Wednesday, January 28, 2009

Archbishop Burke Vicerates the "Catholic News Service" and USCCB "Faithful Citizenship"

Killing two birds with one stone, Archbishop Raymond Burke, the prefect of the Apostolic Signatura, publicly corrects the errors and omissions of Bishops and priests using "Forming Consciences for Faithful Citizenship" to mislead their flock and the abysmal "Catholic News Service".

"Faithful Citizenship" took a punch in the nose too.
The US bishops’ document, “Forming Consciences for Faithful Citizenship,” stated that, under certain circumstances, a Catholic could in good conscience vote for a candidate who supports abortion because of "other grave reasons," as long as they do not intend to support that pro-abortion position.

Archbishop Burke, the former Archbishop of St. Louise Mo. and recently appointed head of the highest ecclesiastical court in the Catholic Church, told LifeSiteNews.com that although “there were a greater number of bishops who spoke up very clearly and firmly ... there was also a number who did not.”

But most damaging, he said, was the document “Faithful Citizenship” that “led to confusion” among the voting Catholic population.

“While it stated that the issue of life was the first and most important issue, it went on in some specific areas to say ‘but there are other issues’ that are of comparable importance without making necessary distinctions.”

Archbishop Burke, citing an article by a priest and ethics expert of St. Louis archdiocese, Msgr. Kevin McMahon, who analysed how the bishops’ document actually contributed to the election of Obama, called its proposal “a kind of false thinking, that says, ‘there’s the evil of taking an innocent and defenceless human life but there are other evils and they’re worthy of equal consideration.’

“But they’re not. The economic situation, or opposition to the war in Iraq, or whatever it may be, those things don’t rise to the same level as something that is always and everywhere evil, namely the killing of innocent and defenceless human life.”

Archbishop Burke also cited the work of the official news service of the US Catholic Bishops’ Conference, that many pro-life observers complained soft-pedalled the newly elected president’s opposition to traditional morality.

“The bishops need to look also at our Catholic News Service, CNS, they need to review their coverage of the whole thing and give some new direction, in my judgment,” he said.


This is a pretty impressive interview out of the starting gate.

The Catholic News Service (not to be confused with Catholic News Agency - has long been a rag for those whose life mission has been trying to reinvent those three days in Woodstock.

I take my vocation as a Catholic Mom, seriously. My children, my charges - they were given to me to hold in escrow. There are things that in hindsight, I would do differently. We all have failures, omissions, commissions that have affected or buried "talents" that we could have or should have done a better job with.

I don't ever remember a moment in my vocation as a mother when I took the teachings of the Church and twisted them. I never made an excuse to cover my shortcomings or failings, my sins or to give myself license to do something that opposes the Deposit of Faith because *I* thought or *I* wanted.

I owned up. I saw wrong and tried to right it. Across the board. I'm not afraid to face Christ.

I can't imagine looking out over a congregation I was responsible for - or a diocese, knowing that some women are having abortions and generations from each one of those people have been snuffed out. All the accomplishments and achievements, joys and sorrows of this life wiped out. All those people, in perpetuity, ripped, their "talents" buried with them - because I thought I knew better than the Church and I lied to people Christ placed under my tutelage. All the education and teaching institutions that will now mislead youth into moral ambiguity.

How they hit the pillows without repentance or shame, fear - knowing they will have to face our Beloved, is one of life's greatest mysteries.

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