Leonard Leo Pressuring the Nuncio to Pressure Bishop Burke to be "quiet"?

According to Austin Ruse, the Nuncio is about to get pressure from Obama to shut Archbishop Burke up.

A few days ago Archbishop Burke gave an interview to the San Diego-based organization Catholic Action for Faith and Family, during which he took the gloves off about Sebelius, who has been nominated to head the massive U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. He noted her “public association with some of the more notorious agents of the culture of death.” This, of course, was a reference to her hosting a party for the late-term abortionist George Tiller, currently on trial in Kansas for nineteen infractions of abortion restrictions.

Burke commented on her fitness for office, saying that for Sebelius to be “placed in charge of the federal office with responsibilities for health and human services” is “sad for our nation” and a “source of great embarrassment.”

Burke closed the interview by issuing a challenge to his brother bishops, most notably Archbishop Donald Wuerl of Washington, D.C.: “Every bishop is held to the same universal discipline which has been in force since the time of St. Paul the Apostle and is stated in canon 915 of the Code of Canon Law.” And then this: “Whether Governor Sebelius is in the Archdiocese of Kansas City in Kansas, or in any other diocese [italics mine], she should not present herself for Holy Communion because, after pastoral admonition, she obstinately persists in serious sin.”

You can see why the Obama administration might get upset about this. They played footsie with pet Catholics of left and right last year and thought they had this kind of problem covered, since some of them have already offered cover for Sebelius. Two groups created to offer such services, Catholics United and Catholics in Alliance, started a petition drive saying Sebelius was really pro-life.

And now there is word that someone who is well known among Republicans, and who has served in previous Republican administrations, is reaching out on behalf of the Obama administration to get the Holy See to quiet Burke, or at least to make it clear he speaks not for the Church, but only for himself.

Democrats may say that Burke overstepped his bounds by commenting not just on Sebelius and Communion, but her fitness as a nominee for HHS secretary. IRS guidelines, which are even now being tested by the Alliance Defense Fund, say Church officials may not comment positively or negatively on candidates for federal office. But Sebelius is not running for federal office. She has been nominated to a cabinet post by the president. And beyond a mere technical question of IRS guidelines, since when are bishops required to shut up about public policy or to speak only for themselves?

But it’s not just questioning her fitness for office that offends Obama and his Catholics. They are also offended about Burke questioning Sebelius’s fidelity to the Catholic Church, for this strikes at the heart of their appeal to Catholics in the pews. Catholics who believe the Democratic answer to health care is more important than the murder of a million children a year desperately need the fiction that someone like Sebelius is a Catholic in good standing. Burke gives the lie to that assertion.

Does this explain this?

I thought this was really a peculiar meme from AB Burke.

I don't know. Maybe it's me, but I had trouble processing the context after years and years of speaking the truth about Canon 915.

There's a guy with a camera, doing an interview. You know he's going to use the interview. A week before the interview comes out, Archbishop Burke has his own interview about Canon 915 and issues a challenge to his fellow Bishops.

How did he think Terry was going to use it? Did he think we'd all be gathering in the underground catacombs to watch it?

Cardinal Burke's letter is a head scratcher, especially this:

“Fourth, I was never informed that the videotape would be used as part of a campaign of severe criticism of certain fellow bishops regarding the application of Canon 915 of the Code of Canon Law.

And he's been out in the public square talking about how Canon 915 isn't optional because.....? To....?

“I am deeply sorry for the confusion and hurt which the wrong use of the videotape has caused to anyone, particularly, to my brother bishops.”

I smell something and I smelled it way before reading Ruse's article.

Don't miss this:

n the course of a Q-and-A, Terry also said Boston Cardinal Sean O’Malley had "done a great disservice to the Church" for failing to excommunicate Sen. John Kerry.

Speaking of which, there's not word one from any of these folks about the original author of that quote and his authoritative statements that Catholics can give out the phone number of the people he's hired to kill other people.

Nobody can answer whether it's Catholic doctrine.

A little screwy.

A lot screwy.

***UPDATE: My sources inform me that Ruse's anonymous Republican luminary putting pressure on Archbishop Burke for Obama, is Leonard Leo, former RNC Chairman. Leo, is famous for taking the RNC from success to the big tent wreck of an organization they have now.

Leonard Leo is also Chairman of the National Catholic Prayer Breakfast and, guess who's coming to breakfast.

In light of this information, Archbishop Burke's raking Randall Terry over the coals makes perfect sense. Leonard Leo and the Nuncio put him up to it on behalf of Obama.

Ruse's story should be written in past tense. It's already happened. Done. Accomplished.

Insufferable.

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.

Archbishop Burke says Democrats risk transforming into the party of death

From CNS:

"That does not surprise me much," the archbishop said. "At this point the Democratic Party risks transforming itself definitely into a 'party of death' because of its choices on bioethical questions as Ramesh Ponnuru wrote in his book, 'The Party of Death: The Democrats, the Media, the Courts and the Disregard for Human Life.'"

Archbishop Burke said the Democratic Party once was "the party that helped our immigrant parents and grandparents better integrate and prosper in American society. But it is not the same anymore."

Pro-life Democrats are "rare, unfortunately," he said.