“At best, the activity of LifeSite is a form of unthinking activism akin to a shooting gallery. Now and then they hit a target,” [Fr. Rosica] said. “More often, however, they leave a vast trail of collateral damage, character assassination and destruction of reputations of good people, including Cardinals, Bishops, priests, religious and community leaders.
LifeSite's editorial response is very charitable in comparison:
The open secret is that much of the talk about “civility” we hear nowadays is too often only a ploy to silence, dismiss, and ultimately condemn those with whom one happens to disagree. We saw this clearly in 2009, when Fr. Rosica chastised many pro-life and Catholic leaders for the position they took on the grandiose Catholic funeral given to Senator Ted Kennedy.
There was, of course, plenty of room for legitimate disagreement on the issue. However, in almost the same breath that Fr. Rosica lamented the loss of “civility, charity, mercy and politeness,” he labeled those who had criticized the public funeral for the late pro-abortion senator as “not agents of life, but of division, destruction, hatred, vitriol, judgment and violence,” and described them “as little children bullying one another around in schoolyards - casting stones, calling names, and wreaking havoc in the Church.”
Vatican Archbishop, now Cardinal, Raymond Burke had an opposite view to that of Fr. Rosica towards those who sincerely saw that there was scandal in the way the Kennedy funeral was conducted. Archbishop Burke went so far as to say, “One sees the hand of the Father of Lies at work in the disregard for the situation of scandal or in the ridicule and even censure of those who experience scandal.”
I feeel sorry for clergy who have difficulty discerning enemy from friend, and will continue to pray for faithfulness and charity in all our clergy and of course, in the entirety of the pro-life movement.
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