An op-ed by Archbishop Burke on embryonic stem-cell research

(Someone – Eve, perhaps? – used the phrase “embryo-destroying research” or something like that. Accurate turn of phrase.”

A newspaper article about St. Louis area priests’ views of Burke’s views on Communion

In recent comments to KMOX and the Post-Dispatch, Burke said Catholics in his archdiocese who vote for politicians who support abortion rights have committed a grave sin and must confess before accepting the sacrament of Communion.

“There is no change in policy,” said the Rev. Mark Ullrich of Our Lady of the Holy Cross parish in St. Louis. “Nothing is different, nothing has changed.” Ullrich said had he been asked about voting and Communion before Burke made his comments last week, he “would have said the same thing the archbishop did.”

Monsignor Francis X. Blood, pastor at St. Cecilia in St. Louis, compared a Catholic St. Louisan’s vote for a politician who supports abortion rights to German citizens in the last century who did nothing to stop the Holocaust. “It’s kind of like Nazi Germany,” he said. Catholics who do not vote for politicians against abortion rights “are at least complicit. Not decrying the Holocaust then is the same today as not decrying the Holocaust of the unborn.”

Blood, who is also the director of the archdiocese’s missionary arm, stressed that the sin is less grave than the sin committed by Catholic politicians who legislate in favor of abortion rights and that other issues besides abortion “are important and deserve attention.”