The Vatican Thinks Obama is Anti-Family

Looks like the Vatican is stepping up efforts to purge the U.S. Catholic Church of any Democrats, or those who might be even slightly friendly toward LGBT causes.  Archbishop Raymond Burke - the religious leader behind the 2004 dust up over whether Senator John Kerry could receive Communion because of his support for abortion - was the keynote at last week's National Prayer Breakfast in Washington, and he went on a tirade against marriage equality and blasted the University of Notre Dame for hosting President Barack Obama for its 2009 commencement.

Archbishop Burke, the former Bishop of St. Louis, is now the prefect of the Supreme Tribunal of the Apostolic Signatura, which is a mucky muck Vatican position tasked with enforcing Catholic theological law.   Apparently, in 21st Century Catholic theological law, there's no place for Democrats or LGBT folks.

Here's Burke at the Prayer Breakfast on Obama:

There can be no place in [Catholic Universities] for teaching or activities which offend the moral law. Dialogue and respect for differences are not promoted by the compromise and even violation of the natural moral law. The proposed granting of an honorary doctorate at Notre Dame University to our President who is aggressively advancing an anti-life and anti-family agenda is a source of the gravest scandal.

And here's Burke at the Prayer Breakfast on marriage equality:

At the root of the confusion and error about marriage is the contraceptive mentality - which would have us believe that the inherently procreative nature of the conjugal union can, in practice, be mechanically or chemically eliminated, while the marital act remains unitive. It cannot be so. With unparalleled arrogance, our nation is choosing to renounce its foundation upon the faithful, indissoluble, and inherently procreative love of a man and a woman in marriage, and, in violation of what nature itself teaches us, to replace it with a so-called marital relationship, according to the definition of those who exercise the greatest power in our society.

Funny, when I see the phrase "unparalleled arrogance," I think of Catholic bishops who - not knowing what a loving relationship with a partner could be like (due to Church-proscribed monogomy) - think that they can wax on about what a loving, committed relationship should look like in society.

Something tragic is brewing in the Catholic Church these days.  In addition to the outcry over Obama's presence at the University of Notre Dame, earlier this year the Bishop of Scranton went ballistic over the appearance of openly gay author Keith Boykin at Misercordia University (a Catholic school in Pennsylvania).  Catholic colleges and universities are beginning to squeeze academic diversity from their schools, to the point where if Bishops like Raymond Burke get their way, Catholic schools in the U.S. will essentially be mouthpieces for the Vatican, education be damned.

But on another note...is it really in the best interest of the Vatican's foreign policy to have one of its leaders criticizing Obama as anti-family?  Because as best I can tell, Obama (despite my frustrations with him over some LGBT issues) hasn't done anything to merit such a backlash from the Vatican.