Scandal is failure to hand on moral teaching, says Burke

Bishop Raymond L. Burke of La Crosse

MILWAUKEE -- The current clergy sexual abuse scandal is "a question of human weakness. But it is also a question of failing to accept and hand on Roman Catholic moral teaching and integrity," according to Bishop Raymond L. Burke of La Crosse.

Burke spoke of the Catholic response to the scandal during his keynote address to about 250 members of Catholics United for the Faith at the Milwaukee Wanderer Forum last Friday at the Ramada Airport Hotel.

Quoting one of his former seminary professors, who said that "where there are problems of chastity, there are problems of obedience," Burke called incidents of clergy sexual abuse "acts of rebellion against God's commandments done by people who refuse ... the teaching authority of the church and become a law unto themselves."

He quoted from paragraphs 2284 through 2287 of the Catechism of the Catholic Church, which defines scandal as grave when perpetrated by those in positions of authority. Burke said that "for Satan, the victory is more complete if he can corrupt the thinking of the shepherds themselves or lead them into failure to teach."

Burke linked the "dissent at the foundation of the sexual abuse scandal" to a mass failure in catechesis over the past 30 years, particularly to those adults seeking full communion with the church. He noted that the "truth of faith and morals may never have been taught to the catechized" and that "what we do not teach as catechists, we do not believe as we ought. There is a radical need today to teach in its integrity the natural moral law and to teach anew the law revealed in Scripture and handed on by the magisterium."

Burke's proposed response to the current scandal was an "act of greatest possible charity toward victims and perpetrators." He called for prayer and reparation as means of healing, but admonished victims not to make their "grave wound the whole point and reference of life. This leaves no place for Christ to enter" into the wounded soul and heal it.

"No matter how grave the act of sexual abuse," Burke said, "our response in Christ must be to hate the sin but be filled with hope in the healing grace of Christ and in charity to be filled with love for the sinner. It is, in fact, as our faith teaches us, the only way to heal. The Catholic response to scandal is charity."

According to Burke, "clearly there has to be zero tolerance of the sin of sexual abuse, but it is anti-Gospel to speak of zero tolerance of the sinner. Care must be taken to understand the nature of sinful acts and assist the sinner in taking up a life of repentance so that the necessary reparation can be done."

Burke suggested turning to Our Lady of Guadalupe to help the church through its current crisis. Mary appeared with child in 1531 "to announce God's love to those in misery," he said. "Only the holiness of her child will overcome the gravity of the present scandal and heal the deep wound it has inflicted on our church and nation."

The two-day conference, "A Call to Holiness," presented by Living Catholic Seminars and the Milwaukee Wanderer Forum, drew about 600 participants. Saturday's presentations included "Time Management for Catholics," by Dave Durand, a Catholic evangelist and president of Living Catholic Seminars; "First Comes Love," by Scott Hahn, a convert to Catholicism in 1986 who is a professor of theology and Scripture at Franciscan University of Steubenville, Ohio; and a performance by singer-songwriter, Erin Berghouse.