UNITED STATES
National Catholic Reporter
by Thomas C. Fox on Sep. 02, 2012 NCR Today
Cardinal Raymond Burke, addressing a Kenyan canon law convention Aug. 28, linked the clergy sex abuse scandal with a failure by priests to respect canon law.
Burke, Prefect of the Supreme Tribunal of the Apostolic Signatura, the Vatican’s highest court, said: “It is profoundly sad to note, for instance, how the failure of knowledge and application of the canon law, which was indeed still in force, contributed significantly to the scandal of the sexual abuse of minors by the clergy in our some parts of the world.”
Burke’s remarks appeared on the CatholicCulture.org website.
“The years of a lack of knowledge of the Church’s discipline and even of a presumption that such discipline was no longer fitting to the nature of the Church indeed reaped gravely harmful fruits in the Church,” Burke said. Going on to say:
For example, I think of the pervasive violation of the liturgical law of the Church, of the revolution in catechesis which often rendered the teaching of the faith vacuous and confused, if not erroneous; of the breakdown of the discipline of priestly formation and priestly life, of the abandonment of the essential elements of religious life and the devastating loss of fundamental direction in many congregations of religious Sisters, Brothers and priests; of the loss of the identity of charitable, educational and healthcare institutions bearing the name of Catholic; and the failure of respect for the nature of marriage and the time-proven process for judging claims of nullity of marriage in ecclesiastical tribunals.
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