VATICAN CITY — Cardinal Raymond Burke has rallied all people of goodwill to take a firm stance in protecting and promoting human dignity, warning that it is under “constant attack in an ever more secularized world.”

In a forceful keynote address to members of the Dignitatis Humanae Institute at the Casina Pio IV in the Vatican Gardens June 28, the Roman Curia’s most senior U.S. cardinal said belief in the dignity of all people is the most fundamental means of the New Evangelization.

He singled out for criticism U.S. politicians who are constantly pushing to liberalize restrictions upon abortion, observing they are backed by “powerful lobby groups with vested interests, such as Planned Parenthood and Marie Stopes International.”

He also criticized other countries such as the United Kingdom for forcing through same- sex “marriage” legislation without any regard for its consequences and the United Nations for linking aid to poor countries with provisions for contraception and abortion.

“A thinly disguised population-control agenda is steadfastly at work in the sheep’s clothing called ‘maternal health,’” he said. But the agenda, he noted, “actually has nothing to do with maternity and nothing to do with health.”

Cardinal Burke, who is prefect of the Supreme Tribunal of the Apostolic Signatura — the Church’s closest equivalent to a Supreme Court — also drew attention to the persecution of Christians, which he said is “at a high point throughout the world.”

‘Virulent’ Secularism

Observing that the world is facing “virulent strains of secularism,” he noted: “One only has to read the daily newspaper or turn on the television for the evening news to know that Christians holding to the truth of the moral law is no longer tolerated by many and that the secularist agenda never ceases in its efforts to overshadow, drown out and intimidate the witness of faithful Christians.”

via Cardinal Burke Takes on the Modernist Agenda | Daily News | NCRegister.com.