Sydney, Australia, Sep 24, 2017 / 12:38 pm (CNA).- Amid the ongoing debate surrounding “Amoris Laetitia,” dubia author Cardinal Raymond Burke said in a new interview that he’s wrongly depicted as the “enemy” of Pope Francis, but he stressed that current division in the Church demands an answer to requests for clarity.
“The urgency of a response to the dubia derives from the harm done to souls by the confusion and error, which result, as long as the fundamental questions raised are not answered in accord with the constant teaching and practice of the Church,” Cardinal Burke said.
“The urgency weighs very heavily on my heart,” he said. In his experience, the cardinal said he’s seen “a great deal of confusion, also people feeling that the Church is not a secure point of reference.”
“Some are feeling even a certain bewilderment…they are looking for a much stronger presentation of the Church’s doctrine.”
Cardinal Burke was one of four signatories of a letter submitted to Pope Francis last September outlining five dubia, or doubts, about the interpretation of his 2016 post-synodal apostolic exhortation “Amoris Laetitia.”
That letter had been submitted to the Pope privately, but released to the public two months later, prompting a firestorm of media commentary and debate.
However, the cardinal also addressed the purported “conflict” between him and Pope Francis, stressing that the media portrayal of he and the Pope is inaccurate, and frequently “overdone.”
“It’s all a caricature. They depict Pope Francis as a wonderful, open person and there’s nothing wrong with that, but they depict me as just the opposite,” he said, explaining that this is done “to advance their own agenda.”
However, Pope Francis “is actually not in favor of their agenda. They use this kind of technique to make it seem like he is and that’s fundamentally dishonest,” Cardinal Burke said.
Neither is there an intention to build up resistance against the Pope, he continued, explaining that the image of him being the “enemy” who is trying to undermine the Pope “isn’t the case at all.”
Cardinal Burke made his comments in a recent interview with Australian journalist Jordan Grantham, published Sept. 21 in Diocese of Parramatta’s online publicaton, “Catholic Outlook.”
The cardinal noted that as faithful Catholics, those who have expressed doubt or concern over the confusion surrounding “Amoris Laetitia” love the Pope “with complete obedience to the office of Peter.”
Yet at the same time, he said, “they don’t accept these questionable interpretations…of ‘Amoris Laetitia,’ interpretations, which in fact contradict what the Church has always taught and practiced.”
Without clarity on these issues, “people are in a very difficult state,” he said, explaining that this is demonstrated by the fact that bishops conferences have issued conflicting guidelines on how to interpret “Amoris Laetitia.”
In addition to Cardinal Burke, other signatories to the dubia letter were Cardinals Walter Brandmüller, president emeritus of the Pontifical Committee for Historical Sciences; Carlo Caffarra, Archbishop Emeritus of Bologna; and Joachim Meisner, Archbishop Emeritus of Cologne.
Cardinals Meisner and Caffarra passed away within two months of each other over the summer, leaving Cardinals Burke and Brandmüller to carry forward the ongoing debate over the dubia.
Cardinal Burke’s latest interview was not related to the release of a letter signed by 62 Catholic clergy and scholars, the most notable being superior general Bishop Bernard Fellay of the breakaway Society of St. Pius X. That letter presented itself as a “filial correction” to Pope Francis for reputed errors and heresies.
Among other things, the letter argues that the Pope has either directly or indirectly perpetrated seven heresies, most of which surround comments he has made about Martin Luther and ambiguities in “Amoris Laetitia,” specifically related to the question of the reception of Holy Communnion by divorced-and-remarried Catholics who cannot get an annulment.
The letter also objects to the Pope’s silence in the face of the “dubia” submitted to the Pope by the four cardinals.
Like the four cardinals’ original dubia letter, the 25-page letter of “filial correction” was also sent to the Pope privately, but the signatories decided to publish it after having received no response from the Pope.
Neither Cardinal Burke nor Cardinal Brandmüller signed the document. According to a Tweet sent out by the traditionalist blog “Rorate Caeli,” which has provided favorable coverage of the document’s release, cardinals were not asked to sign. The letter was “step one only.”
