The Catholic Response to Scandal

By Bishop Raymond Burke
Diocese of La Crosse, Wisconsin
Address given at the Milwaukee Wanderer Forum, December 6-7, 2002
Co-sponsored by the St. Gregory VII Chapter of Catholics United for the Faith
Wanderer Forum Foundation, & Living Catholic Seminars
A couple of excerpts:

"The dissent from the Church’s moral teaching regarding artificial contraception, sterilization, homosexual acts, and self-abuse, which permeates culture, in general, and has also entered into the Church, has its profoundly harmful effect on the thinking and acting of the faithful, in general, and also of the shepherds of the flock. It is not uncommon today to witness a kind of pick-and-choose approach to the Church’s moral teaching on the part of many Catholics. If the shepherds do not teach clearly and consistently the truth about human sexuality, then the flock will be likely led astray by the thinking of the world."

"Dissent is fundamentally rebellion against the teaching authority of the Church, a refusal to practice the virtue of obedience. At first, it may express itself in rebellion against some doctrine of the faith. But, once it becomes a habit, it will express itself in immoral practices, a rebellion against the moral order which God has written in our nature and teaches us through the word of Christ.

The article is a good read and provides some additional insight into the problems.