reports of Mary Richardson Kennedy’s death say: After a Roman Catholic mass, a civil wedding ceremony was held on the boat, and three months later she gave birth to the first of the four sons during their marriage, which was ending in a soon to be finalized divorce fied by him in May 2010. He is on the prowl for a third wife, currently dating actress Cheryl Hines.
The details of the wedding as reported in the press must have come from chapter 28 (page 167) of the 2002 book, Kennedy Weddings: A Family Album, by TV producer/writer Jay Mulvaney and historian/biographer Doris Kearns Goodwin (both Kennedy family friends). The passage from that bookcan be seen at Google books: books.google.com/books?id=Fu8I3O7fttIC&pg=PA167&lpg=PA167&dq=mary+richardson+catholic+mass+marriage+boat&source=bl&ots=uZSNQbb2ms&sig=DrjuVBvHjXJBNdQREW6Sh_1mdWE&hl=en&sa=X&ei=4li2T8L-NcTG6AGV5vyECw&sqi=2&ved=0CE8Q6AEwBg#v=onepage&q=mary%20richardson%20catholic%20mass%20marriage%20boat&f=false books.google.com/books?id=Fu8I3O7fttIC&pg=PA167&lpg=PA167&dq=mary+richardson+catholic+mass+marriage+boat&source=bl&ots=uZSNQbb2ms&sig=DrjuVBvHjXJBNdQREW6Sh_1mdWE&hl=en&sa=X&ei=4li2T8L-NcTG6AGV5vyECw&sqi=2&ved=0CE8Q6AEwBg#v=onepage&q=mary%20richardson%20catholic%20mass%20marriage%20boat&f=false
“I put these things not in their mature logical sequence, but as they came: and this view was cleared and sharpened by an accident of the time. Under the lengthening shadow of Ibsen, an argument arose whether it was not a very nice thing to murder one’s self. Grave moderns told us that we must not even say “poor fellow,” of a man who had blown his brains out, since he was an enviable person, and had only blown them out because of their exceptional excellence. Mr. William Archer even suggested that in the golden age there would be penny-in-the-slot machines, by which a man could kill himself for a penny. In all this I found myself utterly hostile to many who called themselves liberal and humane. Not only is suicide a sin, it is the sin. It is the ultimate and absolute evil, the refusal to take an interest in existence; the refusal to take the oath of loyalty to life. The man who kills a man, kills a man. The man who kills himself, kills all men; as far as he is concerned he wipes out the world. His act is worse (symbolically considered) than [other violent crimes] or dynamite outrage. For it destroys all buildings: it insults [everybody]. The thief is satisfied with diamonds; but the suicide is not: that is his crime. He cannot be bribed, even by the blazing stones of the Celestial City. The thief compliments the things he steals, if not the owner of them. But the suicide insults everything on earth by not stealing it. He defiles every flower by refusing to live for its sake. There is not a tiny creature in the cosmos at whom his death is not a sneer. When a man hangs himself on a tree, the leaves might fall off in anger and the birds fly away in fury: for each has received a personal affront. Of course there may be pathetic emotional excuses for the act. There often are for [crimes], and there almost always are for [terrorist] dynamite.”
Orthodoxy, V The Flag of the World, GK Chesteron
Suicide and cremation are probably two of the most un-Christian things a person can do.
what’s so frustrating were so many comments I read on yahoo about this yesterday. So many were comparing cancer with depression/suicide, that they were “the same” and “she did nothing wrong” in taking her own life. Others went as to far as to say that she is in heaven and that “God said no more suffering so that she needed to ‘come home’” and continued to applaud her suicide. Diabolical stench is what has permeated these people. And what’s worse are those who are “visible” (Kennnedy’s and those “priests” and Bishops who look the other way) who who claim to represent Catholicism. Why on earth would anyone looking from the outside want to covert when seeing that?
Requiescat in pace.
An old attorney and former cold war spy plane navigator mentioned this, and said he thought there could be foul play. He doubts she committed suicide.
She had not given signs that she was suicidal and had, i think he said, “4 children”, and didn’t leave a note.