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Politic Or Not, Burke Was a True Pastor
By Colleen Carroll Campbell
Posted: Sunday, August 17, 2008

ARTICLE
St. Louis Post-Dispatch
Publication Date: August 14, 2008

This Sunday, Archbishop Raymond Burke will celebrate a farewell Mass at the Cathedral Basilica. If past gatherings are any measure, Burke's admirers will swarm the church for a warm send-off. His detractors, dizzy with glee since Burke announced his impending departure in June, will watch the supporters and wonder: How can they be so sorry to see him go?

After all, everyone knows that Burke is not "pastoral." A pastoral bishop makes decisions based on poll numbers and the "signs of the times," not the musty dictates of scripture or tradition. He affirms members of his flock just as they are, stays out of the crosshairs of powerful politicians and leaves the big thinking about contentious moral issues to the real experts: left-leaning theologians at American universities who know more than the stodgy old guys in Rome.

By this standard, Burke clearly flunks the pastoral test.

Consider his behavior when he first arrived here: Burke proclaimed that pro-choice Catholic politicians should be denied the sacrament of Holy Communion if they persist in backing legalized abortion. Then he admonished pro-choice Catholics who support those politicians because of their abortion stance to repent.

Of course, the Catholic Church has opposed abortion for eons. And Burke made an airtight canon-law case for his position in a 2007 journal article that many Vatican watchers cite as a reason for his recent promotion to the church's equivalent of Supreme Court Chief Justice. Burke now may rank as the world's foremost authority in church law, second only to Pope Benedict XVI himself, and his promotion may be Benedict's way of ensuring that Burke's views reverberate throughout the church.

But never mind all that. Talking about the inviolable dignity of unborn human life is not pastoral. Politically correct -- ahem, pastoral -- church leaders dodge discussions of abortion. Sin is so pre-Vatican II.

The same goes for fighting heresy. Truly pastoral prelates know better than to tangle with media-savvy Catholics careening toward schism, such as the two St. Louis women who participated in faux priestly ordinations last year or the leaders of St. Stanislaus Kostka Church who spent six decades resisting diocesan attempts to make their parish conform to the same structure as all other St. Louis parishes.

The Vatican repeatedly has backed Burke's stands in these cases. And the bizarre antics of the renegade Polish priest hired against Burke's objections have divided St. Stan's and driven several of its board members to repent and reconcile with Burke.

Still, a pastoral leader would have let the rebels do their own thing. As Jesus said, "Live and let live." Or something like that.

There is, of course, another view of the good pastor. In this view, a pastor cares about principle more than public opinion. He regards himself as the guardian of a faith he did not invent, a faith he has no right to reinvent when its teachings fall out of fashion. A shepherd in this mold defends gospel values and church teachings, whether convenient or inconvenient.

Such pastors rarely become media darlings. But they do make a difference. After fewer than five years, Burke will leave St. Louis with bursting-at-the-seams seminary enrollment, a reinvigorated pro-life movement, stirrings of liturgical renewal and a flock that no longer can plead ignorance about what the Catholic Church teaches.

This legacy -- along with Burke's down-on-the-farm humility, self-deprecating humor and habit of sticking around a gathering to greet every person who wants to say hello -- has won him more fans than most press reports suggest. They know from firsthand experience what a true pastor is: a man who cares enough to tell them the truth, no matter how unpopular it may be.

-- 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.