c. 2015 Religion News Service
(RNS) Cardinal Raymond Burke, a senior American churchman in
Rome who has been one of the most outspoken critics of Pope Francis’ push for
reform, is roiling the waters yet again, this time arguing that the Catholic
Church has become too “feminized.” Burke, who was recently demoted from the
Vatican’s highest court to a ceremonial philanthropic post, also pointed to
the introduction of altar girls for why fewer men are joining the
priesthood.
“Young boys don’t want to do things with girls. It’s just natural,”
Burke said in an interview published on January 5. “I think that this has
contributed to a loss of priestly vocations.
“It requires a certain manly discipline to serve as an altar boy
in service at the side of (a) priest, and most priests have their first deep
experiences of the liturgy as altar boys,” the former archbishop of St. Louis
told Matthew James Christoff, who heads a Catholic men’s ministry that called
the New Emangelization Project. “If we are not training young men as altar
boys, giving them an experience of serving God in the liturgy, we should not be
surprised that vocations have fallen dramatically,” Burke said.
The Catholic Church dropped its ban on girls assisting the priests
during Mass in 1983, and today it is common to see more girls than boys helping
on the altar. Only one U.S. diocese, in Lincoln, Nebraska, still bars altar
girls, though a number of individual parishes have barred them in hopes of
encouraging more boys and men to consider the all-male priesthood.
In the interview, Burke also blamed gay clergy for the church’s
sexual abuse crisis, saying priests “who were feminized and confused about
their own sexual identity” were the ones who molested children. Researchers
have disputed that claim, and experts note that the reported rise in the number
of gay men entering the priesthood since the 1980s coincided with a sharp
drop-off in abuse cases.
Burke, 66, spoke to Christoff in December during a visit to La
Crosse, Wisconsin, where Burke served as bishop in the 1990s before being named
archbishop of St. Louis. In 2008, then-Pope Benedict XVI called Burke to the
Vatican to head the church’s top court and made him a cardinal. That
prestigious position lent weight to his increasingly sharp and direct
criticisms of Francis, who succeeded Benedict in March 2013.
In an unusual move, Francis effectively demoted Burke in November,
shifting him from his job in the Roman Curia to a largely ceremonial post as
patron of the Order of Malta, a global Catholic charitable organization based
in Rome. Vatican observers suspected the switch would actually give Burke
more freedom to speak his mind, and in this latest interview the cardinal
doubled down on themes he has often struck: that liberalizing changes in both
society and the church, especially “radical feminism,” have gravely undermined
the Catholic faith since the 1970s.
Burke said he recalled “young men telling me that they were, in a
certain way, frightened by marriage because of the radicalizing and
self-focused attitudes of women that were emerging at that time. These young
men were concerned that entering a marriage would simply not work because of a
constant and insistent demanding of rights for women.”
He said that “the radical feminist movement strongly influenced
the Church” as well.
The focus on women’s issues, he said, plus “a complete collapse”
of teaching the faith and “rampant liturgical experimentation,” led the church
to become “very feminized.” That turned off men who “respond to rigor and
precision and excellence,” Burke said.
“Apart from the priest, the sanctuary has become full of women,”
he said. “The activities in the parish and even the liturgy have been
influenced by women and have become so feminine in many places that men do not
want to get involved.”
Burke, a liturgical traditionalist as well as a doctrinal
conservative who is renowned for wearing elaborate silk and lace vestments
while celebrating Mass, also said that “men need to dress and act like men in a
way that is respectful to themselves, to women and to children.”
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