Under pressure, college cancels speech by Ted Kennedy’s widow

A small Catholic college in Massachusetts has been pressured by the local bishop into canceling an invitation to Senator Ted Kennedy’s widow to deliver the school’s commencement address because of her support of abortion rights and gay marriage.

Worcester Bishop Robert J. McManus also told officials at Anna Maria College in late March that the school should not give Victoria Kennedy an honorary degree, diocesan spokesman Raymond L. Delisle said April 2. McManus believes that Catholic institutions “should be honoring Catholics for their consistent public positions with the church, not for contrary positions with the church, especially on core issues such as the right to life and the sanctity of marriage,” Delisle said.

Kennedy is a lawyer and founder of Common Sense about Kids and Guns, a nonprofit organization that seeks to reduce gun deaths and violence among children. She has not been notably outspoken on abortion rights and gay rights, though her late husband was a prominent champion of those causes.