1952 called; it wants Cardinal Raymond Burke back.

And it can have him.

From Religion News Service:

[O]ne 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.”

More than 30 years after the Vatican began allowing choir girls to help priests during Mass, Ray Burke still misses the traditional sausage-fest. He wants his choir boys.

“Young boys don’t want to do things with girls. It’s just natural,” Burke said in an interview published on Monday (Jan. 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.”

Feel free to head-desk along with me. After the explosion of pedophilia scandals that have thrown the Catholic Church into turmoil for decades now, it takes a certain linguistic cluelessness for His Eminence to refer to what boys don’t want to do with girls and to speak of “deep experiences” with altar boys.

But wait, there’s more.

“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.

Of course. That the Church has an increasingly well-known history of pedophilia, rape, and other crimes against children would have nothing to do with falling applications.

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.

One of the most interesting pieces of religion news from 2014 was that Burke had been ousted as the Vatican’s second-in-command, and demoted.

Not to worry, Cardinal: in my eyes, you’ll always be a number two.



