Interview with Cardinal Burke, Part 2

Cdl. Burke, Spring 2008. (Creative Commons license)

Recently, I had the great honor to have an audience with His Eminence Cardinal Raymond Leo Burke to discuss the state of Catholic men in the United States.

Part One of the full transcript is here. The following is Part Two:

Matthew Christoff:   Your Eminence, what has been the impact of this Catholic “man-crisis” on the Church?

Cardinal Burke:  The Church becomes very feminized. Women are wonderful, of course. They respond very naturally to the invitation to be active in the Church. Apart from the priest, the sanctuary has become full of women. 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.

Men are often reluctant to become active in the Church. The feminized environment and the lack of the Church’s effort to engage men has led many men to simply opt out.

As an example, it became politically incorrect to talk about the Knights of the Altar, an idea that is highly appealing to young men. The Knights of the Altar emphasize the idea that young men offer their chivalrous service at the altar to defend Christ in the sacred realities of the Church. This idea is not welcome in many places today.

Aspects of the Church’s life that emphasized the man‑like character of devotion and sacrifice have been deemphasized. Devotions that required time and effort were simply abandoned. Everything became so easy and when things are easy, men don’t think it is worth the effort.

There has been, and continues to be, serious liturgical abuses that turn men off.

In many places the Mass became very priest‑centered, it was like the “priest show”. This type of abuse leads to a loss of the sense of the sacred, taking the essential mystery out of the Mass. The reality of Christ Himself coming down on the altar to make present His sacrifice on Cavalry gets lost. Men are drawn to the mystery of Christ’s sacrifice but tune out when the Mass becomes a “priest show” or trite.

The rampant liturgical experimentation after Vatican II, much of which was not sanctioned by Vatican II, stripped the Rite of the Mass of much of its careful articulation of the Sacred Mysteries that had been developed over centuries. The Mass seemed to become something very familiar, performed by men; the profound supernatural sense of the Sacred Mystery became obscured.

The loss of the sacred led to a loss of participation of women and men. But I think that men were really turned off by the loss of the sacred. It seems clear that many men are not being drawn into a deeper liturgical spirituality; today, many men are not being drawn to service at the altar.

Young men and men respond to rigor and precision and excellence. When I was trained to be a server, the training lasted for several weeks and you had to memorize the prayers at the foot of the altar. It was a rigorous and a carefully executed service. All of a sudden, in the wake of Vatican II, the celebration of the liturgy became very sloppy in many places. It became less attractive to young men, for it was slipshod.

The introduction of girl servers also led many boys to abandon altar service. Young boys don’t want to do things with girls. It’s just natural. The girls were also very good at altar service. So many boys drifted away over time. I want to emphasize that the practice of having exclusively boys as altar servers has nothing to do with inequality of women in the Church.

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 priest, and most priests have their first deep experiences of the liturgy as altar boys. 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.

Matthew:  There is a great need for a major New Evangelization of men in the Church, to use our term, a New Emangelization. Small steps and incremental efforts are not likely to reverse the exodus of men from the Church. What kind of things have to happen within the Church to draw millions of lukewarm men back into a fervent Catholic faith life?

Cardinal Burke:  First of all, the Church must make a concentrated effort to evangelize men by delivering a strong and consistent message about what it means to be a faithful Catholic man. Men need to be addressed very directly about the demanding and noble challenge of serving Jesus Christ the Eternal King and His Catholic Church.   Men are hungry and thirsty for meaning beyond the everyday world.

The culture in which we live is bankrupt and young men, especially, recognize the brokenness of the culture. Young men and young women want to hear words that are directed specifically to them to use their virtues and gifts for the good of everyone.

We can see that men are hungry from the great success of Catholic men’s conferences that are beginning to expand in the United States. This is evidence that men will respond when the Church reaches out to them in a challenging way. Men are facing great temptations, particularly, as I mentioned due to pornography and confusion about sexuality and desperately need to be taught how to battle these temptations in Christ. Men need to enter into prayer and with the help of God’s Grace, men can overcome these grievous temptations and become men of strong moral character. Catholic men.

