To Matt Hower

well aint you the devoted true republican… Reagan was a moron… he did nothing but run this country in the ground like G W Bush… the republican party should be abolished and all members should be convicted of war crimes… and the pope may not be a card carrying nazi…but he sure has the ideals of one… just hope he croaks real soon before he destroys what is left of the catholic church… and now my hatred turns to you… may you rot right next to them in hell

What a relief for St. Louis! This person has done nothing but polarize the catholics of St. Louis. I always thought that a large part of the ordained’s responsibility was to bring people back in to the Church - not send them away.

God works in mysterious ways - but he got this one right! Too bad it took so long!

All St. Louis Catholics are really very lucky that Mr. Burke will leave us before he manages to “flock” all of us just as he did to the St. Stan group!

Someone moderate, tolerant with gays, lesbians, bisexuals, and trangenders. Someone who is a good listener, flexible, tolerant. Someone who respects people of different faiths, denominations, political affiliations, sexual orientations. Someone who is respectful of human rights. Hopefully nothing like Archbishop Burke.

The Archbishop may be blamed for many of the problems that are in the Catholic Church in St. Louis, but the reality of the situation is that the Archbishop is a servant of the people, a shepherd to the flock; and though many of his decisions were not popular, they were necessary. I commend him for graciously taking the criticism he was given, in spite of the intentions behind the remarks made about him. I pray for a man to follow him in the spirit of the love that he had for his flock, with a little more tact.

This just in from the Post-Dispatch:
Archbishop Burke is said to have orchestrated the take-over bid of Anheuser Busch by ImBev.
Now that he has completely destroyed St. Louis, he moves on to Rome where undoubtly he will apply his keen intellect and precise understanding of canon law to many a case and assuredly decide and pronounce more than once… oh yeah, no, we really did mean that marriage was for life and you shouldn’t have gotten that divorce and oh that’s right, yeah, we’re sorry you were confused but we really did mean that you cannot vote for pro-abortion laws and receive communion. Yes, in fact the Catholic Church, really does mean what she teaches.
And to the person who commented that we’re people and not sheep, uh, there’s this book called the Bible and in it a fella named Jesus used that reference many times and I suspect that the one who created us would have a pretty good anthropological understanding about the creature He created… just a hunch.

Wow. In this blog, I have seen: church-bashing; religion-bashing; Republican-bashing; Catholic-bashing; pope-bashing; and Bush-bashing. For a moment I thought I was on the Democratic National Committee website.

My wife and I were never so pleased as when we woke up this morning and saw that Burke was gone. Bottom line….he was not a nice person, and I am glad to see him go.

This is a classic case of addition by subtraction. I hope Burke forgets he ever heard of St. Louis, which needs a pastor [which he wasn't], not a bureaucrat [which he is]. Don’t let the cathedral door hit you on your way out…

“And you non-Catholics, humanists and atheists:MIND YOUR OWN BUSINESS!! Abp Burke has nothing to do with you!!!”

LindyR, you could not be more wrong. Your internecine sectarian squabbling aside, Burke’s behavior impacted much more than the Catholic community, and has everything to do with us human beings.

His Excellency repeatedly refused to cooperate with law enforcement personnel investigating multiple allegations of child rape by priests in his territory. While he is a quite capable– and possibly brilliant– ecclesiastical attorney, he is subject to secular laws. By refusing to turn over requested documents as part of a valid criminal investigation he raised the question of his possibly engaging in obstruction of justice.

His Excellency’s strictures against elected public officials whose political actions did not reflect Catholic dogma also has quite a bit to do with us mere humans. Effectively, HE was undermining the democratic political process by threatening to withhold your sacraments from elected Catholic public officials. This, in effect, if it had succeeded, would have risked forcing the population-at-large to live under laws that were implemented according to the dogma of the Catholic Church.

His Excellency’s pontifications on those lines risked suborning public elected public officials and undermining the Constitution in the name of Catholic dogma. To this day, I have extreme reservations about voting for any Catholic political candidate since, as a mere human, I choose not to live according to Catholic dogma and am reluctant to risk having my Constitutional rights eroded. If I change my mind, I can always move to the Vatican.

His Excellency’s removal from the area falls into “it’s a good thing” category for me because the man is extremely, extremely dangerous.

I wouldn’t necessary celebrate his ascension to the Apostolic Signatura if I were you. I seem to recall that Bernard Cardinal Law of Boston was appointed to a post at the Vatican after some minor scandals in his diocese.

“Scandal.” That’s a favorite word of His Excellency’s, isn’t it? Maybe he and Bernie can have some nice, long chats.