Catholic Voters Given Leeway on Abortion Rights Issue
By Alan Cooperman
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, September 8, 2004; Page A06
Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, the Vatican's arbiter of doctrinal orthodoxy, has given Roman Catholic voters leeway under certain circumstances to vote for politicians who support abortion rights, U.S. Catholic officials said yesterday.
In keeping with Ratzinger's pronouncement, Archbishop Raymond Burke of St. Louis last week clarified the remarks he made earlier this summer, when he said any Catholic who votes for a politician who supports abortion rights is committing a grave sin and must confess before receiving communion.
Burke now says that, in theory, there could be "proportionate reasons" that justify voting for someone who does not share the church's position against abortion -- though in practice, he told the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, "it is difficult to imagine" what such reasons would be.
You know, Burke, it pretty much doesn't matter if you can imagine reasons or not. What matters is
SOMEONE in the Vatican is intelligent enough top back away from the church-state boundary, even if our politicians…or our archbishops…aren't.