We can also see that our seminaries are beginning to attract many strong young men who desire to serve God as priests. The new crop of young men are manly and confident about their identity. This is a welcome development, for there was a period of time when men who were feminized and confused about their own sexual identity had entered the priesthood; sadly some of these disordered men sexually abused minors; a terrible tragedy for which the Church mourns.

We have to be very clear with men about purity, chastity, modesty and even the way men dress and present themselves. Men’s behaviors and dress matter, for it affects how they relate to the world and it affects the culture. Men need to dress and act like men in a way that is respectful to themselves, to women and to children.

To be continued ….

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8 thoughts on “Interview with Cardinal Burke, Part 2”

  1. Pingback: Little Boy Movie Trailer - BigPulpit.com

  2. for there was a period of time when men who were feminized and confused about their own sexual identity had entered the priesthood; sadly some of these disordered men sexually abused minors; a terrible tragedy for which the Church mourns.

    Revolting. I have no idea how anyone could listen to this and not push back.

  3. Burke states that boys don’t like to do things with girls, which is a projection of his own pathology. He uses “feminized” in the first paragraph three times to mean something clearly perjorative but never defines this terrible thing that drives men away. Does he mean banal, boring, dimwitted? Why use the word for “related to women” to mean “stupid?” The answer is in the paragraph beginning “boys and men respond to precision and excellence,” clearly meaning that women don’t. We like sloppy and defective. When a man uses feminine as an insult, it is reasonable to conclude that he just doesn’t like women.

    1. “The introduction of girl servers also led many boys to abandon altar
      service. Young boys don’t want to do things with girls. It’s just
      natural. The girls were also very good at altar service. So many boys
      drifted away over time.”

      This caught my eye as well. For starters, I was an altar boy and I can assure Mr. Burke that I would have rather enjoyed having girls around. Projection of pathology indeed. Second of all, if the girls are “very good at the altar service” and this scares away the boys, isn’t the problem with the boys? Get used to seeing strong, competent women, boys, if you are scared of the quality of their work now, wait til you get to the workplace!

      Lastly, if you want to reach out to men, I would start by dropping the term “Emangelization.” That is just laughably awful.

    2. My two sons have lots of friends of both sexes, and always have. My older son actually avoids all-male groups. Granted that they are only two data points, and I’m hardly His Eminence’s idea of what a good mother should be, but still, it’s evidence that his assertion that boys think girls always have cooties is bogus. Finally, isn’t it possible that, in avoiding activities with girls, the boys are reacting to the message from people like Cardinal Burke that anything female is inherently inferior? If someone in a position of authority told me, when I was a kid, that only girls would “respond to precision and excellence” and constantly used “masculinized” to mean “weak, insipid, banal, and boring,” I would have avoided anything boys did, too.

  4. “The feminized environment and the lack of the Church’s effort to engage men has led many men to simply opt out.”
    I would like to see one bit of real research data which supports this claim. It is misogynist, misplaced, off-putting and in all aspects inaccurate. As my old protege Chris Hitchens would say repeatedly, “Extraordinary claims require extraordinary proofs.” also, “That which can be asserted without evidence can be dismissed without evidence.”
    This interview makes it clear why Pope Francis demoted and banished the pride of clericalism to the ceremonial and distant position of chaplaincy of the Knights of Malta ….

    1. Exactly, the Bishop would apparently like to revert to the good-old masculine environment of priests and alterboys that led many women to feel marginalized.

    2. Burke simply hates women. He uses “feminized” as a perjorative, even though he clearly means things like “banal,” “insipid,” and “uninspiring.” As for that crack about boys not wanting to join activities with girls, Burke has never considered that the boys might be responding to his constant message that girls are stupid and inferior and boys should avoid us. In BurkeWorld, women are stupid and boring and nothing realky to offer the world. No wonder he thinks that gays should be prosecuted. Apparently men will take absolutely any alternative to avoid women unless we serverly punish all other options.

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