Did the Vatican really call Democrats the Party of Death?

[elshiva]

Does anyone have a link?

[pnwmom]

1. Not "the Vatican." One Archbishop. The same guy who was stirring up

similar trouble in his previous post in the U.S. (somewhere in the midwest, I don't recall exactly where).

[izzie]

2. I think people used to tack on war with the party in past years.

Did it do this with Korea when Ike said he would stop that war or some thing like that? It slowly rings a bell with me. The party of war of some such thing. I do not re-call the Pope saying anything.

[elshiva]

3. St. Louis?

[pnwmom]

8. Yes! That's the guy. n/t

[CatholicEdHead]

13. Archbishop Burke is a piece of work

He has been since his days as Bishop of the LaCrosse WI diocese. Yet this is how you get ahead nowadays. The louder and more inane bishops (and even priests) get shows they want to get ahead in the institution, no more no less. The new Archbishop in St Paul/Minneapolis is also cut from the same cloth. Up, up, up, and they offer horrible leadership to the general people but have almost every rule memorized and any possible punishment.

Burke now is at the equivalent of the Vatican Supreme Court. He gets the final say in any religious dispute.

[Beregond2]

4. The Vatican itself would never be that blatant.

Not to mention, they don't want to invite discussion of their role in the Holocaust.

[WePurrsevere]

5. Link & snippet of the story..

http://blogs.reuters.com/faithworld/2008/10/01/vatican-official-attacks-us-democrats-as-party-of-death/

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.

<snip>
Burke made headlines as archbishop of St. Louis for his public attacks on public figures who strayed from Catholic teaching. He suggested during the 2004 presidential campaign that Democratic presidential nominee John Kerry, a Catholic, should be denied communion because of his views on abortion. Several bishops said at the time they would not give him communion and the media staked out churches where he attended Mass to see if he received it.

<snip>
Pope Benedict has been encouraging Catholic bishops to speak out more openly on public policy issues to make the Church’s voice heard. Any bets on when we’ll hear from Burke next?

[elshiva]

10. Sorry, I got it wrong Vatican OFFICIAL, not the Vatican itself.

I'm sorry I can't edit the OP because the editing period ran out.

[WePurrsevere]

11. Some of the news stories dropped "Official" from the headline so...

if it was one of those you glimpsed it's not your fault you were mislead.

FWIW to find the article posted, I Googled "vatican "party of death". If you do the Google yourself there are quite a few with "official" not in the headline as well.

[MichaelHarris]

6. Crusades anyone?

Religion of Death?

[Tanuki]

7. No, but they have consistently opposed the Iraq war

right from the start:
http://www.cathnews.com/news/210/27.php

"The Vatican renewed its opposition to war in Iraq on Wednesday, saying military action would only make matters worse and that a pre-emptive strike raised serious ethical and legal problems.

"It's unilateralism, pure and simple," the Vatican's UN observer, Archbishop Renato Martino, said in comments published in the Italian newsweekly Famiglia Christiana.

The principle of a "first strike" as well as its possible use in Iraq "provoke profound reservations be it from the ethical or legal point of view," he said.

He recalled the Vatican's opposition to the 1991 Gulf War, saying: "Everyone knows the way it turned out. War doesn't resolve problems. Besides being bloody, it's useless," he said.

The Vatican's foreign minister has said the United Nations must authorize any military action in Iraq and a papal adviser has warned against the "unacceptable human costs and grave destabilizing effects" of a preventive strike."

[elshiva]

9. Yes, I knew about that.

Thank you. :)

[Donald Ian Rankin]

12. Not officially, but I don' think there's any doubt they'd like to.

The Pope is trying increasingly hard to make it clear to make abortion, euthanasia and stem cell research (and to a slightly lesser extent gay rights) litmus tests for voters, above all other issues - he's deliberately downplaying the church's opposition to the death penalty and to wars, and making it clear that it's OK for Catholics to support those things, but not for them to support abortion etc.