Demoted conservative Cardinal Raymond Burke stated in an interview that radical feminism is to blame for priests’ sexual abuse of children.
While you recover from that, let’s review some of Burke’s recent history and standing in the Church, then we’ll try to untangle the ways in which Burke says he got from A to B in that ridiculous statement.
Who Is He?
Burke was the?Republican shill conservative voice of the Catholic Church until November 2014. After calling for ?faculty member Rick Majerus at?St. Louis University?to be formally disciplined for attending rallies in support of pro-choice candidate, Hillary Clinton, as well as calling?voting for a pro-choice candidate ‘a serious sin’ and insisting that Catholic voters and politicians are “bound by their faith to oppose” same-sex marriage, political media outlets began noting his support of Republican candidates and policies.
Burke was demoted from?head of the Apostolic Signatura, the Vatican’s Supreme Court, to become the patron of the Order of the Knights of Malta, a largely ceremonial position, by Pope Francis, whom Burke had called out as blessing the weakening of “the church’s teaching and practice” with his views on reproductive justice and his acceptance of the LGBT community. Pope Francis insisted that the demotion was not a punishment. Cardinal?Burke stated in interviews that:
?The pope, more than anyone else as the pastor of the universal church, is bound to serve the truth,? Burke said. ?The pope is not free to change the church’s teachings with regard to the immorality of homosexual acts or the insolubility of marriage or any other doctrine of the faith.”
He Said What?!
In Burke’s interview, he blamed such modern practices as the Church allowing altar girls as the reason for the decline of male participation in the Catholic Church, since:
?Young boys don’t want to do things with girls…I think that this has contributed to a loss of priestly vocations.”
My Response
First, the 2013 lawsuit brought against the Catholic Church for its massive cover-up of child sexual abuse by clergy detailed claims against priests who ministered from?1950 to 2002. These claims indicate that 4% of Catholic clergy members were reported as having committed child sex abuse during this time. Radical feminism garnered national attention in the?very late 1960s, rose to prominence in the early 1970s; therefore, they could not have possibly had an effect on the church in 1950, when the reports began. Altar girls, by the way, were not allowed in Catholic churches until much later?in 1983.
But let’s not get anything confused. The points I made above are just trivial nit-picking in regards to Burke’s statements. The only people to blame for the abuse of children by Catholic priests is the Catholic priests who perpetrated abuse against children. The onus of the immense scope of that abuse lies at the feet of the powerful organization and its leaders that covered it up and allowed it to continue. That organization is the Catholic Church.
The church has only begun an attempt to address these issues and to create changes in practices to prevent them in the future. Let’s not deflect blame and take the focus away from where it should be, which is on the perpetrators and those who covered for them.
