Tuesday, June 15, 2010

Archbishop Hannan on Jackie Kennedy.

This story is reassuring for those of us who lived through the assassination and had a special love for the Kennedy's.  I think every American was very proud of the First Lady and the courageous manner in which  she conducted herself throughout those terrible days.
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Hannan, a young auxiliary bishop in Washington, D.C., at the time of the assassination had delivered Kennedy’s eulogy, at Jackie Kennedy’s request. Ten days later he had presided over a second Kennedy interment at Arlington National Cemetery, in which she quietly re-buried two of their children next to her husband, a daughter stillborn in 1956 and their son, Patrick, who had lived only three days after his birth four months before the assassination.
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“If only I could believe that he could look down and see how he is missed and how nobody will ever be the same without him,” Kennedy wrote of her husband on Dec. 20, 1963, a few days after the re-interment of the children.
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“But I haven’t believed in the child’s vision of heaven for a long time. There is no way now to commune with him. It will be so long before I am dead and even then I don’t know if I will be reunited with him....
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“Please forgive all this -- and please don’t try to convince me just yet -- I shouldn’t be writing this way,” she concludes. - Source
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Archbishop Hannan said he included the Kennedy note in his memoirs to dispel the notion that because of  rumors of Jack's infidelity, the Kennedy marriage was a loveless one.  Hannan believes “theirs was a relationship grounded in deep, emotional conviction until the very end."

8 comments:

  1. When I was a youth, I read everything I could lay my hands on about the Kennedy family.
    This "revelation" from Archbishop Hannan does my soul good...I read so much about J.F.K.'s infidelities...but I also remember (can't give the source) that before that fateful day in November, he requested a "penitential" instrument to wear..possibly a hairshirt from the Franciscan monastery in DC...
    Prayers for the repose of his soul and of his wife, Jacqueline.
    The Kennedy clan certainly did not have a good example in their father, Joseph P.

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  2. Anonymous1:38 PM

    Fr. Nazareth, I also had a special regard for the Kennedy family, JFK in particular. Nice to see something positive about them instead of the usual baloney. JFK had a lot of class (at least on the public stage), and IMO his like not been seen since in any political party. He was special. As Shakespeare might put it, "Take him for all in all, he was a man".

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  3. I was very happy for this positive note on the Kennedy marriage.

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  4. Although "Camelot" was a bit before my time--I'm a Beatles baby :)--my mom just ADORED Jackie..had a picture of her up in our house for the longest time. Style and elegance :)


    I will always remember visiting their tombs in Arlington...JFK had one small bunch of flowers that some admirer had left.....Jackie's tomb had dozens of arrangements, expensive long-stemmed roses, etc..

    Sara

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  5. I think Jack and Jackie understood each other and liked each other. All that ooey-gooey sentimental love is overrated anyways.

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  6. +JMJ+

    And though this will certainly sound cliched . . . he always came home to her, didn't he?

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  7. They understood each other and I think JFK loved her in his way. In those days cheating was a man's perogative as long as he was discreet and kept clear of disease.

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  8. It is documented that Joseph P. Kennedy was a flagrant philanderer...and yet Rose forgave him, time and time again...found refuge in her Faith...how is this bad?
    With all the infidelity that goes on today, esp. with the Internet/porno/masturbation problems with men, esp., why is it such an easy "out" for divorce, esp. when young children are involved? I'm not advocating this, by any means, far from it; but when the stability of a family and the good of children are involved, why is "easy divorce" such an option?
    Love means a lot more than what you "feel"; for both consecrated and married...it means being faithful day in and day out; regardless of the consequences (physical abuse being the exception here).

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