Cardinal Raymond Burke has revealed that his mother was advised to abort him.
In a book-length interview with journalist Guillaume d’Alançon, Cardinal Burke says that when his mother was pregnant with him, she became seriously ill and a doctor advised her to have an abortion.
According to Cardinal Burke, the doctor said: “You already have five children, it is important for you to be in good health so as to take care of them.”
“My parents refused,” says the cardinal, who is now chaplain to the Order of Malta. “My parents told him that they believed in God and that Christ would give them the necessary help. My mother gave birth to me, and everything went well.
“I was therefore quite touched by this question of defending human life, because I could very well have been killed.”
In the book, entitled Hope for the World, Cardinal Burke argues that the “ferocious attack against life today” results from “the distortion of the sexual act by contraception”, and urges Catholics to defend human life.
He adds: “The Devil, of course, wants to discourage us: he tries to sow doubt in our minds about defending human life publicly. And he subtly tempts us to remain silent, to mute our conscience, to tell ourselves that we are personally against abortion but do not have to express our faith and moral convictions in public.”
Elsewhere in the book, the cardinal says that it is “reasonable” to be afraid of Islam’s desire to govern the world. He argues that too few people understand that when Muslims become a majority population “they have the religious obligation to govern that country”.