In his interview, Cardinal Burke said that many lay people argue over “Amoris Laetita,” and “many priests are suffering in particular because the faithful come to them, expecting certain things that are not possible because they’ve received one of the these erroneous interpretations of ‘Amoris Laetitia’.”
As a result, these people no longer understand Church teaching, the cardinal said. And in the Church, “we have only one guide, the Magisterium, the teaching of the Church, but we now seem to be divided into so-called political camps.”
The at times volatile “attacks” from parties who disagree is “a very mundane way of approaching things, it has no place in the Church,” Cardinal Burke continued. “But that’s where we’re at right now.”
The only way for the conversation to move forward on these matters, he said, “is to make the point of reference the doctrine of the Church. That’s what unifies us.”
Cardinal Burke also cleared up what he said are several misconceptions about him that are often promoted by the media, namely that he is “only interested in doctrine and law,” and that he is “out of touch with the times and living in the Middle Ages.”
“I am very pastoral and in fact, I don’t see any contradiction between being pastoral and being faithful in announcing the Church’s teaching and following the Church’s law,” he said.
The cardinal insisted that he is also “very conscious of the everyday culture in which we live, and I try to address it, but in a way that is full of compassion in the sense of addressing the Church’s teaching to the cultural situation and trying to lead the culture to a certain transformation.”
Referring to those who at times paint a picture of the Pope as a great revolutionary changing the tide of the Church in modern times, the cardinal said being the Successor of Peter “has nothing to do with revolutions.” Rather, it involves “maintaining the Church in unity with her long and constant tradition.”
Many people also claim the Pope is somehow going against the Church’s centuries-long tradition, he said. “And that isn’t possible either, because the Roman Pontiff is that principle of unity, unity which is not only present now, but unity with those who have gone before over the centuries.
“In fact, the two are one. When we are unified with the saints and especially with the great teachers of the faith along the centuries, then we also find unity with one another.”
Offering a word to all those currently worried about the state of the Church, Cardinal Burke stressed the need to remain confident in the fact that it is Jesus Christ whom they encounter in the Church, and who comes to meet us.
“Therefore, no matter what confusion or even divisions enter into the Church, we should never give up hope,” he said.
“We should cling all the more faithfully to what the Church has always taught and practiced. And that way we will really save our own souls, with the help of God’s grace, which, of course, we must always be about.”
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Back when I was a kid, I knew the Church was partly to blame for overpopulation because they forbad birth control. And I eventually came to understand that the Christian prohibition of sex-before-marriage was really all about preventing illegitimate children. Now that we have contraceptives, the prohibition is out-dated.
Don’t get me started on abortion.
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Thank goodness for Scott and Kimberly Hahn, Janet Smith, the Kippley’s/CCL, and Father Anthony Zimmerman.
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Is it too much to ask the hierarchy to believe (and actively defend) what the Church taught to the above folks, who taught me?
WHAT are you talking about!! Christ said that out of wedlock sex was sin before there was a Church. This issue in nonnegotiable.
Exactly
The prohibition on sex before marriage has everything to do about immorality and abuse of God’s gifts and NOTHING to do with illegitimacy. And having birth control available has nothing to do with it. Sex with a person not your marriage partner is forbidden. Period.Scott and Kimberly Hahn are faithful converts to Catholicism . Their book Rome Sweet Home goes into some detail about their understanding of the Catholic concept of birth control. In short they dropped their Protestant belief of pro-contraception and accepted Catholic belief. I dont have any idea what you are referncing about them.
I think you are perhaps a bit caught up in the first paragraph and did not well read the second two:
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“Thank goodness for Scott and Kimberly Hahn, Janet Smith, the Kippley’s/CCL, and Father Anthony Zimmerman.
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Is it too much to ask the hierarchy to believe (and actively defend) what the Church taught to the above folks, who taught me?”
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There was a time the Church hierarchy defended the Church’s “family life teachings.” The Hahns, Kipple’s, Smith, Zimmerman (and others) learned them, and were able to effectively transmit and convert others–including me.
