Ed Peters is on the case of the kerfuffle between Arbchishop Raymond Burke of St. Louis and Cardinal Glennon Hospital for Children over a fundraiser featuring Sheryl “One-Square” Crow.
The archbishop resigned as chairman of the major fundraising event because of Crow’s notorious abortion advocacy and the hospital’s refusal to disinvite her at his request.
What astounds me is that the directors of a fund-raiser for a venerable institution for children could have been so clueless as to invite Sheryl Crow, a notorious abortion advocate, to headline their event; worse, the directors were so willful as to reject what were obviously many private entreaties by their chairman Abp. Burke to drop the mad idea before it all blew up in their face.
So now, it’s blown. How sad. All the sadder for having been so easily avoidable.
But you know, I’ve seen this happen before: Catholic movers and shakers, flush with their own funds or with easy access to others’, too often measure success in philanthropic undertakings in terms of media splash, dollars donated, and the number of glitteratti chatting around banquet tables, while they completely forget the fundamental religious, and even the human, values that make their efforts worthwhile in the first place. This time, even the clear words of a very thoughtful archbishop could not pierce the commotion which the organizers of this event confused for progress.
Crow is suddenly all over the media in the past week, and not in good ways. First was her bizarre accosting of Karl Rove at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner last weekend; then her weird diatribe that she wants to pass a law requiring people only use one square of toilet paper for each visit to the bathroom; and her environmentalist hypocrisy for using four buses, six cars, and three tractor-trailer trucks to conduct a “Stop Global Warming College Tour,” the use of one bio-diesel bus for two weeks as a publicity stunt notwithstanding. Of course, back in 2003, she was protesting the War in Iraq with the slogan “No enemies, no war.” How could we have missed it? If only we clicked our heels and repeated over and over “no enemies, no enemies,” al Quaeda and Saddam and the Taliban and the rest would come to their senses and no longer seek to do evil.
So who was the brain trust at Cardinal Glennon Hospital who thought inviting Crow of all people was a good idea?
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