Cardinal Raymond Leo Burke has sat before one of the most listened-to microphones in the United States. The American prelate, former prefect of the Apostolic Signatura and a global reference point for Catholicism faithful to Tradition, has starred in episode 337 of the Shawn Ryan Show, a podcast that boasts millions of subscribers and whose studio, located in Tennessee, has seen a parade of military personnel, intelligence agents, and the leading figures of American politics, including current Vice President J.D. Vance.
Shawn Ryan, the host, is a former member of the Navy SEALs—the U.S. Navy’s special forces—and a former CIA contractor who has turned his program into a mass phenomenon. Baptized a few years ago after a high-profile conversion process, Ryan has decided to dedicate an entire series of his podcast to walking through the Bible, and he chose to inaugurate it with Cardinal Burke, whom he introduced as “an American cardinal widely respected for his expertise in canon law and in the governance of the Church.” The recording, opened and closed with prayer, took place on August 10, the feast of Saint Lawrence, whose intercession the cardinal himself invoked before beginning.
A chilling confession
What seemed like a catechesis on the Old Testament began with an unusual confession from the visibly nervous host before his guest. Ryan recounted that, after certain experiences with psychedelic substances, he believed he had glimpsed hell: “I think I was shown hell, and there was nothing there. There was no sense of God, or of Christ, or of anything good. It was empty, and the only thing I could feel in my body was extreme fear and extreme anxiety.”
From that moment on, he claimed, his home and his family have been the scene of inexplicable phenomena: “I’ve gone through four exorcisms with two different priests, and this doesn’t go away. Pictures have fallen off the wall, I’ve had manifestations inside my body. Last night, at 12:45, all the smoke alarms in the house went off again and again, all night long. And I think this is happening because something doesn’t want us to do what we’re going to do today.”
The cardinal’s response was immediate and of supernatural clarity: “I believe that too. The devil absolutely hates anyone who brings the truth to others. Our Lord Himself told us: the devil has been a murderer from the beginning, a liar and the father of lies. The more you come to understand the truth, the more you seek it in our Lord Jesus Christ, the more trouble he’s going to give you.”
Burke added an observation drawn from his own experience: “I often think that his main temptation is discouragement. If he can convince you that what you’re trying to do is impossible, or that it will only bring you harm, and you give it up, then he has achieved his purpose.” The prelate recalled the shepherd children of Fatima, to whom the Virgin also showed a vision of hell: “It’s a terrible thing to have such a vision, but it can be a real grace, because we never forget it. And when we feel the temptation to stray from the path of Christ, we remember it and want to return to the straight path.”
“I know this has happened to you from the very top of the Church”
The most pointed moment of the conversation came when Ryan, speaking of the attacks suffered by those who defend the faith, made an unmistakable allusion to the cardinal’s own tribulations during the previous pontificate: “I know this has happened to you from the very top of the Catholic Church. Why does God allow this to happen?”
Burke did not deny it. His response was a lesson in the theology of the cross: “It’s the question everyone asks, and I think we have to look at our Lord Himself. Why did the Father allow evil men to condemn Him unjustly and subject Him to the Passion and the cruelest death imaginable? It was for the purification of sin and for the total offering of life to God. When we accept these sufferings and unite them to those of Christ, a purification takes place in us. And we all need it.”
He concluded with a luminous image: “When He hung upon the cross, a soldier pierced His heart with a lance. They thought they had finally done away with that troublemaker. And who today is better known, more important, more loved than our Lord Jesus Christ? The cross is our only hope.”
In a timely aside, the cardinal also came to the defense of the sacramental seal, now threatened by various laws: “Now they want to force priests to reveal what is said in confession. Priests could never do that, because the penitent’s conversation is with God. The priest is only an instrument, and he has no license or permission whatsoever to reveal anything that is said to God through him.”
Sodom, Noah, and the present world
Asked about the similarities between the days of Noah and our own, Burke did not shy away from any burning issue. He pointed to a clear example of contemporary rebellion: “the idea that I am the author of my own being, that I have the right to decide whether I should live or not, and that I have the right to change the identity that was given to me at birth.”
Regarding same-sex marriage, approved by referendum in the land of his ancestors, he was blunt: “There are countries, like Ireland, the country of my own ancestors, that have put into their Constitution that there can be marriage between two persons of the same sex. I say this is a heresy, not only against the faith and against what the Scriptures teach, but against reason itself.”
Gender ideology received an equally severe diagnosis, with a warning directed at the medical profession: “Medicine is the art of healing, of curing. Sadly, the medical profession has taken on the task of actually mutilating people so they can carry out that idea that the sex nature assigned them is wrong. It turns out, of course, that no one can be happy that way. And we already know of cases of people who, after all those surgeries, have filed lawsuits against those who mutilated them.”
A biblical catechesis for millions of souls
The bulk of the conversation was a serene and profound walk through the Old Testament: the divine inspiration of the 72 books, the canon, the deuterocanonical books excluded by the Protestant Bible, the covenants with Adam, Noah, Abraham, Moses, and David, the natural law written on the human heart, and the prophecies that point to the Savior. “Nothing in the Bible can lead us astray,” the cardinal explained. “Every word in it, even in its smallest details, can in some way draw us closer to God.”
Special attention was given to his explanation of the betrothal of the Virgin Mary to Saint Joseph, which left the host in awe: “Sometimes it is said today that Mary was the first single mother, and that is not true, because she was perfectly married to Joseph before the archangel Gabriel arrived. In Jewish law there were two stages to marriage, and betrothal was already marriage, with a legal bond so strong that Saint Joseph thought he had to divorce Mary.”
As they parted, after praying the Our Father together, Ryan announced that the series would continue with an episode dedicated to the New Testament, also with Cardinal Burke. “I’m sure this is going to reach countless souls,” the host told him. The prelate’s reply summed up the spirit of the entire interview: “If God wills, it will lead them to begin reading the Bible and to know our Lord through it.”