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Very sad the hierarchy doesn’t seem much interested in converting folks these days.
Surely, “not identical.” Not even consistent. But, how to contain the manifest contradictions (!), but without being lured into triggering a replay of the Reformation dismemberment?
“'[S]ynodality is…a spiritual event. That is, [the pope] invites us to listen to one another and, in listening to one another, to listen to the Holy Spirit for what he wants to say to us,’” Koch explained.”
Such listening today entails, as well, listening to all that the Holy Spirit has said to us in the past. Yes? The Magisterium. So, the contradictions are not only about deconstruction of the Church “structure,” but also about the revealed unity of faith and morals (Veritatis Splendor, nn. 95, 115). And, moreover, the elementary, pre-theological and non-demonstrable first principle of non-contradiction.
The fly in the ointment (so to speak) is the strategic positioning rainbow exhibitionism by Cardinal Marx on the C-7 and Archbishop Hollerich as relator-general for the 2023 Synod on Synodality. Both already enlisting the media to help double-speak the contradictions (in the path of Hans Kung et al who earlier worked derail the real Vatican II–the actual documents–with the virtual spirit of Vatican II).
But, now, as for the German synodal wayward, perhaps the pope’s recent and very excellent remarks about “idols” serve especially, and yet obliquely, for whatever is left of the Church in Germany… https://cruxnow.com/vatican/2022/04/pope-urges-priests-to-avoid-idols-that-distract-from-god
You mean the Sin-nod on Sin-nod-ality, don’t you?
Indeed, and I humbly suspect that yours truly introduced that term back in May 6, 2021, as part of a comment that bears repeating today:
“On the ‘path’ with Alice in Wonderland: ‘Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to go from here?’ The Cheshire Cat: ‘That depends a good deal on where you want to get to.’ Alice: ‘I don’t much care where.’ The Cheshire Cat: ‘Then it doesn’t much matter which way you go.’
Or, as Martin Luther once said of the Bible, now with Bishop Batzing’s double-speak: ‘a synod has a wax nose; you can twist it whichever way you want!’
synod = sin nod.”
Kathryn above : Your first paragraph was confusing. I had to read the entirety of your comments several times in order to understand (I think) what you were getting at.
While I once a supporter of contraception/abortion, I am now vehemently opposed to those things–thanks to laymen (Father Zimmerman was a priest, obviously) like the Hahns, etc.
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I can count on one had the priests I know who uphold the truth on contraception publically (none of them in my own diocese).
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For nearly twenty years, I sat through homily after homily on social-justice- poor=good people, rich=bad people, and judging is a bad thing to do (very un-Christ like to call someone out on his sin).
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The homily I once heard that mentioned divorce promoted annullments. I think I heard a sermon on contraception only twice–once at a Rosary Triduum, and once at an NFP conference (so not the Sunday Mass).
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Since family breakdown is a large component of poverty and social ills (and Church decline), I don’t think it is much too ask for the hierarchy of the Church to actually promote those behaviors that protect against those very ills, especially since the hierarchy never misses a chance to support increased taxes and gov’t funding on services to support the poor trapped in the unhealthy social situations to lead to the poverty to begin with.
I’ve noticed the obsession with governmental solutions by many Catholic Social Teaching advocates. The problem with this approach is the amount of unelected, unaccountable power that this concentrates in the hands of government bureaucracies. This lack of checks and balances is an open invitation to the corruption of those wielding this power. Too little recognition of the effects of Original Sin that are still with us. It’s getting to the point that the government is being treated like an all knowing, all seeing, and all powerful god. No recognition of human weaknesses and limitations.
I write to wonder why so many “Catholic “ websites don’t want any comments from average people. I used to sometimes comment at America but the Jesuits cut me off from commenting because I didn’t take the radical progressive line. This site is the only Catholic site I’ve found that lets average people speak their mind.
Why are so many “Catholic” sites so fearful of hearing from people who aren’t “progressives?”
