Commenting on the sexual abuse problems in the Catholic Church, as evident in the recent cases of Cardinal Theodore McCarrick and the Pennsylvania Grand Jury Report on abuse, Cardinal Raymond Burke, an American, said it is obvious there is a poisonous "homosexual culture" among some priests and bishops and that there "needs to be an open recognition that we have a very grave problem of a homosexual culture in the Church."
In an Aug. 16 interview with Catholic Action for Faith and Family, its president, Thomas McKenna, asked Burke, "Your Eminence, a new wave of clergy sexual abuse has surfaced and is indicating a widespread practice of homosexuality among clergy in dioceses and seminaries across the country. What would you say is the root cause of this corruption?"
Cardinal Burke, a member of the highest court at the Vatican, the Apostolic Signatura, said, "It was clear after the studies following the 2002 sexual abuse crisis that most of the acts of abuse were in fact homosexual acts committed with adolescent young men. There was a studied attempt to either overlook or to deny this."
"Now it seems clear in light of these recent terrible scandals that indeed there is a homosexual culture, not only among the clergy but even within the hierarchy," he said, "which needs to be purified at the root. It is, of course, a tendency that is disordered."
Burke also said this homosexual culture is tied to the anti-life, contraceptive culture prevalent in the United States and globally.
"I think it has been considerably aggravated by the anti-life culture in which we live, namely the contraceptive culture that separates the sexual act from the conjugal union," said Burke. "The sexual act has no meaning whatsoever except between a man and a woman in marriage since the conjugal act is by its very nature for procreation."
"I believe that there needs to be an open recognition that we have a very grave problem of a homosexual culture in the Church, especially among the clergy and the hierarchy, that needs to be addressed honestly and efficaciously," said the cardinal, who also is Patron of the Sovereign Military Order of Malta.
On the spiritual side and the damage the homosexual abuse crisis causes to the faithful, Burke said, "What we must never permit is that these gravely immoral acts, which have sullied so much the face of the Church, permit us to lose trust in Our Lord, who is the Head and Shepherd of the flock. The Church is His Mystical Body, and we must never lose sight of that truth."
"We should be profoundly ashamed of what certain shepherds, certain bishops, have done, but we should never be ashamed of the Church," he said, "because we know that it is pure and that it is Christ Himself, alive for us in the Church, Who alone is our way to salvation."