Heroic Catholic leader Cardinal Raymond Burke has recently become the target of vitriolic language among those who have chosen to fashion the argument that Catholic teachings are out of date and represent “hatred and bigotry.”
The tragedy is that among those using anything but respectful language to take issue with what the cardinal has said are self-proclaimed homosexual priests within the Catholic Church.
Fr. André Samson, who is a Faculty of Education professor at the University of Ottawa “openly proclaims he is ‘gay.’” According to LifeSiteNews, this priest used “public radio and social media to smear Cardinal Raymond Burke for his outspoken defense of Catholic teaching, calling the high profile Church leader who visited Ottawa last week a ‘clown’ and a ‘drag queen,’ and [is] now saying that the cardinal’s statements on homosexuality are ‘violent.’”
Really? And why is that, you might ask? Let’s see what Cardinal Burke has to say about homosexuality. According to a report in LifeSiteNews, Cardinal Burke addressed a Canadian audience and discussed the moral evils of our time, including same-sex marriage:
“One necessarily thinks too of the ever advancing agenda of those who want to redefine marriage and family life to include the unnatural sexual activity of two persons of the same sex, which is justified as tolerance of so-called ‘alternative forms’ of human sexuality, as if there were a true form of human sexuality other than that intended by God, our Creator and Redeemer, as he has written it in our body and soul.”
Burke called the above “great evils which beset the world in our day,” adding that they indicate a way of living “as if God did not exist.”
“They are a manifestation of sin, [which] at its root is pride—the pride of man who fails to recognize that all that he is and has comes from the hand of God who has created us and has redeemed us from the sin of our first parents,” he said.
Clearly, the cardinal was not uttering “hate speech” of any kind, but rather was setting forth, as he has done on so many occasions, the truth which, as Christ taught in John chapter 8, sets us free.
Having said that, it is clear that the perverse thinking that would prompt an openly “gay” priest to condemn the cardinal is rooted itself in hatred, bias, and bigotry toward Christ Himself. We need not look too far to understand that such utterances are destined to divide Catholics on the basis of a false teaching known as tolerance. And this is so even though Catholic teaching on homosexuality, for example, is not new and cannot change.
Metropolitan Hilarion, chairman of the Moscow Patriarchate’s Department for External Church Relations, has spoken out in defense of the very teachings Cardinal Burke is being pilloried for having defended. Metropolitan explained, “The legalization of same-sex cohabitations, tolerant attitude to euthanasia and prostitution, disruption of the centuries-old institution of marriage and family, pose a clear threat to the future of humanity.”
Indeed, Cardinal Burke’s words and those of Metropolitan Hilarion are united with the profound statements of many clear thinkers among the Catholic greats of our age. Father John Hardon, SJ, unashamedly taught the very same truth. In fact, in his analysis of the teaching of Catholic catechism he put this forth in the form of a question and answer:
What is the most important moral factor in the historic rejection of homosexuality?
The most important moral factor is the teaching of religion, especially, but not only, Christianity. That is why Sodomites concentrate on trying to change the historic condemnation of homosexuality. They realize that the religious factor is at the heart of the rejection of sodomy over the centuries.
Once defense of faith and truth is lost and Christianity caves in to the pressure to tolerate evil for its own sake, the fight against abortion, contraception, euthanasia, and all threats against human dignity is lost. And yes, the culture of death is aware and is pressing at the gates.
We ask God’s blessing on the lions who stand in the wake and will not allow the gates to be beaten down. Cardinal Raymond Burke, one such lion extraordinaire, deserves our gratitude and our prayers.
We ask as well for the intercession of the saints so that we may do all within our power to resist evil and teach truth, and that we may follow the example of men like Cardinal Burke and understand that there is no price too high to pay when our goal is to stand always with Christ.
