Once again, TIME's Amy Sullivan delivers the message of the Catholic Left.  You may recall the last time she declared that abortion funding in the health care bill was a "myth."  

That "myth" is causing a real ruckus at the present moment.

This time around Sullivan uses the speech delivered by Archbishop Burke at the September InsideCatholic.com dinner to spin a real myth, "A Tale of Two Priests." 

Archbishop Burke did, in fact, use the occasion of our dinner to make a speech on various aspects of the Holy Father's "Caritas in veritate" and its implication for a culture of life.  He included some rather pointed comments about the then recent funeral Mass for Sen. Ted Kennedy, which became something of a celebration of Kennedy's Catholic contribution to politics in spite of his dissent on pro-life issues.  

Sullivan insists that "Burke's broadside" at Cardinal O'Malley "has set the Catholic world abuzz." She also reports that "friends" of Cardinal O'Malley say he was "stunned" by Burke's comments, particularly his reference to the "Father of Lies."

If that is the case, there was much that must have stunned Cardinal O'Malley in the days following the funeral because the criticism was very widespread among Catholics, both lay and religious.  

Archbishop Burke's comments were not pointed at O'Malley, but they were, no doubt, relevant to the funeral and the participation of Cardinals O'Malley and McCarrick. Amy Sullivan, surprisingly, does not mention McCarrick who received the bulk of the subsequent criticism for his eulogizing of Kennedy and his egregious misrepresentation of a Vatican comment about the funeral.  

Here is what Burke actually said in context:

If there has always been the danger of giving scandal to others by public and seriously sinful actions or failures to act, that danger is heightened in our own time. Because of the confusion about the moral law, which is found in public discourse, in general, and is even embodied in laws and judicial pronouncements, the Christian is held to an even higher standard of clarity in enunciating and upholding the moral law. It is particularly insidious that our society which is so profoundly confused about the most basic goods also believes that scandal is a thing of the past. 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. 

Regardless of the persons this might touch, who can really disagree with it? Amy Sullivan thinks some very powerful people in the Church were outraged to the extent that Burke may face serious consequences: "The question now is whether the Vatican will move again to muzzle Burke."  The "again," by the way, is based upon the questionable assumption that Burke was moved out of St. Louis in retaliation for his outspokenness in the 2004 election.

If Burke were being punished by the move to Rome, being made the Catholic equivalent of the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court is a strange way of doing it, which is precisely the kind of authority he wields as Prefect of the Supreme Tribunal of the Apostolic Signatura. 

Another fact Amy Sullivan fails to mention is that Burke was appointed to the influential Congregation of Bishops on October 23, a month after his speech at the InsideCatholic.com dinner. That appointment, as well as the broad respect Archbishop Burke still commands among the U. S. bishops, suggests quite the opposite of Sullivan's narrative.