Burke denounces corrupt and secular culture at Mass in Oxford

CARDINAL Raymond Burke, above, preached yesterday against a “dictatorship of relativism” which brands Christians “fundamentalists and extremists”.

At a Mass in Oxford to celebrate the quincentenary of the birth of St Philip Neri, founder and patron of the Oratorians, the cardinal, who has just left the Vatican to become patron of the Knights of Malta, compared today’s world to the Renaissance world of “corruption” from which St Philip chose to stand apart. The cardinal encouraged Catholics to take inspiration from the saint in encounters with their own culture, which Burke described as “secularised and therefore corrupt”. He spoke of how “fundamental truths”, such as the importance of human life and its “cradle in the family” based on marriage, have been  “defied and violated”. He warned of the dangers of various ideological currents and condemned a “dictatorship of relativism which does not recognise any goal except the ego and its desires”.

He is on a short visit to Oxford and was later due to celebrate Vespers and Benediction for the intentions of the Order of Malta.