Perhaps you have answered your own question, that many progressives are deaf, and rigidly in a rut BECAUSE they’re progressive…
But the same is true of many “conservatives,” that many are rigid foot-draggers—but of a different color (and surely not lavender!). My very solid pastor of long ago sometimes barked that he was “orthodox”, not conservative. These two types of rigid bigotry (two, not only conservatives!) are allergic to each other, and the itchy scratching dominates the media run mostly by progressives. It’s all about subscriptions.
Meanwhile, a real conservative and a real progressive (probably the former more than the latter?) would be reassured by St. John Henry Cardinal Newman’s Sermon VI for the 6th Sunday of Lent, which concludes:
“God grant that we may not attempt to deceive our consciences, and to reconcile together, by some artifice or other, the service of this world and of God! God grant that we may not pervert and dilute His holy Word, put upon it the false interpretations of men, reason ourselves out of its strictness, and reduce religion to an ordinary common-place matter–instead of thinking it what it IS, a mysterious and supernatural subject, as distinct from anything that lies on the surface of this world, as day is from night and heaven from earth!”
As for Jesuits, I have personally known three (three!) who were also unambiguously Catholic, partly because none worked in the media, none confused matters of prudential judgment with dogma, none still read much what has become of America magazine, and certainly none sipped at the tainted waters of the National Catholic Report (a self-banished “commentator” on things Catholic, but no longer recognized as a Catholic publication).
It’s quite simple, sadly enough. Those sites are focused on pushing a specific narrative in order to advance a left wing political and social agenda. Dissenting voices expose and challenge those false narratives, so they need to be silenced.
Bill, I would say you are correct to characterize America as “Catholic.”
Because I certainly wouldn’t call it Catholic.
Sending all at CWR, Easter Greeting.
I think Kathryn has a good tack. Her direction and concerns can be understood as charted through VATICAN II and Paul VI.
Please consider this word “tack”, in its varied senses.
The thing complained of has 2 external parts, what is preached and what is not preached; and the ones who are on the receiving end, are put into different kinds of apposition. If you have to go head-on against it -the preaching, say,- those in charge then want to be very gracious and can insist how accommodating everyone needs to be.
Also, the preaching on the 2 sides, is said to be “spiritual”. Consider: If you take it as an assignment to reflect in silence on what is offered and so “come to allow yourself to grow in wisdom quietly and humbly”, because, as some hold, “it is the way of Therese of Lisieux”, then, what borderland area would it be that you have entered into there?
Cardinal Koch had an interview with Vatican Radio January 17 2014 and it was reported in CWR a few days later -in the link. I have read CNA’s report here April 2022 and CWR’s report there January 2014. With both I am unable to decide what Cardinal Koch is leading, other than “seamless garment unity” of 2014 possibly being carried along through “dialogue” of 2022.
In the whole 8-year span, his propositions and arrangements are almost identical in opacity and if he were a prism the light would not refract! I apologize for this frankness. And if I try to apply Cardinal Newman’s exhortation, above, quoted by Peter D. Beaulieu, I find I don’t know how. Good thing because I likely would make a total mess of it for Newman, the way things are positioned.
Jesus’ tunic was never torn. The ones who were interested in it cast dice for it!
If you want to make allegory from Scripture, please try to be true to the scripts.
But I also would take Peter D. Beaulieu to task here. The touchstone on everything is surely NOT the state of the NC REPORTER nor the “3 Jesuits” known by Beaulieu!
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‘ Most people have a plane-like vision, stuck to the earth, of two dimensions. When you live a supernatural life, God will give you the third dimension: height, and with it, perspective, weight and volume. ‘
Escriva, THE WAY 279
https://www.escrivaworks.org/book/the_way/point/279
https://www.catholicworldreport.com/2014/01/20/cardinal-koch-putting-christs-seamless-garment-back-together-interview-about-church-unity/
Kathryn above – Most people don’t see the link from abortion back to contraception. Persuading them of it is a very high hill to climb these days and I think that’s why most priests and bishops steer clear of the subject (and that is making the very unsure assumption that they are convinced themselves). So, yes, I agree that lay leaders like Janet E. Smith and the Hahns are courageous and prophetic. I’m not familiar with the Kippleys/CCL.
