williamlobdell.com

The Vatican and at least 68 Roman Catholic bishops have protested the invite Notre Dame has given President Barack Obama to give its commencement address on May 17.

Church leaders believe Obama’s backing of abortion rights should disqualify him from speaking at a Catholic institution. Getting an abortions is a mortal sin, according to Catholic theology. Among the bishops leading the protest is Archbishop Raymond Burke, retired from the Archdiocese of St. Louis who now heads the Vatican Supreme Court. Perfect.

Burke is know for playing hardball with victims of clergy sexual abuse and aiding and abetting molesting priests. Check out this article about Burke’s actions as Bishop of La Crosse.

Burke was a master at keeping a lid on them. Several victims who claim they were abused by priests in La Crosse tell Riverfront Times they were stonewalled by Burke, who declined to report their allegations to local authorities. And while some of his fellow church officials nationwide were reaching hefty settlements with victims, Raymond Burke was unyielding in his refusal to negotiate with victims’ rights groups. He declined to make public the names of priests who were known to have been abusive, and he denied requests to set up a victims’ fund. Most strikingly, Riverfront Times has learned, while bishop in La Crosse Burke allowed at least three priests to remain clerics in good standing long after allegations of their sexual misconduct had been proven — to the church, to the courts and, finally, to Burke himself.

His critics say Burke’s ability to conceal the diocese’s dirty laundry was abetted by Wisconsin’s unique civil code, which makes it virtually impossible for someone to sue the church for the actions of an individual priest.

“He stands with his fellow bishops in Wisconsin as having had the ability to just rebuke and ignore our victims,” says Jeff Anderson, an attorney in St. Paul, Minnesota, who specializes in clergy abuse cases. “He has a long history of making pastoral statements that they care, that they want to heal, that they want to help. They are very long on words, but very short on actions.”

“We don’t exist, for him,” seconds Peter Isely, a Wisconsin leader of the national Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests (SNAP). “Loyalty to the church is of the highest order for him, and his response to victims’ claims has been lethargic and slow and reluctant and bureaucratic and impersonal.”

(P.S. If you are wondering why some like Burke would be promoted to head of the Vatican Supreme Court, it’s because that’s exactly how the pope wants a bishop to act. He’s being rewarded for this kind of behavior.)

I’d love to get my hands on the list of the 68 bishops who are morally outraged that President Obama would be allowed on the Notre Dame campus to speak. I’d estimated that 90% had some handed in protecting child molesters (Pro choice vs. pro child molester? That’s an easy call). But they spend their energy trying to bar the President of the United States from speaking to Notre Dame students. (I’m not a liberal, but I’d imagine no bishop would protest President Bush speaking there, despite his stance on, say, torture — and that Pope John Paul II said the Iraq War wasn’t a “just war.”) Forget Obama, it’s the bishops who should be banned from speaking on any moral issue to Catholic students (or anyone else).

If anyone can get their hands on the list of protesting bishops, please forward it to me. I’ll love to run a post detailing their involvement in the church’s clergy sexual abuse scandal.