Rick Majerus, the Catholic Church and Free Speech

Earlier this week Rick Majerus, the coach of the St. Louis Billikens men’s basketball team was asked by a reporter his views on abortion. Majerus said that he was pro-choice but indicated that it was/is a decision more for women than men and that it was very personal and that a lot of people could have a genuine disagreement of conscience over the subject.

The next thing you know, Raymond Burke, Archbishop of St. Louis, was calling Majerus on the carpet for expressing his opinions while he works for a Catholic university. According to Burke “It's not possible to be a Catholic and hold those positions. When you take a position in a Catholic university, you don't have to embrace everything the Catholic Church teaches. But you can't make statements which call into question the identity and mission of the Catholic Church."
OK, first, the Archbishop cannot make this argument. It violates Majerus’ rights to free speech. I know you’re thinking that Majerus is an employee of a private school and they can put any kind of muzzle on him they want. The problem with this is that SLU just got a big dose of public financing for a new basketball place and they got that money by, essentially, arguing that they served the public of St. Louis and were a public facility/utility that warranted public funding. Now, I am not sure I agree with that reasoning, but the fact of the matter is that the Archbishop cannot have it both ways: He cannot say that SLU needs public money and then try to muzzle free speech. If you want public money, you have to live with the public responsibilities. That means that Coach Majerus gets to say what he wants.

But more important to me is how the fuck did Majerus public statements about being pro-choice call into question the identity and mission of the Catholic Church? Now, I am a Catholic although you could say I have lapsed quite a bit and you would be correct. But I do not recall EVER hearing that the “identity and mission” of the Church was being anti-abortion. True, the official position of the Church is to be anti-choice on the subject of abortion and a lot has been said and written by at least the last two Popes about the subject of abortion, but I always thought that the “identity” of the Church was “Christian,” not Anti-Abortion.” And, similarly, I had always thought that the “mission” of the Church was to bring people, souls more precisely, closer to God through his son, Jesus Christ by teaching the Gospel of Christ. And, while I am a bad Catholic, I do not recall Jesus ever saying a word about abortion.

So, to be blunt, according to Burke, the Catholic Church has gone from being a body in Christ whose message is to spread the gospel to being an anti-abortion group whose reason for existence is to stop abortion. That is not the church I signed up for.
I am sure someone out there will say that maybe Jesus didn’t talk about abortion but he sure did talk about how killing people is wrong. True enough. But why is it that Burke has never said anything like this about people who are in favor of the death penalty? I know that Majerus never said anything about the death penalty, but there are plenty of people in Missouri (their governor, Matt Blunt for one, former Senator Jim Talent, a Catholic, I believe, for another) who are against abortion but in favor of capital punishment and have stated their opinions thusly, but the Archbishop has never scolded them in public. And what about pro-choice Catholics like Rudy Giuliani and Arnold Schwarzenegger; why hasn’t the Archbishop talked about them?
I know that this has ranged a bit far afield but Burke really needs to take a step back and decide if he feels comfortable trying to muzzle public opinion, even if that opinion is of employees of Catholic universities in his bishopric. The First Amendment protects not only Majerus’ right to say what he wants, it protects Burke and his flock’s right to practice whatever religion they want. He should be careful about weakening that Amendment lest it weaken him in the long run.

Spike