Labour leadership contender Andy Burnham has said that though he “drifted away” from the Catholic Church over its teaching on sexuality he found Pope Benedict XVI’s talk of a smaller, purer Church “terrifying”.
In an interview with the Huffington Post on Tuesday, the Shadow Health Secretary and MP for Leigh, who was raised a Catholic, also said he still believed the social teaching of the catechism to be “powerful and strong and right”.
While praising Pope Francis for his humility, warmth and “fantastic character”, Mr Burnham said that before Francis’ election in 2013 the Church had become more judgmental and “more obsessed with sexuality and issues related to sexual behaviour”.
“And in that period, I drifted more and more away and Ratzinger said he wanted a smaller, purer Church, which I found quite terrifying actually.”
In fact rather than advocating a smaller, purer Church, Pope Benedict said in a book of collected writings published in 2009 that because of the challenge of secularisation the Church “will become small and will have to start afresh more or less from the beginning” but he added that it “will be a more spiritual Church”.
Mr Burnham also said he has “high hopes” for Pope Francis, whom he described as “a humble man with great warmth and a fantastic character”. He continued, speaking of the Irish referendum in which voters backed the introduction of gay marriage: “When the vote happened in Ireland recently I did hope that it might be a moment for him to move the Church on,” he continued. “I still live in hope.”
Mr Burnham described how his advocacy for LGBT rights had caused tensions among his Catholic friends. “I’m Catholic by upbringing, but I’m not particularly religious now,” he said.
“My kids go to a Catholic school, so I still believe in the values and the grounding it gives you. But because of my background, when I voted [on LGBT issues] it always caused a kind of tension in terms of people I know, friends, family.”
Burnham said he felt the Church had lost touch with most British Catholics on issues such as LGBT rights and birth control. “I find that quite difficult because if I think of the Church of my youth, and the priests that I knew, the feeling and overriding mood was quite forgiving really, quite humane, humorous, irreverent,” he told the Huffington Post.
After the Irish vote, Mr Burnham wrote in the Mirror that he first voiced his desire to say gay marriage legalised in The Tablet. “I did so in the pages of The Tablet – the journal of the UK Catholic congregation – because I thought the Church had got itself on the wrong side of the argument and of history,” he said.
Above: Andy Burnham. Photo: DoH
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