Bryan Burwell

Libraries and history books are filled with details of the importance of the separation of church and state. Until now, there was no pressing need to delineate the separation of church and sports. It’s called a sideline, and until now, it’s worked pretty well, even though a little divine intervention for the sagging fortunes of Notre Dame football would actually be appreciated.

For the most part, it always has been easy for most of us to tell the difference between a church pew and a bleacher seat, even though the Jesuits, Christians and Mormans are some of the most aggressive practitioners of the full-time business of big-time athletics. But in St. Louis, the line is starting to get a little blurred as St. Louis University’s high-profile basketball coach Rick Majerus and the city’s controversial Archbishop Raymond Burke have become involved in a manufactured controversy that calls attention to whether the church can tell one of its rain-making athletic icons what to say and how to think.

Majerus was attending a political rally for Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Hillary Clinton Saturday night in suburban St. Louis, and during an taped interview with a local television reporter, Majerus said he was supporting the former first lady, and also agreed with her party’s support of abortion rights and stem cell research.

A basketball coach talking politics should not be the lead story on the nightly news. But on Monday night, it became big news when the local reporter decided to snitch on Majerus to Burke, the famously polarizing local Catholic leader who has had several public spats with celebrities concerning their pro-choice stances. In 2004, Burke said he would deny communion to Sen. John Kerry, then the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee who supported abortion rights. Last fall, Burke took on Rudy Giuliani, a 2008 Republican presidential candidate and abortion rights supporter, promising to deny him communion as well.

Last April, Burke resigned from the foundation board of a local children’s hospital after the foundation's board refused to replace Sheryl Crow as the musical headliner benefiting the hospital's Bob Costas Cancer Center. Crow is a supporter of embryonic stem cell research.

Now here’s where the “manufactured” part of the controversy begins, because the local reporter did more to stoke the controversy than Majerus. Soon after Majerus said he was pro-abortion and stem cell research, the reporter asked him: “Are you Catholic … Is this OK with (SLU president) Father Biondi?”

“What, are you trying to go ‘60 Minutes’ on me?” Majerus lightheartedly asked.

Little did he know.

Within 48 hours, Majerus was caught in the middle of the latest mini holy war waged by the archbishop. Once the reporter contacted Burke, a controversy was born when the church leader said he would encourage SLU officials to not only discipline Majerus, but also put a public muzzle on him as well.

“I would have to insist that it is not possible for a representative of the university to espouse these views,” Burke told the reporter. “They’re in open violation of moral law, let alone Catholic teaching.”

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Thankfully, SLU officials — including the school’s Jesuit president — behaved with a more open-minded sense. The school announced that Majerus was entitled to speak his mind, particularly when he’s acting as a private citizen, not a representative of the school. "Rick's comments were his own personal view," said university spokesman Jeff Fowler. "They were made at an event he did not attend as a university representative. It was his own personal visit to the rally."                                     

For all his charming Friars Club glibness, his occasionally abrasive tough-love coaching habits and his quirky postgame interviews that can ramble on delightfully enlightening and profoundly peculiar stream-of-consciousness paths, Majerus isn’t some simple man. He’s a smart and complicated man who cares about so many more things than raising basketball to a well-played athletic art, or delivering another self-depreciating punch line.

So no one should be surprised that Majerus is interested in presidential politics, or that he might be willing to express his political opinions, either. He’s a grown man well beyond voting age, and just because he happens to be the SLU basketball coach doesn’t mean he should be expected to keep those opinions private. His father was secretary-treasurer of the United Auto Workers Union, and according to Majerus' autobiography “My Life on a Napkin,” on election night 1976, Jimmy Carter called the Majerus house and said, "I just wanted to thank your dad. I carried Wisconsin, and your father was a big help to me there, and in Illinois as well."

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