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The La Crosse Connection

Wisconsin Archbishop Follows Bishop Maher's Lead; Denies Communion to Pro-Abortion Politicians

BY THOMAS A. SZYSZKIEWICZ

After Bishop Leo Maher's 1989 denial of communion to Catholic politician, Lucy Killea, for maintaining a public pro-abortion stance, no American bishop denied communion to a pro-abortion political figure until last year. In August of 2003 in a small Wisconsin city on the banks of the Mississippi River -- a town that got its name when French missionaries saw the natives playing a game with a racquet that looked like a crosier -- Archbishop Raymond L. Burke wrote to some legislators in his diocese. After congratulating them on their recent wins, he wrote, "I am compelled however, by the obligation of my office as Bishop of the Diocese of La Crosse to raise with you the position you have taken on legalized abortion.... As a faithful member of the Catholic Church, you have an obligation to fulfill the duties of your office with regard not only to the laws of the state, and but also with regard to the moral law. The moral law demands that innocent life always be protected. Indeed, a law that would allow for the murder of the innocent is fundamentally unjust."

He then wrote, "Your legislative record demonstrates an insufficient concern for the plight of the unborn....You have failed to restrict the evil of abortion when the opportunity presented itself to you."

And finally, "It is a grave contradiction to assume a public role and present yourself as a credible Catholic when your actions on the fundamental issues of human life are not in accord with Church teaching. I call upon you to consider the consequences for your own spiritual well being, as well as the scandal you risk by leading others into serious sin."

The letters Archbishop Burke wrote to State Senator Julie Lassa, a Democrat, and two others were written in August. They were not reported in the press until December, two days after it was announced that he had been appointed to move down the Mississippi to be the archbishop of St. Louis. They were meant as private letters. But, unknown to the bishop and his staff, was that any letter written to a legislator at his or her office comes under the state of Wisconsin's open record law.

The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel was the first to report on the letters and had a copy of Lassa' s, which it claimed it obtained through the open records law. When the letter was made public, the bishop came under immediate attack for supposedly violating the separation of church and state. The Journal Sentinel wrote two editorials and published two columns condemning him in about a week' s time and only one in support of him.

With his transfer to St. Louis, most people figured it wouldn' t go any further than that. Asked by Our Sunday Visitor what would have happened if he had stayed in La Crosse, Bishop Burke replied, "I would have instructed them not to receive Communion and then I would have instructed their pastors to tell them that these people are not to be given Holy Communion. I consider it very serious."

In fact, Archbishop Burke had already done just that. In an official notification which he had promulgated November 23, 2003 and later printed January 8, of this year in The Catholic Times, the La Crosse diocesan newspaper, he told politicians precisely what he said he wanted to do. Citing canon 915, that those who persist in manifest grave sin are not to receive Communion (the same canon Bishop Maher cited with Killea), he told them, "Catholic legislators, who are members of the faithful of the Diocese of La Crosse and who continue to support procured abortion or euthanasia, may not present themselves to receive Holy Communion. They are not to be admitted to Holy Communion, should they present themselves, until such time as they publicly renounce their support of these most unjust practices."

Because the notification was promulgated before it was announced Archbishop Burke was to move to St. Louis, it carried force of law in La Crosse.

Archbishop Burke's actions wasn't the only example of him publicly upholding Catholic teaching on sexual morality. He pulled the Diocese of La Crosse from participation in CROP Walk, an ecumenical walk for the hungry, because the group that sponsors it, Church World Service, distributes contraceptives in Third World countries. He also pulled the diocese from participation in the annual AIDS Walk after it was discovered that groups participating in it and benefiting from it openly supported the homosexual lifestyle.

An interesting effect of Burke's actions was that many parishes in the diocese started having their own walks for the hungry where the money raised went directly to Catholic Relief Services. And despite the withdrawal from the AIDS Walk, the diocesan agency doing outreach to AIDS victims still received funding from the Bishop's Annual Appeal.

Similarly, Bishop Maher's action against Lucy Killea wasn't the only time he stood up for Catholic teaching. Father Ray Ryland, formerly a professor at the University of San Diego, explained that the bishop was also opposed to putting school-based clinics in Catholic schools and told members of National Organization of Women they could not receive communion. Father Ryland recalled that when he was a deacon assigned to Immaculata Parish, NOW members planned to protest that action when the bishop showed up for a Mass there. Father Ryland got a call from a member of Hare Krishna asking him when this was going to take place, "and I remember it distinctly, he said to me, '...so we can come and defend our bishop.'" And the day of the protest, three members of the sect drove down from Santa Barbara to defend Bishop Maher."

At first it appeared Bishop Burke would get the same cold treatment from his brother bishops in Wisconsin as Bishop Maher did from his confreres in California. But Bishop Robert Morlino of Madison, Wisconsin wrote a column in his newspaper, The Catholic Herald, saying that he, Archbishop Timothy Dolan of Milwaukee, and Bishop David Zubik of Green Bay all supported the action. He explained, though, that they were new to their sees and had to wait to evaluate their individual pastoral situations before they could take any action. (The other Wisconsin bishop, Raphael Fliss of Superior, who is due to retire in October 2005, was recovering from orthopedic surgery and Bishop Morlino said he didn't want to disturb him.)

Two days after Bishop Morlino published his column on January 22, the Journal Sentinel published an interview with Archbishop Dolan on the subject of Archbishop Burke and politicians. "So, what's come of this, I think, which I'm happy for, is what you might call we front-burnered this issue again," he said. "And no matter where you stand on the particular style of what he's done, I think all of us, certainly as bishops, Catholic leaders, people committed to a pro-life cause, are glad that it's front-burnered."

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