The U.S. Cardinal Crusading Against the Catholic President-Elect

[Yo_Mama_Been_Loggin]

ROME—When then-candidate John F. Kennedy gave his landmark stump speech to the Houston Ministers Conference in September 1960, he stressed that he was “not the Catholic candidate for president.” He insisted instead, “I am the Democratic Party’s candidate for president who happens also to be a Catholic. I do not speak for my church on public matters—and the church does not speak for me.”

Two months later, JFK was elected the first Catholic president of the United States amid fears that his presidency would be guided by the Vatican and Pope John XXIII and warnings that he might compromise the separation of church and state—none of which happened. Sixty years later, Joe Biden is the second Catholic ever to win the presidency, and this time the criticism isn't from outside the Catholic Church, but from within, with conservative American Cardinal Raymond Burke leading the charge, painting Biden as an anti-Catholic not fit to lead.

In the months leading up to the election, Burke was on a campaign of his own, stumping for the thrice-married incumbent President Trump while pleading that Biden is “not a Catholic in good standing” over his views on abortion and birth control. Burke said Biden should not receive communion at Catholic mass and should not tout his faith. “I don’t understand why Catholics who are involved in politics can’t get this straight in their heads, but they should,” Burke told the Catholic Action for Faith and Family association, for which Burke is a spiritual adviser, in an interview that was run by the popular conservative Catholic website Lifesite. “If someone says, ‘I’m a devout Catholic,’ and at the same time is promoting abortion, it gives the impression to others that it’s acceptable for Catholics to be in favor of abortion. And of course, it’s absolutely not acceptable. Never has been. Never will be.”

Biden is not Burke’s only target. He has also condemned Pope Francis for his recent remarks on extending civil rights to same-sex couples. Burke, whose office did not respond to multiple requests for comments, accused Francis last month of inciting “error and confusion with words that do not correspond to the constant teachings of the Church,” when the pope commented in a documentary that he supported legal rights for gays. “To speak of a homosexual union, in the same sense as the conjugal union of the married, is misleading, because there can be no such union.”

https://news.yahoo.com/only-complaints-second-catholic-president-100158880.html

What ever you say Chester.

[LakeArenal]

1. Yeah, well the Pope disagrees.

I’m notCatholic but I know who has better standing.

[empedocles]

2. Shades of 'Father McLaughlin' - who really got carried away with himself

[sboatcar]

3. Wouldn't going against the Pope be going against god?

I thought he was the inerrant word of god...?? Maybe I'm wrong?

[usajumpedtheshark]

8. By himself, only when speaking in ex cathedra about church doctrine. the most recent example I think

was in 1950 Pope Pius XII making the assumption of Mary an article of faith.

[gratuitous]

4. Well, when Joe Biden becomes president of all the Catholics, Cardinal Burke . . .

You can upbraid him all you want. But Biden is the president-elect of the United States of America, and believe it or not, some Americans aren't Catholic. So Biden has to carry out the duties of the office for all citizens, not just you. Grow up.

[Sneederbunk]

5. They thought JFK would be controlled by the Vatican.

Today the Vatican cannot even control its own priests.

[mobeau69]

7. ...

[Marthe48]

6. bleep burke, too

n/t

[usajumpedtheshark]

9. We will most likely see the next pope being much more conservative

[Thomas Hurt]

10. Time for Burke to hang up his frock and be born again...join Jerry Jr. in evangelical hypocrisy.

[OnDoutside]

11. When so many moderates left the Church, 19th century RWNJs throwbacks, like Burke have become

even more brazen. I see it here too in Ireland, where largely what's left is the follow the rules of the club, or fuck off. So many have fucked off. Mass attendance here in Ireland has dropped from 91% in 1973 to around 30-35% (probably less) in 2020, and dropping as older people pass. What's left is essentially a hard core, where a lot of the money is coming from the RW Catholic groups in the US.

[Klaralven]

12. .

Burke previously chaired the advisory board of the Institute for Human Dignity, a Catholic-inspired non-governmental organization based in Rome.[62] Burke terminated his relationship with the institute in June 2019 amid its being identified increasingly with the political program of Steve Bannon.[63]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raymond_Leo_Burke

At least he's in Rome and has no leadership position in the US, so not sure who cares.

[musette_sf]

13. Most Catholics don't give a hoot what Ray Ray "Cappa Magna" Burke has to say.

Burke personifies the kind of legal "rigorist" that Francis ardently resists. He is the modern version of that religious leader that drew some of Jesus' harshest condemnations, those who placed undue burdens on others and pronounced themselves the undisputed bearers of truth.

Some may consider Burke a theologian, but he made his reputation as a canon lawyer who, by all indications, thinks that Catholic Christianity is primarily a transactional enterprise in which the highest calling is to abide by every detail of every church statute as he interprets them.

It is not overstatement to say that Burke stands as representative, perhaps in the extreme, of a certain version of church and one that we believe has failed miserably. He is a member of a culture that by instinct (and not insignificantly by church statutes of that time) opted to protect those who viciously abused the most vulnerable in the community while ignoring the perpetrators' victims.

https://www.ncronline.org/news/accountability/editorial-cardinal-burke-living-symbol-failed-version-church

[shrike3]

14. Burke can go fuck himself. And I'm Catholic.