Instead of advancing a single link from “abortion back to contraception,” is there a THREAD…
…running from contraception through abortion, to open marriages, to cohabitation and a divorce culture, to a non-binary/homosexual subculture and gay “marriage,” and then to polygamy beginning already with acquiescence to Islamic practices across many parts of Europe (in France, between 150,000 to 400,000 residents in polygamous households (Philip Jenkins, “God’s Continent, 2007), to Western open-range gender theory and transgenderism?
In 1948 the defeated minority at the Anglican communion Lambeth Conference (earlier approving contraception) told it like this:
“It is, to say the least, suspicious that the age in which contraception has won its way is not one which has been conspicuously successful in managing its sexual life. Is it possible that, by claiming the right to manipulate his physical processes in this manner, man may, without knowing it, be stepping over the boundary between the world of Christian marriage and what one might call the world of APHRODITE, the world of sterile eroticism?” (Cited in Wright, “Reflections on the Third Anniversary of a Controverted Encyclical,” St. Louis: Central Bureau Press, 1971).
Pope Paul VI enlarged the warning, in his Humanae Vitae (Of Human Life, 1968), on the future of a morally unhinged world, the contraceptive mentality — and STATE POWER.
Dismissed at the time as an alarmist, he asked,
“Who will stop rulers from favoring, from even imposing upon their peoples, if they were to consider it necessary, the method of contraception which they judge to be most efficacious?” Today, from the Administrative State, in kindergartens a balanced diet soon of FDA-approved sugar-free cookies together with gender/transgender theory ideology.
Neither a single link nor a thread, but instead the real “seamless garment.” The hour is late…
Thank you Peter D. Beaulieu for deepening your thought here.
As for Cardinal Koch, I still am “not getting it”. Sorry. It could be one of my gears is stuck or something so. The EWTN interview is said to be scheduled for airing April 24 2022; but the article did not say which EWTN program will carry it or what time; and I can’t find it on the EWTN Schedule for that day.
For now, I just don’t get it -:
‘ “I don’t see these as identical. For the pope, synodality is … a spiritual event. That is, he invites us to listen to one another and, in listening to one another, to listen to the Holy Spirit for what he wants to say to us,” Koch explained.
“In Germany, I have the impression that synodality consists in dealing with the structures, something that Pope Francis already urged very energetically in his “Letter to the People of God” in Germany, that it is first and foremost not about structures but spirituality. And secondly, that the synodality on the whole should serve evangelization, as the pope has now also established in the Apostolic Constitution for the Roman Curia.” ‘
John and Sheila Kippley were the founders of the Couple to Couple League. They went on to found another NFP organization called NFP and More.
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Contraception is “intrinsically disordered” by itself–it’s link to abortion, while not irrelevant, is not the reason the it is forbidden. And I agree, I think it is a “very unsure assumption” the hierarchy is convinced of it.
Ever warning given in early 1960 by originally Pope John 23 about what the contraceptive pill would do to marriage, to women, to men has come to fruition. Breakups, unfaithfulness, sex from young ages. abuse of women, poor self esteem for women who have become sex slaves, not liberated,
sexual deviations, males becoming the clowns to perform with women dominating. The list goes on and on and everyone is so unhappy, and cannot find any beauty in the gifts God has created. I have been teaching the Billings Ovulation Method since 1970 and have watched the rot set in with no support from our pulpits. Yes Janet Smith has spoken at our conferences together with many wonderful people, including Drs John and Lyn Billings, who dedicated their entire lives to God’s plan for marriage.
Ever since the Bismarck Kulturkampf «Germany» has been trying to domesticate the Catholic Church. Not satisfied with the various schisms and trends of the «Lutheran» and «Calvinist» variety the so called Old Catholics were encouraged in their anti-romanist trajectory.
All of these schismatics are struggling against the processes of secularism, indifferentism and a general European/Western cultural decline.
These neo «German Catholics» plainly do not read history, or arrogantly assume history never repeats.
Islam, biding its time off stage, certainly does. The slow capture of the once Christian Levant and Near East is tangible proof of that.
A divided house will ineluctably collapse.