Bishop Burke v. Sheryl Crow

Colleen Carroll Campbell has an interesting essay at NRO online about the criticism of Bishop Burke's resignation from the foundation board of the Catholic children's hospital in St. Louis in reaction to their decision to feature Sheryl Crow (a very public advocate for abortion rights and embryonic stem cell research) at a fundraiser.  Her closing paragraphs:

Many religious leaders have learned that they receive more flattering press if they focus their political pronouncements on the fight against poverty or global warming and avoid issues like abortion. Burke surely learned this lesson. The same critics who loudly told him to stay out of politics in 2004, when he criticized Sen. John Kerry’s views on abortion, voiced no such concern in 2005, when he protested Missouri’s Medicaid cuts.

Today’s religious leaders increasingly face a double standard when it comes to their public pronouncements: They can say what they want as long as they express politically correct views or stay mum on hot-button social issues. Where secular pundits and celebrities are given free reign to plead their case to the public, religious leaders are derided as theocrats for injecting religiously derived moral principles into political debates. This stifling of religious voices is intended to prevent religious conflicts in the public square. But it also prevents the most fundamental form of deliberation necessary to the functioning of a pluralistic democracy: honest debates about right and wrong, good and evil, truth and falsehood.

Burke’s resignation from the foundation board clarified how seriously the Catholic Church takes its teaching about the sanctity of human life from its earliest stages. That teaching may not be popular or politically correct, but Burke has the right to defend it. To vilify him for speaking out because he wears a bishop’s mitre is the epitome of religious intolerance. Such intolerance should frighten religious believers and free-speech defenders of all political persuasions.