Anti-Abortion Fetishist Cardinal Burke says President Biden is an “apostate.”

oor Ray­mond Burke, a prince of the Church, who every­one tells me is a canon lawyer, does­n’t seem to know his canon law. He seems to think Joe Biden is an “apos­tate” who can be excom­mu­ni­cat­ed over being pro-choice. (That is to say, Mr. Biden thinks that abor­tion should be legal, not nec­es­sar­i­ly that abor­tion is good.) I’m afraid both claims are false, and we can dis­patch with both of them quick­ly. On the lat­ter point, canon law express­ly lays out what a Catholic may be excom­mu­ni­cat­ed for, and dis­agree­ing with the Church’s teach­ing about legal abor­tion is not one of them. CIC 1398 is the rel­e­vant canon. It says: “A per­son who pro­cures a com­plet­ed abor­tion incurs a latae sen­ten­ti­ae excom­mu­ni­ca­tion.”

In order to “pro­cure” an abor­tion, Pres­i­dent Biden would need to get one him­self. (That’s not like­ly, for obvi­ous rea­sons.) Or he would need to per­form one, which is also not like­ly. Or he would need to pay for one. Or he would need to pres­sure a woman into get­ting one. Or he would need to dri­ve a woman to a doc­tor for the express pur­pose of get­ting an abor­tion. And even if he did any of these things, no cir­cum­stances mit­i­gat­ing cul­pa­bil­i­ty would need to be present.

Mere­ly being pro-choice is not suf­fi­cient to incur a latae sen­ten­ti­ae excom­mu­ni­ca­tion.

But Alt! There’s anoth­er class of excom­mu­ni­ca­tion known as sen­ten­ti­ae fer­en­dae, or excom­mu­ni­ca­tion upon judi­cial review—you know, in a canon­i­cal tri­al.

I am aware. These involve such things as break­ing the seal of the Con­fes­sion­al, kid­nap­ping, tor­ture, incit­ing sedi­tion against the pope. (Car­di­nal Burke needs to be care­ful on that last one.) The prob­lem is, none of them has a thing to do with abor­tion.

But Alt! Car­di­nal Burke does not sug­gest excom­mu­ni­cat­ing Biden because he’s pro-choice. He sug­gests excom­mu­ni­cat­ing Biden because he’s an apos­tate! And accord­ing to CIC 1364, apos­tates do incur a latae sen­ten­ti­ae excom­mu­ni­ca­tion!

Right. And here’s where Car­di­nal Burke’s case is par­tic­u­lar­ly sil­ly. On what basis does he think that the pres­i­dent is an “apos­tate”? Apos­ta­sy, accord­ing to the Cat­e­chism of the Catholic Church, is the “total repu­di­a­tion of the Chris­t­ian faith.”

Total repu­di­a­tion.

When did Pres­i­dent Biden repu­di­ate the Chris­t­ian faith? I missed that. And dear read­er, you will search in vain through the Fake Site News arti­cle for an answer there.

You can only equate being pro-choice with “total repu­di­a­tion of the Chris­t­ian faith” if you think that being against abor­tion is the very essence of Chris­tian­i­ty itself.

The Catholic Church teach­es noth­ing of the kind, and it’s what I mean when I refer to Car­di­nal Burke as an “anti-abor­tion fetishist.” I don’t mean that being against abor­tion is itself a fetish. I am against abor­tion, both moral­ly and legal­ly, and have argued that posi­tion numer­ous times on this wery blog. (Seek and ye shall find.) But I do mean that treat­ing the Church’s teach­ing on abor­tion as though it were the essence of the faith—as though deny­ing it amounts to “total repu­di­a­tion of Chris­tian­i­ty” and “apostasy”—turns it into a fetish.

Total repu­di­a­tion of Chris­tian­i­ty would be some­thing like deny­ing that God sent his only son to redeem the world from its sins. It would mean con­vert­ing to athe­ism, or Judaism, or Islam, or some­thing like that. It does­n’t mean think­ing abor­tion should be legal.

And Car­di­nal Burke is a prince of the Church and a canon lawyer, and he was once the pre­fect of the Apos­tolic Sig­natu­ra, so he should know this per­fect­ly well. Either he has devel­oped the­o­log­i­cal amne­sia, or else he is lying.

I make no claim as to which of the two is cor­rect. Burke him­self will have to tell us.