Tactical strike for the Catholic left?

For presiding over the funeral Mass of the late Senator Ted Kennedy, Boston Cardinal Seán O'Malley was charged by another Catholic cleric with being under the influence of Satan ("the father of lies").

Such public quarrels are rare and this charge came from the far Catholic right -- from Archbishop Raymond Burke. It was part of his argument and that of others on the Catholic right that pro-choice Catholics should be denied both communion and funeral rites. An undeniably controversial view and deserving of coverage.

Amy Sullivan of Time wrote:

But it's one thing for partisans and bloggers to disparage a Mass for a dead Senator; it's quite another for a Vatican official to do so. Even some leading conservative Catholics may find they cannot support Burke's latest salvo. When told of the Archbishop's assertion that pro-choice Catholics should not be permitted funeral rites, Princeton professor Robert George was taken aback: "That's a very different, and obviously graver, claim than that with which I would have sympathy. I haven't heard before any bishop say that pro-abortion politicians should not be given a Catholic funeral."

In this and other aspects of her article the Catholic right at Life Site News and elsewhere see a "tactical strike for the Catholic left."

Whereas non-Catholics mostly see, well, journalism. Worth reading.