ST. LOUIS POST-DISPATCH
Thursday, Jan. 31 2008

Will history reward Burke for his trouble?
By Colleen Carroll Campbell

When Archbishop Raymond Burke publicly rebuked Saint Louis University
basketball coach and pro-choice Catholic Rick Majerus last week, he must have
known what was coming.

The outspoken defender of Catholic teachings against abortion and embryonic
stem-cell research has been at it long enough to know the drill: First come the
screaming headlines, then the breathless pundit pile-on, followed by the
relentless rehashing of past conflicts and finally the tidal wave of
anti-clerical online tirades. Meanwhile, the Catholic he admonished becomes a
media darling and his plea for support from a fellow Catholic leader — in this
case, Saint Louis University President Father Lawrence Biondi — is met with
stony public silence.

Watching the scenario unfold, one can't help but wonder: Why does Burke bother?

He has Catholic teaching about abortion on his side, of course. The church
always has considered the intentional destruction of innocent human life
through abortion to be a grave moral evil. The church regards
embryo-destructive research and euthanasia the same way. Catholic teaching
holds that Catholics cannot support these things and remain in good standing
with their church.

But as Burke's critics frequently note, plenty of Catholic bishops parrot this
teaching without provoking such ire. They don't make headlines. They don't take
on popular politicians or sports figures. And they certainly don't dwell on
that sticky church law that forbids Catholics from receiving Communion if they
obstinately persist in serious sin.

To do so would be public relations suicide. Every bishop knows it.

Yet Burke and a handful of his peers — including Archbishop Charles Chaput of
Denver and Bishop Thomas Olmsted of Phoenix, among others — not only proclaim
Catholic doctrine but also apply it to Catholics in their midst. Concerned that
decades of cultural accommodation have left American Catholics indifferent to
the 1.3 million unborn children aborted each year, these bishops prefer the
mortification of a media circus to the queasy calm of ignoring injustice.

Their critics say they are unreasonable and out of touch. But history may say
otherwise.

Not so long ago, U.S. Catholic bishops saw another group of people treated as
disposable property. Although a paper trail of papal decrees condemning the
slave trade stretches back to the early 1400s, most American Catholic bishops
sat out the pre-Civil War abolition debate. Historians say they feared
proclaiming the fullness of Catholic teaching on the subject, lest they
jeopardize their precarious position in America and anger Catholics who
supported slavery.

In a famous 1984 speech defending abortion rights, Mario Cuomo, a Catholic and
a former governor of New York, described the bishops' refusal to back abolition
as "a practical political judgment" with parallels to the
personally-opposed-but-publicly-supportive position of pro-choice Catholics.
Bishops who kept mum on a polarizing dispute they probably could not win
"weren't hypocrites;" Cuomo said, "they were realists."

Cuomo's call to "realism" on abortion failed to win many converts among
pro-life Catholics, who regard the timidity of 19th-century bishops on slavery
as a cautionary tale, not an inspiration. Instead, pro-life Catholics find
inspiration for their position in Archbishop Joseph Rummel of New Orleans and
Cardinal Joseph Ritter of St. Louis, bishops who braved fierce opposition and
used threats of excommunication to integrate Catholic schools at a time when
many Catholics bucked church teaching on racial equality.

Throughout our history, America's story has been one of an expanding circle of
concern embracing human beings once dismissed as unworthy of protection. Given
that trajectory, it is reasonable to believe that the struggle to guarantee
protection for unborn human lives someday may join the abolitionist and
civil-rights efforts as defining movements in our history. If and when that day
comes, it will be leaders such as Burke, not their accommodationist critics,
upon whom history will smile.

Colleen Carroll Campbell is an author, television host and St. Louis-based
fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center. Her website is
www.colleen-campbell.com.