Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-Missouri) was scheduled to speak at her daughter’s graduation ceremony at a Catholic high school – but the invitation was rescinded over the senator’s positions on abortion and embryonic stem cell research, a major issue in her defeat of Sen. Jim Talent (R) last November. According to McCaskill’s office, the school told her the decision to uninvited her came from Raymond Burke, the archbishop of St. Louis.
Burke gained notoriety for his high profile denunciation of 2004 presidential candidate John Kerry, a Catholic, whom he warned to stay away from mass while campaigning in St. Louis – the archbishop threatened that he would withhold communion. More recently, Burke resigned as chairman of a children’s medical charity after its board of governors refused to cancel a fundraising concert by Sheryl Crow, whom he called “a high profile proponent of the destruction of innocent lives.” Burke’s political activism has made him a hero on the far Right.
