Cardinal Burke’s removal from the Apostolic Signatura has not put a damper on his outspoken concerns about the ideas being considered during the two-part Synod on Marriage and Family. In a conference in Ireland, he again called for a removal of certain issues from the second round of synod talks in October, 2015.

Cardinal Raymond Burke has urged Pope Francis to take the issues of Communion for the divorced and remarried, cohabitation and same-sex marriage “off the table” for next year’s Synod of Bishops.

Addressing more than 300 delegates at a family and marriage conference, organised by Catholic Voice, in Limerick on November 15, the American cardinal said these issues had distracted the work of the synod in its first session in October.

Warning that Satan was sowing confusion and error about matrimony, the cardinal patron of the Knights of Malta said, “Even within the church there are those who would obscure the truth of the indissolubility of marriage in the name of mercy.”

Again and again, the good cardinal puts his finger on the source of the problems plaguing human sexuality and the family, and his clear voice on how Catholics should view these issues is refreshing:

Lashing out at the “so-called contraceptive mentality,” he warned it was “anti-life” and blamed it for “the devastation that is daily wrought in our world by the multi-million dollar industry of pornography” and the “incredibly aggressive homosexual agenda,” which he claimed could only result in “the profound unhappiness and even despair of those affected by it.”

Cardinal Burke said he was reduced to tears by attempts to introduce “so-called gender theory” into schools.

He warned that such theory was “iniquitous” and that exposing children to such “corrupt thinking” could not be permitted.

He said “society has gone even further in its affront to God and his law by claiming the name of marriage for liaisons between persons of the same sex.”

To applause, the cardinal said he refused to use the term traditional marriage for the marriage of a man and a woman.

“My response is — is there any other kind of marriage? I fear that by using that terminology that we give the impression that we think that there are other kinds of marriage; well, we don’t.”