NORTHFIELD, Massachusetts (LifeSiteNews) — Cardinal Raymond Burke has described gender ideology and sex change as “an attack on reason” and “on nature.”

Speaking with Thomas Aquinas College (TAC), a Catholic liberal arts institution with whom Cardinal Burke has good relations, the American cardinal weighed in on gender ideology and attacks on family life.

“Today, the attack is on reason itself and on nature itself,” he stated. “For instance, to say that I can change my nature: I was born a male and that I can, through the use of various chemicals and mutilation, make myself a woman — this is an attack on reason, on nature.”

NEW: Cardinal Burke to @TACollege on gender ideology:

“For instance, to say that I can change my nature: I was born a male and that I can, through the use of various chemicals and mutilation, make myself a woman — this is an attack on reason, on nature.” pic.twitter.com/K7DPGDFGVy

— Michael Haynes 🇻🇦 (@MLJHaynes) August 21, 2024

Burke, who has held key roles in the Roman Curia for around 30 years, called on Catholics to proclaim the teachings of the faith. “So the Church must continue to teach the doctrines of the Faith in all their clarity, and that will lead us to questions of natural law, of the good order that’s written in our very human nature and which we must respect,” he said.

Such a role, Burke noted, serves to highlight “the importance of education as it is given at Thomas Aquinas College,” the now 53-year-old Catholic college centered on a great books curriculum.

This study of the Catholic faith and Western Civilization “enables us to see these most fundamental questions, which have to do with the natural law, which have to do with who we are as human beings,”  Burke said.

“We have witnessed a disintegration of the Catholic way of thinking, of Catholic culture,” the cardinal lamented. “That simply has to be restored, and that will come by way of reason and faith. The two are always in harmony with each other, because God is the One Who gave us the gift of reason and blesses us with the gift of faith.”

Burke, the emeritus prefect of the Supreme Tribunal of the Apostolic Signatura, was the 2024 commencement speaker at TAC’s East Coast campus. Delivering his address, Burke accentuated the importance of Catholic studies:

A Catholic education fortifies us to know God’s plan and to do God’s will by recognizing the darkness and sin around us and in our lives, and by embracing Christ Who dispels the darkness and conquers sin in the world and in our lives by His dwelling with us in the Church.

For many years, Burke has been a notable critic of gender ideology and the promotion of abortion in society, especially in America.

READ: Cardinal Burke: Gender theory is ‘madness,’ transgender bathrooms ‘inhuman’

This stance he has continued, especially with the controversy of U.S. President Joe Biden presenting himself for Holy Communion whilst promoting abortion – in contravention of Catholic teaching and Church law.

During an interview this summer, Burke critiqued Biden, who “claims to be a devout Catholic and yet is in favor of aborting babies even in the birth canal” and is also “in favor of … (the) transgender agenda, which is a complete rebellion against God’s plan for us.”

Prior to that, during an April speech for the New York Men’s Leadership Forum, Burke commented how “gender ideology is an attack on human reason because it goes against our very nature.”

Indeed, in a joint 2019 “declaration of truths” document issued with Bishop Athanasius Schneider, Burke led a number of Catholic prelates in condemning gender ideology. The text stated on the topic:

The male and female sexes, man and woman, are biological realities created by the wise will of God (see Gen. 1: 27; Catechism of the Catholic Church, 369).

It is, therefore, a rebellion against natural and Divine law and a grave sin that a man may attempt to become a woman by mutilating himself, or even by simply declaring himself to be such, or that a woman may in like manner attempt to become a man, or to hold that the civil authority has the duty or the right to act as if such things were or may be possible and legitimate (see Catechism of the Catholic Church, 2297).

In response to the societal promotion of gender ideology, Burke has repeatedly urged the study of Catholic teaching as contained in sound catechetical and theological manuals.

He has also encouraged Catholic centers of education to pay particular attention to their teaching on theology and matters pertaining to life and family. “It’s a primary responsibility” for Catholic schools to conduct age-appropriate instruction for younger children, he said at a conference in 2015.

Pointing to Catholic third-level educational establishments, Burke said that they “most especially should be attentive both in what’s taught in the theology classes, but also in the discipline in the life of the university to reflect the truth about marriage.”