When the Only Good Dissenter, is a Stifled Dissenter

Originally posted at Talk to Action.

The Catholic Right, Part Sixty-three

"The kingdom of heaven may be likened to a man who sowed good seed in his field. While everyone was asleep his enemy came and sowed weeds all through the wheat, and then went off. When the crop grew and bore fruit, the weeds appeared as well.

The slaves of the householder came to him and said, 'Master, did you not sow good seed in your field? Where have the weeds come from?' He answered, 'An enemy has done this.' His slaves said to him, 'Do you want us to go and pull them up? He replied, 'No, if you pull up the weeds you might uproot the wheat along with them.

Let them grow together until harvest; then at harvest time I will say to the harvesters, "First collect the weeds and tie them in bundles for burning; but gather the wheat into my barn."'" Matthew 13:24-30

On June 27, 2008 the Vatican announced that St. Louis, Missouri's Archbishop Raymond Burke was promoted to Prefect of the Apostolic Signatura -- a position that except for the Pope is considered the highest judicial position within the Catholic Church. It is essentially being the Chief Justice of the Church's Supreme Court.

Pope Benedict may believe he is cultivating the vine by promoting Burke. If so, he is sadly mistaken. Instead, he is letting a pernicious weed grow amid the wheat, one that could choke both the Church and the democratic liberal society within which faith thrives. To paraphrase Thomas Jefferson, Archbishop Raymond Burke is a Prince of the Catholic Church whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant.

One of Archbishop Burke's last official acts in the Diocese of St. Louis illustrates how this is so.

During his reign as the Archbishop of St. Louis, Missouri Raymond Burke sewed more discord and has engaged in more heavy-handed confrontation than perhaps any other member of the American Catholic clergy. For example, he notoriously attempted to influence the 2004 Presidential Election by threatening to deny Democratic nominee John Kerry Holy Communion for his pro-choice positions. He also threatened St. Louis University basketball coach Rick Majerus with similar punishment earlier this year when Majerus dared to say that he supported Hillary Clinton because like her, he is pro-choice and supports embryonic stem cell research.

Archbishop Burke did his best to defeat Missouri's 2006 referendum supporting embryonic stem cell research - this despite the research's potential for curing life threatening diseases; and despite the fact that Missourians of other faiths supported the measure on religious grounds. Unsurprisingly, the archbishop believes that the only good dissent is stifled dissent.

Burke may have been indicating this apparent axiom of his judicial temperament recently. When the Bully in St. Louie banished Sister of Charity Louise Lears, a member of the pastoral team at St. Cronan's Catholic Church in South St. Louis, and a coordinator of religious education in the archdiocese and denied her from receiving any of the sacraments within that jurisdiction. Why? Because she believed women should be eligible for ordination.

The National Catholic Reporter reports:

They call her a bright, energetic, compassionate and faith-filled woman. They see her as a creative, generous and selfless person, a highly effective parish minister. They say she is first rate teacher and preacher. They view her as a person guided by the gospels including an unwavering commitment to justice and the local poor.

Her offense? She dared to believe that all church ministries, including ordination, should be open to women. And she dared to attend an ordination of women to the priesthood, one that Archbishop Burke had a mole videotape. As the National Catholic Reporter duly noted on July 9, 2008:

The archdiocese of St. Louis authorized the video recording of a Catholic women's ordination ceremony that took place in a synagogue last November. It then used the video, along with photographs apparently taken from the video, as evidence to punish a Catholic nun who attended the liturgy, according to several people familiar with the case.

The independent periodical also reported:

However, several people familiar with the documents, prepared by the archdiocese that made up the case against her, strongly criticized what they called the "surveillance" video-taping.

One of the confidential archdiocesan documents, according to knowledgeable sources, was an affidavit giving permission to an individual to attend the ceremony in order to record it. The record of the ceremony is contained on two electronic discs in Lears' file.

It should be noted that NCR also reported that while there is no evidence that the archbishop knew about or ordered the taping, "Catholics familiar with the workings of the archdiocese say it would be unlikely it could have happened without his authorization."

Burke is far from the first weed in the history of the harvest of the Church.

In his biography of St. Augustine, historian Garry Wills provided some keen insight into the ancient Archbishop of Hippo's beliefs on clergy:

"Augustine had argued that the Church on earth is a mixed body, with some weeds growing amid the wheat."(i)

Archbishop Burke is one such weed, not growing haphazardly, but instead being well cultivated by an increasingly belligerent faction within the Vatican. And he is being cultivated to choke the wheat of the Catholic Church as well as that of liberal democracy. He callously labels any dissent, no matter how loyal, as heresy in a manner eerily similar to they way Senator Joe McCarthy viciously maligned political dissent as "communism." The repression of Sister Lears reminds us of authoritarian reaction to the fresh ideas of people who are now Catholic icons; a modern day Bernard of Clairvaux to Sister Lears standing as a modern day Peter Abelard; It uncomfortably echoes the bishop of Paris issued his 1277 edict in which he condemned a series of Thomas Aquinas's theses as heretical, and excommunicated the now venerated saint posthumously. Burke, as with other obstinate and fearful men before him, is all too quick to wield the anxiety of eternal damnation in order to acheive his vision of a neo-Carlist society.

Fear. It is the bully's primary weapon. And the same person who would use fear as a weapon to quell dissent within an organized religion would not hesitate to use that very same device on the greater secular society. And indeed, that is precisely what Archbishop Burke and his ilk have been repeatedly doing - as they try to intimidate American Catholics into becoming docile, non-thinking citizens who would act to make other religious and non-religious citizens succumb to an ultra-orthodox Catholic morality.

As I said in my earlier piece on Burke as a leader of the Catholic Right, he is willing to use whatever means necessary to silence dissent--and to interfere with the rights of citizens and candidates for public office who disagree with Vatican teachings on certain matters. And as I've also stated in my earlier pieces in this series, such bullies must be challenged. Thankfully, there are Catholics making known their extreme displeasure with Archbishop Burke's authoritarian ways. American Catholics are waking up to the dangers presented by this intolerant man and those like him.

Those who will not tolerate differing opinions will endanger the rights of others to believe as they see fit. Standing up to Archbishop Burke and standing with Sister Lears will send two important messages: we don't tolerate bullies and we cherish a non-sectarian society that let's all religious faiths flourish, not just the stilted vision of a tyrant.

Endnote:

(i) Wills, Garry, Saint Augustine, A Life, page 115

The Catholic Right: A Series, by Frank L. Cocozzelli