Abortion's a "Ferocious Attack" Encouraged by Contraception, Warns Cardinal Burke

“The devil, of course, wants to discourage us,” Cardinal Raymond Burke says regarding the pro-life movement, “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.”

Cardinal Burke gives this warning in a recently published book-length interview with French journalist Guillaume d’Alançon titled Hope for the World: To Unite All Things in Christ.

The notion he references that someone can be “personally against abortion” but refrain from expressing that position or acting on it is a common position of Catholic politicians in the United States, where Cardinal Burke is from. Popularized by the Catholic politician Mario Cuomo, who was governor of New York State in the 1980s and 1990s, a similar position is held by Hillary Clinton’s vice presidential running mate and Catholic Tim Kaine.

The cardinal further declares that abortion is a “ferocious attack against life” encouraged by “the distortion of the sexual act by contraception.”

In the same book, Cardinal Burke also reveals that the doctor had pressured his mother to abort him, though she and his father refused. “I was therefore quite touched by this question of defending human life, because I could very well have been killed.” (Read more: The Doctor Pressured My Mother to Abort Me, Cardinal Burke Reveals)