“C”atholic Reporter slams Cardinal Burke as “Medieval Retrograde”

Source: Wikimedia Commons, under Creative Commons License; Author: Geerlingguy

A prominent reporter in “progressive” Catholic media is presently working on a story that will “blow the lid” off Cardinal Raymond Burke’s “regressionist, anti-science and anti-reason” leadership of the Order of Malta.

The Cardinal was only recently appointed Patron of the Order of Malta by Pope Francis following his removal as Prefect of the Apostolic Signatura in late 2014.

However, the reporter, who will only go on record once his article is published, claims that Cardinal Burke “swiftly usurped” the constitutional powers from the “Prince and Grand Master” of the Order for “his own nefarious designs”.

“There are two key aspects of Cardinal Burke’s coup for power: first, we all know that the cappa magna is only a mere sign of Burke’s appetite for the preservation of Catholic cultural anachronisms and lust for conferral of titles upon himself.”

The Order of Malta traces its origins to the Middle Ages, and is “shrouded in secrecy”

“Well, the Order confers a lot of titles and has a lot of cultural anachronisms for the taking. Pope Francis knew that Burke would become totally distracted by these things and would shut up about the upcoming Synod on the Family.”

Second, the Cardinal’s association with the Order, “its pomp and white crosses on a red field and all that — would inspire a connection between the Order’s medieval origins and Burke’s own backward thinking.”

“We’ve known for some time that Cardinal Burke has no patience for modern technology or health care, and has even termed such things ‘modern witchcraft’. As soon as Burke learned that he’d be presiding over an organization that operates state-of-the-art medical facilities throughout the world, he decided that God was calling him to return these facilities to ‘the way God intended, just like it was in the Dark Ages.'”

Cardinal Burke, “using funds belonging to the Order, retained a “like-minded” physician from Albania to write new medical protocols for the treatment of MRSA (methicillin-resistant staphylococcus aureus) — an antibiotic-resistant ‘superbug’ — in all Order-operated hospitals and medical facilities.”

Today’s members of the Order continue to wear funny costumes (Source: Flickr, Bobbie Hanvey Photographic Archives, John J. Burns Library, Boston College, under Creative Commons License)

According to the reporter, a team of infectious disease specialists at the Order’s Holy Family Hospital in Bethlehem vehemently objected to the new protocols when they were “previewed” to the hospital’s staff.

One doctor (preferring to remain anonymous, citing fear of reprisals) at the Bethlehem hospital told the reporter that “What apparently happened was the Cardinal saw an article reported by BBC which claimed that ‘a 9th Century Anglo-Saxon remedy using onion, garlic and part of a cow’s stomach’ was capable of killing 90% of MRSA bacteria.”

“Cardinal Burke seized upon this as evidence of how antibiotics are nothing more than medical sophistry and actually detrimental to public health in a hospital setting. He refused to listen when we tried to explain that eliminating only 90% of MRSA using such a protocol meant that there was actually an even greater risk for the patient, because the surviving 10% would effectively re-colonize and subsequent generations would be more or less impervious to the medieval remedy.”

Whenever not parading in costume, members of the Order are found supporting its various humanitarian and medical programs (Source: Flickr, under Creative Commons License; Author: Canadian Pacific)

In response, Cardinal Burke purportedly “stuck his fingers in his ears and started chanting ‘La, La, La! Can’t hear you! La La La!'”

As for other potential “bombshells” against Cardinal Burke, for the most part the reporter is keeping them under wraps until his exposé goes to press, though he does say that “the Church will never be the same once the Cardinal’s views on the ‘positive therapeutic effects of burnings at the stake’, another ‘pet project of Burke’s funded by the Order’, are finally made public.”