Tim Townsend, of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, reports:
ST. LOUIS — Rock singer Sheryl Crow was coming home to Missouri this weekend to sing her polished, roots-rock songs at the Fox Theater to help raise money for children with cancer.
But St. Louis Archbishop Raymond Burke was not interested in Crow’s altruism. He was interested in her activism — specifically her support for embryonic stem cell research, which the Roman Catholic church believes is akin to abortion. On Wednesday, Burke said Crow “promotes moral evils.”
Burke felt so strongly that Crow’s performance supporting the Bob Costas Cancer Center at Cardinal Glennon Children’s Medical Center would be wrong that he resigned from the hospital foundation’s board earlier this week. He believes Catholics — even those who have already bought tickets to the show — should think hard before attending.
For the archbishop, the matter was simple. He had a moral responsibility to avoid the appearance of entangling church teaching and the views of a public figure who supports abortion rights. Burke said he could not allow someone who “publicly espouses the mass destruction of innocent human beings” to raise money for a Catholic hospital.
What if, for instance, there were someone appearing who we discovered was openly racist and who made statements and took actions to promote racism?” he said at his first news conference in years. “Do you think that I would let that go on?”
Read the full story here.
