Jackie Kennedy's Letters to Dublin Priest to be Sold at Auction

Is is just me, or does anyone else find the release of private letters from Jackie Kennedy to Father Joseph Leonard, a Vincentian priest from Dublin, particularly distasteful?

Are there no sacred boundaries we won't cross for the voyeuristic pleasure of the unrelenting public?

The letters span fourteen years (from 1950 to 1964), in which she reveals personal thoughts and feelings on her engagement to New York stockbroker John Husted, which she broke off shortly before the wedding, her subsequent marriage to President John F. Kennedy, and her personal struggle with her faith following his assassination in 1963.

It seems to me that if Jackie Kennedy wanted those letters to be put out there for public consumption, she would have done so, or perhaps written an autobiography.

I think it an unforgivable invasion of privacy when letters written in confidence to a priest, are put on public display.

What I would like to know is who is responsible for this. Certainly not her family, I hope.

Views: 684

Tags: Dublin, Faith, Ireland, JFK, Kennedy, New York, United States

Comment by David Caldwell on May 20, 2014 at 4:44pm

It's not the auctioneer's standards I'm worried about but the standard's of All Hallows College. By definition private correspondence between two confidants is, and was intended to be, just that, confidential. I have no doubt Father Leonard would be horrified that personal letters sent to him are being made public and are being exploited for their commercial value. Effectively All Hallows acquired these items by accident and is abusing the trust Father Leonard placed in them and they are misusing his Estate for their own benefit?

Comment by Maryann Tracy on May 20, 2014 at 6:48pm

They would have never survived in today's world, living under a microscope  as celebrities and public figure do now, but I would think that the Church would be held to a higher standard than TMZ!

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