Cardinal Raymond Burke took a prominent role in Sunday’s first ever March for Life in Rome, presiding over Eucharistic adoration in St. Mary Major basilica Saturday in reparation for the crime of abortion and taking part in the march the next day. In this short interview with the Register, the prefect of the Supreme Tribunal of the Apostolic Signatura reflected on the importance of the march as he joined the thousands of people who walked from the Colosseum to St. Peter’s basilica.
What are your opinions and reflections on the March for Life?
The march is very important as a fundamental witness to the inviolable dignity of human life and the responsibility all of us have to restore the respect for the dignity of human life in society. Rome, as one of the most important cities in the world, makes it important this March is held here. Certainly it has great significance for Italy, but it also has great significance for the whole world. I’ve met people today from north and south America, from Poland, Africa, various parts of Europe and we see the great thirst especially of young people. If you look at the participation here, most of them are young people. They understand the bankruptcy of a culture and society which is anti-life and anti-family and so they’re here to manifest to others their commitment for life and for the family.
Do you detect with this march that perhaps the tide is turning?
I believe so and I’ve believed this for some time. There’s no question that the contrary forces are great and hold a lot of so-called worldly power, but here you have a force which is profoundly spiritual and it will eventually triumph and overcome the forces of the culture of death.
Surprisingly it’s only the first March for Life in Rome.
It is, and the organisers say that they have been inspired by the march in the United States that has been going on since the sad decision of the Supreme Court there. But that it happens here now is good and my prediction is that you’ll see this grow and grow and grow. There’s a temptation to discouragement because they haven’t been able to repeal the abortion laws and so forth. And we see now [the push towards] euthanasia, stem cell research and so forth, but the march brings us together and we understand that there are many, many hearts that are desiring to see change. So it’s very, very powerful. That’s why I’m a big proponent of these big types of manifestations. I believe that they’re greatly important for the advance of the culture of life.
Also opposition to same-sex marriage is a subject of this march as well as opposition to abortion?
As I understand it, I believe the march is aimed at the restoration and respect of human life and so it would be directed towards the culture of life. Many of the people I’ve spoken with here, also from other parts of the world, have expressed their great concern about the whole same-sex, homosexual agenda. That’s only natural because fundamentally what you’re dealing with, with that agenda, is a profound confusion and really error with regard to human life and the sexual identity of each human being and each importance for human life itself. We’re made man and woman to love one another but also to join in an indissoluble and faithful union for the procreation of new human life.
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Please do not keep disseminating false data that youth are turning prolife. I wish I could tell this to Achbp Burke and others who make these claims: the majority of youth are NOT prolife. They merely enjoy protests and holding up signs. If you polled these same youths and asked if they’d support bans on contraceptives, Plan B, IVF and/or embryonic stem cell research in support of prolife causes, you’d get a resounding NO. This is also a crowd that supports same-sex marriage, which is contraceptive sex in its nature.
And now do you know this, Hat Lady? Would you say that to the youth that go to the D.C. March in January?
@Hat Lady: the trend IS towards pro-life. I’ll grant that many young people do not see how contraception, IVF, ESCR, homosex, fornication, and divorce are assaults on life similar in kind to abortion. But it used to be that the majority did not see even abortion as immoral. Now they do. I will cheer this candle, rather than curse the surrounding darkness, and pray that we as a society continue in our current progress towards being a culture of life.
Thank you Cardinal Burke for giving us new hope especially for the youth who must carry the campaign for the future With the Holy Spirit in our corner, we will ultimately renew the face of the earth.
That Hat Lady-
Keep telling yourself that. I’m sure someday you’ll eventually delude yourself into believing it.
Meanwhile, us 20 somethings are protesting, praying at abortion clinics, going to Mass, making Eucharistic Holy Hours, getting married, VOTING (yeah we even do that on occasion) getting married and raising pro-life children. Not to mention not using birth control, condoms, abortion, and hey, we’re even smart enough to know what IVF is and why you’re not supposed to use it.
So why don’t you join us, instead of trolling around on the internet bashing us? Just because that may be all you’ve ever done (protest and hold up signs) doesn’t mean its all we’ve done or will do.
@That Hat Lady…..... the youth of today have lived first hand in the mess that our “free love” parents created for us. We’ve experienced the chaos surrounding single parent households and more and more have also grown up in same sex households (seems the only time those families knew why men and women were created differently were at the times when they made a decision to foist that on innocent children!). We know how lost and insignificant we were to our “parents” and the majority of us also are searching and leaning towards a better life and a better way. Sorry, Hat Lady, the last generation screwed things up. We know that and are determined to turn the tide!!! How many “youth of today” do you actually come into contact with? or are you just regurgitating the stereotypical nonsense that you read somewhere “on-line”???? You are very wrong about us. Sign me: 19, pro-life, pro-family, registered voter, and also “learned from my parents’ mistakes”!
Being a younger youth (as in younger that voting age) I know that I personally am adamantly with the church, but as for a good section of the other youth in my area I’m either sure they’re not or not sure either way. It’s hard to tell without outright asking though.. so while I agree that the trend of secular youth (whether or not their parents are religious) is still towards the end I’d rather it not be, the generalization in either way is dangerous. There is a resurgence I’ve noted in pro-life, pro-family, anti-contraception “-ness” though. In other words, it’s complicated
Burke is deluded if he thinks there is any prospect that all abortions are going to be criminalised…..
@piusxxx: Imagine your hands and feet, arms and legs are bound together. You are blindfolded and there’s tape across your mouth. Now, a member of your family pays some stranger $100 to take an axe to your neck. Should that be crinimal? At what age should it be OK for that to be done to you? 30? 20? 10? 1? Now, why is that OK in your mind but abortion—the very same procedure—can’t/won’t/shouldn’t be criminal? I think Cardinal Burke maintans hope that all hearts will be turned and recognize the horror of this mass killing of innocent human life at the whim of another and indeed take all steps possible to eliminate it from our society.
My nieces and nephews know that they are blessed to be alive- they could have been aborted… The generation that aborts doesn’t recognize the fact that these children of God know that. The Catholic Church is very in tune with the natural rhythms of life- conception of our souls, our births, our lives and actions and consequences of those actions, our deaths, & our eternal existence!!! I am very glad the youth of today can see through the falsehoods of secularism, hatred towards religion, relativism, and materialism. I support and applaud their decisions to be pro-life, pro-family, and pro-actively searching for God’s Divine Truth!
The Catholic bishops of the United States in their official statement on education, November 19, 1950 in the New York Times stated, “We protest in the strongest possible terms against the introduction of sex instruction into the schools.” They also said: “Fathers and mothers have a natural competence to instruct their children with regard to sex.”
Now the USCCB mandate sexualized catechetics in parochial schools and CCD programs - See Motherswatch.net for an analysis of the pornographic materials put before the eyes of youth in every diocese in the U S without exception.
The Alan Guttmacher Instiute, right hand of PPH states that sex education supports abortion. Greviously, prelates in the Catholic Church worked to get sex ed in schools and for more information read, “The McHugh Chronicles.” To date no apologies, no excommunications, no corrections!! Actions do not line up with the words and apathy is killing the unborn. Men were made to combat what offends God! Where are they?
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