The Guidelines aren't so Strict, Minnesota Archbishop Soft on Marxism

Dennis McGrath, the mouthpiece of the Archdiocese of Saint Paul, Minnesota, insists that a controversial speaker, Father Kevin Burke SJ, who is about to speak at a local parish, Our Lady of Grace in Edina, is a priest in good standing and there is no cause to invoke any sanctions against his coming visit and talk. While Mr. McGrath admits that the Church has admonitions about Liberation Theology, he won't admit that it condemns this Marxist ideological approach. McGrath insists that, "condemnation is much too strong a word." In reality the Church has condemned Liberation Theology and even if a specific condemnation weren't available at this point, many of its underlying principles. The Communications Director of the Archdiocese is wrong, the Church has condemned Liberation Theology and the Archdiocese (link) is hosting a well-known advocate of Liberation Theology and Homosexuality in opposition to his own rules not to host speakers whose writings are not in harmony with the teachings of the Catholic Church.

Father Burke SJ has written and not retracted various treatises on Liberation Theology in praise of Marxists like Ignacio Ellacuria, who became a casualty of war when he assisted Soviet backed guerrillas in the Salvadoran civil war.

He also heads a faculty in Berkeley that features "Queer Studies". It's hard to see how this amounts to "being in harmony with the teachings of the Church."

When we brought this to the McGrath's attention, he accused the interviewer of not "loving homosexual persons" and went on for a while, insisting that they are certainly welcome in the Archdiocese.

We'd suggest that the Communications Director, given the large salary he receives to represent the Archdiocese in these matters, actually read the directives and teachings of the Church and Archdiocese he claims to represent.

At this point it seems clear where the Bishop and Dennis McGrath, ever eager to make false allusions himself, stand with regard to the teachings of the Church. We would in no way, of course, say that Archbishop Nienstedt or any of those under his leadership are Marxists or Homosexuals, naturally.

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Kevin Burke SJ.

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