5 famous people defending Harrison Butker amid commencement speech backlash
1. Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone
Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of San Francisco took to X Thursday to weigh in on the controversy surrounding Butker’s speech. “[Butker’s] call for young Catholic men to put their vocations as husbands and fathers first could not be more important,” he wrote. “Surely we can ponder his spiritual call to us too. Faithfulness is the way.”
Cordileone’s comment about a “spiritual call” to bishops refers to the part of Butker's address in which he criticized the way some church leaders acted during the COVID-19 pandemic and subsequent lockdowns that led to the implementation of restrictions on in-person worship. “Too many bishops were not leaders at all,” Butker recalled. “They were motivated by fear, fear of being sued, fear of being removed, fear of being disliked. They showed by their actions, intentional or unintentional, that the sacraments don’t actually matter.”
