This [6] is gonna' leave a mark...
Vatican officials seldom single out political leaders who differ with the Church on issues like abortion rights or embryonic stem cell research. But now that the Vatican's highest court is led by an American, the former St. Louis Archbishop Raymond Burke, we can expect things to get more explicit in Vatican City - at least when when it comes to U.S. politics.
Burke, who was named prefect of the Vatican's Supreme Court of the Apostolic Signature in June, told the Italian Catholic newspaper Avvenire that the U.S. Democratic Party risked "transforming itself definitively into a party of death for its decisions on bioethical issues." He then attacked two of the party's most high profile Catholics - vice presidential candidate Joe Biden and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi - for misrepresenting Church teaching on abortion.
Boy, it's refreshing when you come across someone who gives it to you without the varnish. He went on...
Burke said pro-life Democrats were "rare" and that it saddened him that the party that helped "our immigrant parents and grandparents" prosper in America had changed so much over the years.
No joke. Given their party's positions on abortion, embryonic stem-cell research, and gay marriage, you can't think that their leadership feels too happy about the Vatican taking a more aggressive role in holding its flock to account, (especially when you consider how many blue-collar Catholics there are in those swing states in the north and upper-midwest).
