Priests Spar Over What It Means to Be Catholic

A pair of prelates face off over pro-choice politicians in an unusually public dispute that threatens to split American Catholics

Jeff Roberson / AP

Archbishop Raymond Burke says pro-choice Catholics should be denied Communion and funeral rites

The leaders of the Roman Catholic Church traditionally couch even the harshest disagreements in decorous, ecclesiastical language. But it didn't take a decoder ring to figure out what Rome-based Archbishop Raymond Burke meant in a late-September address when he charged Boston Cardinal Seán O'Malley with being under the influence of Satan, "the father of lies."

Burke's broadside at O'Malley was inspired by the Cardinal's decision to permit and preside over a funeral Mass for the late Senator Ted Kennedy . And it has set the Catholic world abuzz. Even more than protests over the University of...

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