Cardinal Raymond Burke has called for “open recognition” of the Catholic church’s homosexual culture in light of recent revelations of sexual abuse.

“I believe that there needs to be an open recognition that we have a very grave problem of a homosexual culture in the Church,” Burke said in an interview Thursday, “especially among the clergy and the hierarchy, that needs to be addressed honestly and efficaciously.”

The former head of the church’s equivalent of the Supreme Court said it was already “clear after the studies following the 2002 sexual abuse crisis that most of the acts of abuse were in fact homosexual acts committed with adolescent young men.”

“There was a studied attempt to either overlook or to deny this,” he said, referring to the mainstream media cover-up of the homosexual nature of the abuse as well as such denial within the church itself.

“Now it seems clear in light of these recent terrible scandals that indeed there is a homosexual culture, not only among the clergy but even within the hierarchy, which needs to be purified at the root,” Burke said.

The cardinal’s analysis of the situation coincides with another report, also released on Thursday, by the president of the Catholic League, Bill Donohue.

In his report, Mr. Donohue, who is a trained sociologist, decried the ongoing “media cover-up of the role played by gay molesters” in the church.

Referring to the 2004 John Jay study on the sexual abuse crisis in the United States, Donohue notes that “81 percent of the victims were male, 78 percent of whom were postpubescent.” Since all of the abusers were male and most of the victims were postpubescent males, “that is a problem called homosexuality,” Donohue stated.

Despite the media’s insistence on referring to a pedophilia crisis, the report revealed that “less than five percent” of the cases involved pedophilia, Donohue said, and studies done in subsequent years report approximately the same ratio.

“It’s been a homosexual scandal all along,” he said.

“No amount of compassion for those who have been violated by priests should ever be done at the expense of telling the truth, no matter how unpopular it may sound. To do otherwise is cowardly, shameful, and unjust,” he said.

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