• Burke’s law, amended Burke’s law, amended From the St. Louis Post-Dispatch – October 6, 2004 In attempting to settle the question of how St. Louis Catholics should be guided when they go to the polls, Archbishop Raymond L. Burke
• Burke’s law, amended
Burke’s law, amended
From the St. Louis Post-Dispatch – October 6, 2004
In attempting to settle the question of how St. Louis Catholics should be guided when they go to the polls, Archbishop Raymond L. Burke has raised another, more basic question:
Will the flock pay any attention to the shepherd?
In his new 25-page pastoral letter on the rights and obligations of Catholic voters, Archbishop Burke writes, “A Catholic may vote for a candidate who, while he supports an evil action, also supports the limitation of the evil involved, if there is no better candidate.”
Sen. John F. Kerry of Massachusetts, the Democratic presidential candidate, who is Catholic, generally supports abortion rights. President George W. Bush generally opposes them, but makes an exception for cases of rape, incest and the life of the mother. Neither position matches Archbishop Burke’s absolutist position that it is “intrinsically evil to destroy human embryos, even for some intended good.”
But under the latest iteration of Burke’s Law, a Catholic may vote for Mr. Bush if (a) there’s no other candidate “who supports the moral law in its full integrity, (b) he believes the president promotes other morally good practices, and (c) he “avoids scandal” by disclosing, to anyone who might inquire, the full details of why he voted as he did.
If all the registered voters among the archdiocese’s 550,000 Catholics were to be guided by the archbishop’s position, it probably would insure a GOP sweep in Missouri. And given the closeness of the presidential race, Missouri’s electoral votes could be crucial to victory.
But nationally, some 87 percent of Catholics say they won’t let the church’s positions affect their vote, and two-thirds disapprove of bishops interjecting themselves into politics, according to a poll released this spring by the Quinnipiac University Polling Institute, a polling and research center based in Connecticut. There’s no evidence to suggest that Catholic voters here think differently from their peers nationwide.
Conversely, there’s no evidence that Archbishop Burke cares what polls say, either. His letter is not about politics, but theology. It reflects his firm belief in the tradition that bishops and priests stand in place of the apostles in interpreting God’s will for man. His interpretation of moral law says that voting for a pro-choice candidate is “formal cooperation” with evil and never morally permissible.
The letter, entitled “On Our Civic Responsibility for the Common Good,” was delivered to all parishes in the Archdiocese last weekend and published Friday in the archdiocesan newspaper, the St. Louis Review. The letter returns Archbishop Burke to the position he espoused in June during the controversy over his statement that he would deny Holy Communion to Catholics on the “wrong” side of the abortion and stem-cell debates.
In early September, the archbishop appeared to back off that position, saying a vote for a pro-abortion candidate might be permissible in some circumstances. The pastoral letter makes it clear just how limited those circumstances are.
The letter also lists other “intrinsic moral evils” that candidates must not support if they expect Catholic votes. They include euthanasia, human cloning, embryonic stem-cell research and gay marriage.
Support for the death penalty and war, while bad, are not intrinsically evil, his letter says. Nor can a Catholic voter say that a candidate’s stand on other human rights issues is more important than his stand on abortion. The inviolability of human life is “primary and fundamental,” the letter says.
Nor can Catholics claim an “out” by citing the primacy of their consciences. The archbishop says the conscience must be “fully informed,” and that includes understanding and complying with the church’s teachings. To do otherwise is to commit a grievous sin, to be outside the state of grace, to cut oneself off from the right to the sacrament of the Eucharist and to put one’s eternal soul in jeopardy.
“Even some conservative Catholics find that message to be extreme,” said Ronald E. Modras, a professor of theology at St. Louis University. “He’s giving us Catholic moral tradition, but interpreting it according to his own conscience and opinion. You can have an informed Catholic conscience and come to a different conclusion.”
By staking out his position so boldly, Archbishop Burke has added a new question to the November ballot: an informal referendum on his own influence.
